The Poynter Institute for Media Studies ran a list this week of 515, quote, “unreliable news websites” that included The Daily Signal. But after mounting pressure, the institute nuked the list altogether.
“We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology,” Poynter’s managing editor, Barbara Allen, writes.
The Poynter Institute describes itself as a group that, quote, “champions freedom of expression, civil dialogue and compelling journalism that helps citizens participate in healthy democracies.”
If you don’t like The Daily Signal because you don’t believe in free speech or you think conservatives should be silent or you just don’t want certain stories told—it’s a free country.
But to smear us as engaging in dishonest journalism is well … dishonest journalism.
Absent from the original list, however, were news outlets known for their biased, liberal perspective such as MSNBC, The Nation, Mother Jones, and The Guardian.
It should come as no surprise that, according to a report by The Washington Free Beacon, an employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center had a hand in compiling the list.
The SPLC, a left-wing civil rights organization, is notorious for lumping in legitimate, mainstream conservative organizations with hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and and Neo-Nazis. It’s also recently been rocked by turmoil after the founder was ousted for allegedly inappropriate behavior and the president resigned.
Put simply, the SPLC is not a reliable source.
What is a reliable source? The Daily Signal. And don’t just take my word for it.
NewsGuard, an organization run by journalists that analyzes news sites’ content and grades them accordingly, gave us a “green” rating, the highest rating possible for transparency and credibility. This is the same rating they gave to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
At The Daily Signal, we are open with the fact that we are a part of The Heritage Foundation that comes from a conservative point of view, but we also take our standards of accuracy and objectivity with our facts and reporting seriously.
If Poynter had contacted us before publishing their list, perhaps we could have illuminated them to that fact, but they never did.
It’s too bad Poynter didn’t take its journalistic standards as seriously as we do.
