Fact Checkers Gone Wild

NewsGuard’s Reality Check Falsely Claims Project 2025 Doesn’t Defund the National Weather Service

Yesterday, NewsGuard’s Reality Check sent out a newsletter blast containing the following headline:

One problem: The original defunding claim is correct. Newsguard’s rationale for their failed fact-checking is buried in the following incorrectly reported paragraphs:

NewsGuard reviewed Project 2025’s policy proposal for a second Trump administration and found that it does not call for the elimination of the NWS, which provides weather forecasts, forecasting data, and severe weather alerts.

Instead, Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” report suggests that the agency change part of its role and pivot away from its own public forecasting, in favor of focusing “on its data-gathering services” that inform forecasts from private companies such as AccuWeather.

This might be a good time to mention that Accuweather gets a large chunk of its data from the NWS, not the other way around. More on that later.

Then, the so-called fact-checkers fact-checked by quoting a spokesperson from the author of Project 2025:

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation told NewsGuard in a September 2024 email that “Project 2025 … does not call for the elimination of NWS,” adding, “The claim is false and ridiculous — anyone can read the Mandate for Leadership on our website for free to see what we actually call for.”

Yikes.

This would be like me receiving a Trump email (this is a real quote from the stable genius) that says:

“Every single thing that we’re doing is based on structure and common sense. I was looking at the various states, and I think 35 states could be the equivalent of Norway and Denmark.”

After which I dutifully crank out a Substack post headlined…

Liberals Falsely Claim That 35 States Are Not the Equivalent of Norway and Denmark

…without bothering to figure out what the hell he was trying to say.

NewsGuard simply took Project 2025’s word for it and got things completely back assward in the process, without doing any research.

A cursory review of NOAA will reveal that it and its many offices feed information to private companies. Accuweather does not provide research to the NOAA.

That easily verifiable fact should have been enough to kill the article. But one gets the sense that even the fact-checking cottage industry that the right wing has nurtured is trying desperately to find a “balance.”

That there generally is no balance doesn’t seem to come up during their coffee klatches.

Even the authors of Project 2025 acknowledge that NOAA doesn’t rely on private companies for its information:

“NOAA does not currently utilize commercial partnerships as some other agencies do.”

~ page 665

That’s because the NOAA is a research behemoth that has been the pride of scientists for decades. Companies like Accuweather tap into that research. The fact that NewsGuard used Accuweather as an example is comical.

Newguard reporters Becca Schimmel and Sarah Komar display an uncanny lack of knowledge about the NOAA in addition to a hopeless inability to parse the language in Project 2025.

Do your research, kids, before posting extreme misinformation to a fact-checking site.

Image and speech bubble licensed from Adobe Stock; image smashup by author

NewsGuard’s post is such a hot mess that I don’t know where to begin.

Let’s start by doing what the Project 2025 spokesperson suggests and “read The Mandate for Leadership on our website for free to see what we actually call for.”

First off, I don’t call it Mandate for Leadership. I call it The Trump Manifesto, but you do you, Heritage. Secondly, “for free,” you say? You should pay me to read your propaganda.

Anyhoo, let’s have a look shall we?

Page 664:

“The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

The National Weather Service is part of the NOAA. Project 2025 authors want to defund and dismantle the NOAA. By extension, this means they want to defund and dismantle the National Weather Service, which relies primarily on data from various offices with the NOAA (as does Accuweather).

Screenshot of banner from NWS website

So many companies, universities, and organizations rely on data produced by the NOAA that dismantling it would produce a hurricane of horrors.

Not even Accuweather supports dismantling the NOAA, because, in an almost scientifically precise way, the truth of the situation is the opposite of what NewsGuard claims:

Screenshot from Accuweather website; fair use claim

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In a statement, AccuWeather CEO Steven R. Smith said¹:

“AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations. The authors of ‘Project 2025’ used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.”

The company continues by emphasizing the important role of NOAA in weather research:

NOAA/NWS’ value to the American people and businesses is maximized when the government maintains a strong focus and performance on its important core role (emphasis mine):

1. Maintaining the most comprehensive weather infrastructure for the United States and developing the world’s best numerical weather prediction models and forecast guidance.

2. Disseminating all foundational weather data, including, but not limited to, radar, satellite, and observations on an equal-opportunity basis to support a vibrant American Weather Enterprise.

