NewsGuard, the far-left, self-appointed arbiter of internet truth, released a blog post criticizing Tucker Carlson for his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Chief among NewsGuard’s gripes with the interview is that Carlson did not do enough to push back on claims Putin made, including that the “Poles forced [Adolf Hitler], they overplayed their hand, and they forced Hitler to start the Second World War by attacking Poland.”
With a complete lack of context, NewsGuard also criticized Carlson for his questions regarding Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
“Even when asking about jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Carlson said ‘maybe he was breaking your law in some way,’ an assertion of guilt for which there is no evidence,” NewsGuard said.
The video interview, by contrast, shows visible tension between Carlson and Putin during the confrontation over Gershkovich’s imprisonment.
The New York Times recognized as much in a story titled, “Tucker Carlson Urges Putin to Release American Journalist.”
“Evan Gershkovich who is the Wall Street Journal reporter, he is 32 and he’s been in prison for almost a year,” Carlson told Putin. “This is a huge story in the United States and I just want to ask you directly, without getting into details of your version of what happened, if as a sign of your decency, you’ll be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States?”
“We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them. We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner,” Putin replied. “However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps.”
Carlson continued to push.
“So, typically, I mean, this stuff has happened for, obviously, centuries. One country catches other spy within its borders and trades it for one of its own intel guys in another country,” Carlson said. “I think what makes it – and it’s not my business – but what makes it different is that this guy is obviously not a spy. He is a kid and maybe he was breaking a law in some way but he is not a superspy and everybody knows that and he has been held hostage and exchange, which is true, with respect, it’s true and everyone knows it’s true. So maybe he is in a different category, maybe it’s not fair to ask for somebody else in exchange for letting him out. Maybe it degrades Russia to do that.”
“He is just a journalist,” Carlson said later.
“He is not just a journalist, I repeat again. This is a journalist who received secret information on a secret basis,” a clearly uncomfortable Putin said. “It is different, but still, I am talking about other people who are essentially controlled by the U.S. authorities wherever they are serving a sentence. There is an ongoing dialogue between the special services. This has to be resolved in a calm, responsible and professional manner. They are keeping in touch, so let them do their work.”
During the uneasy confrontation, Putin eventually admitted that he did not “rule out that the person you referred to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland.”
“TuckerCarlson.com gets a 17.5/100 rating from NewsGuard…” according to NewsGuard, which adds that it “‘pre-bunks’ whatever new falsehoods [Carlson] promotes next.”
NewsGuard has a long history of giving biased ratings to news outlets that do not toe the left-wing line when even its CEO has spouted demonstrably false information on live television.
“My personal opinion is there’s a high likelihood this story is a hoax, maybe even a hoax perpetrated by the Russians again,” NewsGuard CEO Steve Brill said on CNBC just before the 2020 presidential election.
Biden’s laptop was proven to be authentic beyond doubt just months later.
Experts believe that NewsGuard is defining a new category of SaaS (software as a service) called “middleware.” Contrary to the benign-sounding moniker, “middleware” is used to facilitate government’s circumvention of the First Amendment by farming out its own narratives to a private “news” company.
NewsGuard recently received a $750,000 grant from the Department of Defense (DOD).
“They don’t run a very big shop. $750,000 is a lot of money for NewsGuard – and who did they use that money to censor? Opposition to the DOD,” Mike Benz, an attorney and the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), told The Tennessee Star in August.
“One of the things that I find most grotesque is that there is nothing natural about NewsGuard,” said Benz. “This is not a market that would exist without government pressure.”
“You pay off all these people who are affiliated with the state, and that’s what protects you from the state,” he said. “The fact is, this is a hard-nosed national security state plan to eliminate opposition media. The taxpayer is being charged to subsidize their own silence.”
Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, has called NewsGuard a “scam.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X / Twitter.
Photo “Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin” by Tucker Carlson.
