Thank you for rating AlterNet and other sites such as Jacobin green, NewsGuard.

An excellent adjunct to fact-checking news stories by providing evaluation of media sources' "trustworthiness." NewsGuard's operational of definition of trustworthiness is based on nine criteria, with each site evaluated given a full "report card" based on each of those criteria. A summary evaluation is also arrived at, but the individual evaluations are key. The extension has worked fine for me. My main disappointment is NewsGuard's recent announcement that it plans to start charging for access to its evaluations, which have been free until now.

UPDATE 17 Mar 2020: I noticed a surprising number of extreme reviews for NewsGuard, so I scanned the "5s" and "1s" to get a better sense of what was going on. The 5s seem like a typical mix of vague, highly specific, and everything in between. The 1s seem to fll into three groups: 1) disappointment in the extension changing from free to subscription-based (a disappointing fact I noted in my original review); 2) general disappointment that some sites were given better or poorer evaluations than the reviewer felt was justified; and 3) non-specific negative reviews that reasonably may have been posted solely to lower NewsGuard's credibility as a source for evaluating the quality of news websites. This wreaks of an anti-NewsGuard campaign—perhaps started by sites that received negative ratings.

Obviously, I cannot prove whether there is/was a campaign to disparage NewsGuard, but I encourage those who are considering installing the NewsGuard extension to read a core sample of the reviews with 1-star ratings and decide for yourselves. If you are considering paying monthly for this kind of service, which many people can hardly afford, at least get a sense of how reliable the negative NewsGuard reviews seem to be before you decide.

Newsguard's professional approach to its assessments has actually generated more responsibility in the media industry, but rather than simply a green tick or a red X, they might consider at least an amber light for the likes of Fox News, which has a pass rating.

Co-founders Brill and Crovitz have been in the game for a long time, both with a history of some left-field projects, yet I think they've done well with this one with a seemingly qualified and reliable team.

They are gradually expanding around the world, and this will be useful and informative for Europeans and Asians.

I'd probably give it around a 4.6/7 star for now but it's certainly on the way up. Definitely a high-quality product.

This is a great add-on that judges news outlets by objective, unbiased standards of journalistic integrity. Many people rate this one star because it correctly rates their preferred news source as risky, biased, or untrustworthy. This outlet doesn't rate sites by their political leanings, it rates them based on objective standards such as their record on correcting false information, disclosing ownership and possible conflicts of interest, whether they handle fact / opinion responsibly, and whether they routinely publish false statements. Because of this, the ratings aren't based on politics, they're based on journalism as they should be.

NewsGuard does a good job of giving reasons why they rated a site a certain way. Their reasons are generally about journalistic integrity (funding sources, willingness to correct errors, making opinion/fact differences apparent) not political leanings, which is good. In general, I don't like to rely on the overall rating (green or red) that they give, but I find the breakdown of "nutrition facts" very useful. I feel like the categories they choose to rate on have given me a vocabulary of attributes to look for in all news and information outlets, even when I'm not using the extension.

I love the fact that the reviews suggest discrediting Fox News and CNN at the same time. God guys, this is not a tool for finding the media that matches your taste.

I am a bit surprised by the many 1-star ratings. It seems quite a few people are a bit confused about journalist standards: it's not about objectivity (because we are all human beings and therefore biased) but about transparency.

I still remember vividly my colleague sending me a link to an article claiming that Rudolf Hess was scheming with the Brits against the Soviets during WW2. I saw the alert from News Guard that the site is untrustworthy, checked up the Sputnik News and hey, whaddyaknow, it's covertly financed by the Russian govt! The Hess story is a Stalinist era conspiracy theory that has recently been pushed again by the russian govt.

I don't necessarily like or trust all the sites that are being given a good rating by the developers but that doesn't mean that they are bad.

Please look a bit beyond the tip of your own nose before giving another 1-star review to this brilliant extension!

Fantastic first line of defense against fake news. The plugin warns you with an icon about sources that fail their standard checks. The plugin also has detailed (sometimes overly) "nutrition labels" about why they rated organization a certain way. These labels let you get an idea about why an organization like Fox News was rated positively, even if you disagree with it. This app lets you see how organizations uphold (or don't) journalistic integrity EVEN IF THEY ARE BIASED. If you expect this app to simply confirm your personal biases, then don't bother.

This is the single most important extension of the modern era

Most of the one star reviews of this application are likely made by hostile foreign actors.

RT is openly attacking this app:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkY9fMK26dE
https://www.rt.com/usa/448555-newsguard-app-fake-news/
https://www.rt.com/news/449530-newsguard-edge-browser-media-integrated/