Censoring attempt defeated

On April 30, The Poynter Institute, which bills itself as a “school for journalism and democracy” and is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, published a new report and dataset called “UnNews.” This report declared at least 29 right-leaning news outlets and organizations to be “unreliable news websites.”

The goal of the report was clear: to kneecap and silence conservative organizations by smearing them and then bullying their advertisers. The report’s call to action was for advertisers to blacklist these websites, suggesting that “Advertisers don’t want to support publishers that might tar their brand with hate speech, falsehoods or some kinds of political messaging.”

The report labeled conservative sites, including the Media Research Center, CNSNews.com, Breitbart, The Washington Examiner, Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Caller, Heritage’s Daily Signal, The Daily Wire, Judicial Watch, LiveAction, PJ Media, LifeNews, RedState, The Blaze, and Drudge Report, to name a few, as “unreliable,” “biased,” or “clickbait.”

Meanwhile, numerous demonstrably untrustworthy left-wing sites were left off the list.

The MRC reacted immediately to expose and neutralize this pernicious scheme. Yesterday, MRC TechWatch published “Journalism Institute Poynter Tries to ‘Blacklist’ 29 Conservative Outlets as ‘UnNews.’” We revealed that this smear report was written by Barrett Golding of the anti-conservative and recently discredited Southern Poverty Law Center.  We also pointed out that the list reflects the biases of the liberal organizations that compiled its component parts.

Our article was posted by the Drudge Report, which exposed it to 20 million readers, and Poynter immediately began receiving complaints.

Additionally, MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell tweeted: “Busted: George Soros is the man behind a ‘journalism institute’ that is blacklisting conservative media organizations. Typical radical left dishonesty. Fake media rides again!”

Later that evening, Poynter disabled access to its own list and issued a letter of apology admitting its “methodology” had “weaknesses.”

Ironically, Poynter’s efforts to shred the reputations of conservative media and eliminate their voices by bullying advertisers redounded to its own disgrace.

But make no mistake, this is the modus operandi of the radical left — mislabel a conservative group, target their advertisers and silence them online. We stopped them this time but we know the Left is already planning their next attack.

Email from the MRC