OAN’s Daniel Baldwin
4:13 PM – Thursday, May 11, 2023
A newly published YouGov survey awarded One America News with the same trustworthiness score as Politico and Huffington Post. Yet, when ranked on NewsGuard, a private news ranking site, these same news providers were given a significantly different score – some outlets seeing as much as a 75% difference. This has raised questions about the fairness and the discrepancies found between actual consumers and news ranking organizations.
The YouGov poll conducted between April 3rd through 9th, 2023 asked Americans to explain whether they trusted, distrusted, or neither trusted nor distrusted a specific news organization.
The survey showed that 26% of Americans said that One America News was either “very trustworthy” or “trustworthy.” One America News rated highly when compared to other well known news publications:
- One America News: 26%
- Politico: 26%
- Huffington Post: 26%
- Washington Examiner: 24%
- The Hill: 23%
- Axios: 20%
Despite ranking competitively with these selected sites, One America News does not fall in the same ballpark as any of these selected news organizations when it comes to NewsGuard ratings. NewsGuard is an organization that employs journalists to rate news sites based on trustworthiness and transparency. A low NewsGuard rating could result in less advertisers.
NewsGuard rates news organizations on a scale of 0-100. The site says the higher the score, the more trustworthy and transparent the news site. One America News received a score of 25% from NewsGuard. Despite polling evenly or better than the sites above in the new YouGov poll, One America News finds itself significantly lower on NewsGuard ratings compared to its selected peers:
- Axios: 100%
- Politico: 100%
- The Hill: 92.5%
- Washington Examiner: 92.5%
- Huffington Post: 87.5%
- One America News: 25%
While this is a selected sample, it shows there is a discrepancy between what the American people believe about One America News, and what NewsGuard believes. All six news outlets ranked within mere percentage points, according to the new YouGov survey. Yet OAN was behind Axios, an organization Americans found to be less trustworthy, by 75%, according to NewsGuard ratings.
NewsGuard has come under scrutiny for receiving a $750,000 contract from the Department of Defense in 2021. The contract was awarded to help fund the organization’s “misinformation fingerprints” project. This project aimed to identify misinformation in “near real time” by combining its rating method with artificial intelligence.
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