3. Issuing weather warnings and watches to the public for severe weather that threatens life and property.

But NewsGuard, instead of digging for facts while “fact-checking,” relied on a propaganda email from the Project 2025 authors to form the basis of its error-filled report.

This stuff isn’t tricky. The NOAA’s description of its weather service operation is clear:

NOAA’s National Weather Service is building a Weather-Ready Nation by providing better information for better decisions to save lives and livelihoods.

The NOAA website emphasizes² its broad-based infrastructure of research scientists and technologies that has taken decades to build:

Also underlying NOAA’s continued success is its unique infrastructure. NOAA’s core mission functions require satellite systems, ships, buoys, aircraft, research facilities, high-performance computing and information management and distribution systems.

This infrastructure wasn’t built overnight, but Project 2025 authors want to dismantle it in a day.

They explain how they wish to do this on page 675 (privatize! privatize!) after acknowledging that the NOAA is a “colossal” operation:

“Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”

Did you catch that? The “climate change alarm” industry. That kind of editorializing within the framework of a so-called research paper tells you all you need to know about the propaganda that drives Project 2025, and what you can expect from a future Trump administration as it strives to complete the task of hardcore conservatives to turn the United States into a failed state.

Project 2025 goes on to say:

NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research.

NOAA makes that boast because somebody’s got to, and nobody is around to defend government agencies these days. It is a well-deserved boast. Universities across the country rely on its data and maintain deep relationships with it that will be smashed to pieces if Project 2025 achieves its objectives to dismantle it and privatize and/or distribute its constituent parts to other agencies.

The relationship with universities is mutually beneficial. Young, eager scientists work on their PhDs by climbing aboard NOAA vessels and beaming back stellar information for the world to use without the burden of the kinds of costs companies would have to charge to replicate the types of services NOAA provides.

In addition to weather forecasts, the agency, as part of the Department of Commerce, continuously monitors conditions in the world’s oceans and atmosphere.

It has played a vital role in determining that Antarctic ice shelves are getting consumed by warm water currents beneath them to help create what Nature Magazine calls lush landscapes on its northern peninsula thanks to rising summer air temperatures in the area.³

The agency is one of the world’s most important resources for deep-sea exploration and discovery.

It tracks marine mammals and endangered species in waters claimed by the United States and manages fishing rights along coastal areas.

Project 2025 claims that all of this would be better suited for privatization.

Name a company that is going to develop a prospectus that says to the world’s filthy rich stockholders, “We have this great idea. We’re going to track endangered species for y’all.”

The agency consists of the following offices, all of which Project 2025 says should be privatized:

• The National Ocean Service (NOS);

• The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR);

• The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS);

• The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS);

• The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps.

From the Project 2025 document:

Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.

~ page 675

After all, we know that the demand for Beluga whale tagging is going to be astronomical and a sure money maker. And what major corporation won’t be eager to purchase information about melting Antarctic ice shelves?⁴

Okay, you got me. The cruise industry might want to take a peek at it if they can cut wages for their inexpensive help enough to buy a few pages.

Image licensed from Adobe Stock

Project 2025 then tells the following lie, which NewsGuard bought hook, line, and sinker, presumably because NewsGuard’s entry-level reporters don’t know that the hook, line, and sinker were produced by wild-eyed conservatives with a thirst for endless mayhem:

“Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather.”

As I stated earlier in the article, AccuWeather debunked this and confirmed that it’s the other way around. Newsguard’s lack of research is a headscratcher given that AccuWeather released a public statement refuting this in July.

It’s not like this information isn’t out there. Hell, if I found it, anyone can.

Even fact-checkers.

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Notes

NewsGuard is not a conservative propaganda mill. It was co-founded by Steven Brill, a respected journalist who once called The New York Post’s Hunter Biden stories a hoax possibly perpetrated by Russia.

But it looks like NewsGuard needs to work on training its reporting staff because this was a major faux pas.

A version of this article was originally posted yesterday on the Medium platform’s Project 2025 pub. Project 2025 deserves extra attention until it is universally accepted as the clear and present danger that it has become.

1. https://www.accuweather.com/en/press/accuweather-does-not-support-project-2025-plan-to-fully-commercializing-nws-operations-noaa-has-critical-role-in-american-weather-enterprise/1670156

2. https://www.noaa.gov/our-mission-and-vision

3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03219-2

4. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240411130210.htm