Opinion
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U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Poynter has included AmmoLand News in a now removed blacklist of right-wing websites they claimed were fake news.
Poynter is a school for journalism. It trains new journalist to be “objective” in the topics that they will be covering in the press.
On Tuesday, May 1st, 2019 the school published a list of 515 news websites that they deemed “unreliable” news sources. AmmoLand News wasn’t alone on this list. Some of the other sites included in the list were Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, The Blaze, the Drudge Report, and even the Washington Examiner.
The list was put together by Barrett Golding who is a Podcast producer for the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC has been under fire for their biased reporting and multiple cases of slander.
Gavin McInnes is currently suing the SPLC for defamation. The SPLC has labeled the group that McInnes started, the Proud Boys, a hate group. They tied McInnes to the group even though he is no longer a part of the Proud Boys.
Twitter and Facebook removed McInnes citing his connection to a “hate group.” Since McInnes, who co-founded Vice, primarily uses social media to host his shows it has damaged his brand and hampered his ability to make a living.
Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, has also sued the SPLC for false information. They incorrectly labeled the group that dedicates it’s time to fighting Islamic extremism as Islamophobic.
Muslims run the Quilliam Foundation. Nawaz was a Muslim extremist before seeing the errors of his ways in an Egyptian jail and vowed to fight against the extremism that he was a part of before his jail term. He has become one of the leading experts in extremism and has advised world leaders such as Tony Blair on combating this Islamic extremism.
The SPLC settled out of court for a $3.4 million payment and had to issue a public apology to Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation. Twitter has even removed the SPLC from its Trust and Safety Council.
My organization III% United Patriots of Virginia (3UPVA) has also been designated as an “extremist anti-government militia” by the SPLC. The organization is not a Militia or anti-government. Some of the 3UPVA members do not even own firearms, and at the time of the designation I worked for the US Government and held high-level security clearances.
When I contacted the SPLC about the designation and offered to sit down with them so show them what we do, the left-wing organization refused. When pressed on where the information on 3UPVA came from I was told it was from “the internet.” The SPLC declined to give me more information on their source for the false allegations, and they did not seem willing to review their designation. This accusation could have jeopardized my employment.
According to Poynter, they sourced their data from five different databases. AmmoLand News was marked unreliable because of the sites political slant. Absent from the list was MSNBC which has an admitted liberal bias. Poynter also did not include Mother Jones, The Nation, and other left-wing publication in their list.
After increased criticism on the list, Poynter, which is partially funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, removed the list from their website and replaced with a statement from Poynter’s managing editor Barbara Allen.
In Allen’s statement, she said that Poynter used pre-existing databases compiled by “journalists, fact-checkers, and researchers.” She said after receiving complaints, they audited the list. Their audit showed inconsistencies in the methodology. Although she did state, they feel that most of the sites on the list were unreliable.
Allen also stated that the list was supposed to be a “starting place for readers and journalists.” Poynter did not communicate that fact in the original post to the reader. An outside observer could infer that this is revisionist history.
As of now, the list is removed from Poynter.com but will live on in online archives to malign fair and open news sites. It is unclear if Poynter will introduce a new list that they vet more heavily.
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About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. He is the former CEO of Veritas Firearms, LLC and is the co-host of The Patriot-News Podcast which can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotnews. John has written extensively on the patriot movement including 3%’ers, Oath Keepers, and Militias. In addition to the Patriot movement, John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and is currently working on a book on leftist deplatforming methods and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, on Facebook at realjohncrump, or at www.crumpy.com.
Creed Fisher – This Place Called USA
So a school for training journalists created a list of unreliable news sources? Isn’t that special. Training fake news journalists to identify fake news. I’m wondering if it’s done with a lot of mirrors.
