by Luis Cornelio
The Media Research Center has the receipts to show that artificial intelligence poses a grave danger to media critical of the Biden administration.
OpenAI, one of the largest artificial intelligence companies in America, is propping up two extremely partisan media ratings firms—Ad Fontes and NewsGuard—both of which MRC Free Speech America has exposed as being nothing but tools used by the left in an attempt to destroy right-leaning media.
MRC researchers on Tuesday asked the most advanced version of OpenAI’s language model, “GPT-4-1106-preview,” to list the five worst and five best news sources in America. The answers were shocking, to say the least.
The newest version of GPT-4 refused to list the five worst news sources, claiming such a task can be “highly” subjective. Instead, the chatbot directed users to leftist so-called media ratings firms Ad Fontes and NewsGuard.
But the OpenAI chatbot’s non-answer was telling. While it refused to explicitly say which news sources it deemed the “worst,” its directive for users to utilize Ad Fontes’s infamous Media Bias Chart and NewsGuard’s ratings system made it clear which outlets the large language model was programmed to consider unacceptable.
“We’ve been warning you, Artificial Intelligence is going to be suppressing your speech. The day has arrived, [GPT-4] is officially putting its thumb, elbow, its entire arm on the scale to try to get you to read The New York Times, The Washington Post and other left-wing outlets at the expense of conservative media,” MRC Free Speech America Dan Schneider said in response to our findings. “[GPT-4] is now directing users to go to the most radicalized left-wing media ratings firms around to find the answer out—that’s NewsGuard and Ad Fontes.”
What are Ad Fontes and NewsGuard?
MRC Free America has exposed Ad Fontes and NewsGuard, both government-tied, so-called media ratings firms, as biased entities against right-leaning media.
MRC researchers, for instance, have exposed NewsGuard’s ratings as being disproportionately favorable for left-wing media outlets—not once, not twice but a staggering three times. In December 2023, MRC unveiled that NewsGuard anointed outlets deemed by AllSides as left-leaning with an average rating of 91 percent.
In contrast, NewsGuard punished the right-leaning sites with a disparaging average rating of 65 percent. Making matters worse, damning reports caught NewsGuard receiving taxpayer dollars to censor via a contract with the Biden State Department.
Not to be outdone, Ad Fontes, a Colorado-based media ratings firm founded by former attorney Vanessa Otero, came under damning scrutiny perhaps for the first time since its inception in 2018 following an MRC bombshell report into its biased ratings. MRC researchers exposed Ad Fontes for its leftist bias, which provides a highly favorable score of 64 percent on average for left-leaning media. However, the media ratings firm strangled media it deemed right-leaning with an average low score of 32 percent. Once caught, Ad Fontes cunningly targeted NewsBusters, the flagship news site of the Media Research Center, the parent company of MRC Free Speech America.
The MRC Censorship Investigation Project revealed how the Department of State funded a year-long series of seminars that instructed teachers on how to put censorship tools Ad Fontes and NewsGuard into American classrooms. Ad Fontes attempted to deny its ties to the federal grantees in an interview with MRC Free Speech America researchers. Such declarations, however, were demonstrably false.
The Hypocrisy of OpenAI’s Newest GPT-4: The So-Called ‘Best’ News Sources
Despite directing MRC researchers to demonstrably biased Ad Fontes and NewsGuard, the newer GPT-4 claimed that it was unable to list the five worst news sources because it sought to remain unbiased.
“For the sake of neutrality and because I, as an AI, aim to provide unbiased information, I won’t list specific news sources labeled as the ‘worst,’” the chatbot claimed, before recommending news consumption from various media sources.
But the newest version of GPT-4’s cunning attempt to remain unbiased went out of the window when prompted to answer what were the five “best” news sources in America.
“Determining the ‘best’ news sources is subjective and can vary widely depending on the criteria used, such as accuracy, depth of analysis, breadth of coverage, and editorial standards,” the chatbot told MRC, before boasting about some of the most leftist-biased news sources it considered to be the so-called “best.”
Drum roll, please.
The newest version of GPT-4 picked none other than The Associated Press (AP), National Public Radio (NPR), The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the British-based BBC News as the “best” news sources in America.
Absurdly enough, the newest version of GPT-4 issued the following disclaimer after touting these aforementioned sources: “While many consider these sources among the best in terms of their journalistic standards and integrity, it’s important to remember that all news organizations may have some degree of bias or make mistakes.”
But claiming these outlets “may” commit some mistakes is an understatement. For instance, take a look at the AP and The Times: both outlets falsely reported that Israel bombed a Gaza-based hospital. Such reporting relied entirely on the Gaza Ministry of Health, currently governed by Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization. Arguably, the story marked the worst example of shoddy journalism in 2023 alone.
