'Journalists' on CIA's payroll. Pravda.Ru should become foreign agent… in USA

US-based company NewsGuard that positions itself as a fighter against disinformation published a report on the advertising market of the Russian Internet industry. US analysts did not like the fact that Google ads appear on websites such as Pravda.Ru.

NewsGuard, which is indirectly associated with the CIA and the US State Department, believes that the English version of Pravda.Ru is a source of unreliable information. The US company rated the publication 7.5 out of 100 points.

NewsGuard "journalists" are concerned about the materials that Pravda.Ru carries about the Russian-led special military operation in Ukraine. In particular, the company pointed to the news article about Russian President Vladimir Putin's address to the nation regarding the recognition of the Donbas republics. The Americans did not like the publication of a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense about Ukraine's staged bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol. Following instructions from Washington, Kyiv then blamed Moscow for the attack.

NewsGuard took the trouble to dig into the history of Pravda.Ru — a publication that became a successor to the Pravda newspaper.

"Pravda.Ru, which began in 1912 as the official printed newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was required to register as a foreign agent in the US, American "journalists" claim.

They contacted Google inquiring about advertising on the site, but have not received a response.

Letter to the editor

It gets even worse as it goes on. NewsGuard sent strange inquiries to Pravda.Ru editors. In one of them, an American company asked to explain why an article from one of our contributors, an American citizen, allegedly looked like an AI-written text.

In another inquiry, the US company asked to explain why Pravda.Ru was not making any record of editorial corrections in its articles, Vadim Gorshenin, the head of Pravda.Ru said on his Telegram channel.

"I'll tell you how it is: the censors of the Soviet Pravda, where I used to work, look like cute kittens next to the CIA,” Gorshenin summed up.

Censors on the payroll

It was not too long ago when NewsGuard started studying the Russian sector of the Internet, largely due to the special operation. However, the US company has an extensive history of rating its own media outlets.

In January 2019, US news site MintPress published a report providing strong evidence proving that NewsGuard was closely associated with the US government not only financially, but also organizationally.

The material, in which Pravda.Ru editor-in-chief Inna Novikova will give clarifications about the NewsGuard "research", will be published on Monday, March 27.