New York, NY (KMOX) - An organization that rates the credibility, fairness, accuracy, and transparency of online sites says it found hundreds that are publishing COVID misinformation. "It's not just one brand of misinformation that these sites dabble in," explains John Gregory, journalist and researcher with NewsGuard. "About 80 percent of the hundreds of sites that we identified as sharing election misinformation, also appeared on our COVID misinformation tracker."
A release from the organization says that of the 6,730 domains NewsGuard has rated overall, more than 500 posted COVID misinformation. Researchers found that websites reporting false COVID cures or making false claims about the dangers of vaccines, for example, can get many times the traffic of websites that have verifiable data on the pandemic.
Gregory adds that many of those questionable sites gain revenue from companies that place ads based on that traffic -- sometimes the actual advertisers don't know that their product or service is featured there. "They've just been trusting that the programmatic advertisers are putting their ads in places where they would want them to go and maybe leaning too heavily on what the engagement is, rather than the credibility of the source."
He says many of the sites posting COVID misinformation or hoaxes are run by individuals or organizations that support a particular viewpoint -- and there are some that offer no information about their ownership or management. "They can have names that sound like legitimate news sources. They can sound like... ...a government agency. In the case of the National Vaccine Information Center, who would recognize that off the bat as an anti-vaccine group."
Gregory says NewsGuard is trying to reach the news consumer who might not recognize the difference between a credible news source and a website that misleads or spreads false information, "because these days they can look so similar."
Click here to read about NewsGuard's rating process for yourself.
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