They didn’t take the list down before the Wayback Machine archived it!
https://web.archive.org/web/20190501173436/https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/unreliable-news-index/
The list image included with the article labels Ammoland as “bias” with no further assignation as unreliable while some sources were labeled with both. This is true. Ammoland is not unreliable and is biased towards the correct definition and application of the Second Amendment. Perhaps this could be considered a backhanded endorsement.
Indoctrination begins in public schools, from there it’s easy to change the way people think.
I don’t see what the uproar is about. I mostly visit ammoland for the deals and sales they publish for gun gear, they are one of the best sites for gun deals. I rarely read the articles. When I do though, I’m shocked at what’s written. Ammoland is not only biased but is almost threatening in it’s tone when trying to make it’s point. It does nothing to try and start dialog and paints anyone who isn’t a gun toting ‘murican as a pansy liberal that wants to take your guns away. I don’t know about it’s reliability, but when… Read more »
So how do you feel about the pansy liberals who want to take our guns away? Do you know the term FUDD?
@DemocratGunLiar, Ammoland does not write all the articles, ergo the bias that shocks you, is not theirs, nor is the tone that you find “threatening”. You must take your shock and fear up with the individual authors (or choose to grow up.Which ever, it is your call.)
Nor have I ever read Ammoland writing painting anyone, no matter how emotionally delicate, as a pansy. Ammoland does not have to. There are plenty of us that recognize non-murican, pansy, gun grabbers, when we read their printing
Demobedwettter, you are clearly a liar. If you actually were a firearm owner, you would not be “threatened” by the prose advocating for our RKBA, you would be espousing it, just as the rest of us here do. You come here for the ads on firearms, etc., yeah, right, as if you couldn’t find deals on those products at the sites that actually sell those products. Even your lies are poorly thought-out. You are a pathetic anti-rights stooge. Go get your peanuts from Bloomberg and go away. We here do not need ignorant, low-life, low-income fools to explain to us… Read more »
Our tax dollars at work fellas. These characters are on the payroll. They hate America and that would be us. We are America. To think we pay this trash to bother us. Free speech is threatening to the gov unless it comes from the mouths of Satan’s communists. If they treat us this poorly when were armed just think how poorly they will treat us when were not.
I have sent the following note to after reading your article.
I have read your identification of sources of information that you have judged to be unreliable and I take exception to the process.
The issue is whether any elitist template is appropriate to pre-judge any information or source of same is ‘unreliable’. Such process is antithetical to democracy and is an insult to its citizenry who are presumptively as capable as any elitist group to make such determination individually.
Be good Journalists and simply ‘report’ information and leave its qualifying to the reader of same.
Sent from my iPad
Would that be Barrett Gelding by any chance?
Poynter is simply reflecting the deeply held beliefs of the progressive and socialist movements. Our nation was founded on an idea. The idea is the most radical idea in human history. That idea is that every life is divinely created by intent, with intent and that intent is divine in nature. Legitimate government can only serve that intent. Each individual life unfolds to reveal the gifts given at conception by an all knowing God. That is a direct threat to any form of authoritarianism. Anyone who spreads this kind of freedom talk is a direct threat to any tin horn… Read more »
n r ringlee. I very much like what you said. May I quote you?
It would be wise for all to learn from the censoring of views,not just the Marxist Left although they practice it fervently,we can’t have a thing like differing views bandied about.
“Poynter is a school for journalism. It trains new journalist to be “objective” ”
And “Freedom is slavery”, “War is peace”, and now, “biased” means “objective”. But those of us who’ve read Orwell, Huxley, Anne Rand, etc. know better than to be fooled so easily. Too bad that most ‘journalism’ students today have an IQ apx. the same as their shoe size.
@Knute Knute,
That would be Ayn Rand ‘Anthem’ is a great book.
1984 and Animal Farm are not the only works by George Orwell that bear reading. His experience in the socialist movement and his observations after he “woke up” gave him a unique perspective that few survive.
https://www.thoughtco.com/george-orwell-list-of-works-740980
Actually Orwell endorsed socialism. He had a big problem with Communism.