Achgut.com

In September 2021, NewsGuard analyst Elena Bernard contacted Achgut.com as part of a regular update of the site’s Nutrition Label. The site replied that it would forward NewsGuard’s inquiries to the respective authors, all but one of whom did respond. The answers are included below.

In November 2021, Achgut.com’s managing director and co-founder, Dirk Maxeiner, sent an additional statement, which is also published in full below together with NewsGuard’s response.

(Note: This letter was originally written in German. NewsGuard’s team translated it into English. The German version can be found here.)

Dear Ms. Bernhard,

Thank you for your questions and the opportunity to comment on them. Enclosed are our answers and the answers of the authors addressed. For documentation reasons and for the sake of clear classification, I repeat your questions in red and place our corresponding answers underneath. Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Dirk Maxeiner

Dear Mr. Kramer

Thank you for passing on my request for a statement to the respective authors. I have a supplementary inquiry: on your page “Unerhört” you write “Errors are openly admitted and transparently corrected by us.” Indeed, I have found correction notes under some articles; others, however, including the four to which I refer in my previous mail, have so far gone uncorrected. How do you handle the correction of errors? Do you have a correction policy?

Kind regards

Elena Bernard

Reply from Dirk Maxeiner:

Our correction policy is exactly as quoted in your inquiry: “Errors are openly admitted and transparently corrected by us.” There is no need for correction in the four articles you cite, as there are no errors, please see the following responses for details. Three of the four articles were written by proven legal (lawyer) and medical experts (doctor and biochemist). Basically: Of course there are different opinions among different experts in these fields, but these are just different opinions (and not final truths) within the legal and scientific discourse, which are subject to constant revision with the changing knowledge. This is how the scientific process of knowledge works. Our authors contribute to this process. And now to the contributions and answers in detail, which illustrate this very nicely.

Question from Elena Bernard:

In the article
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/und_nochmal_verschlimmert_die_impfung_womoeglich_covid

it says, among other things, that there is “evidence that the disease is exacerbated by vaccination. The phenomenon is called “antibody dependent enhancement” (ADE), where vaccination causes a new infection with the pathogen to be much worse than without vaccination. This evidence has been mounting for a few weeks, and now another very important paper has appeared on the subject.” However, the linked study is not about ADE at all, but about possible breakthrough infections in vaccinated and recovered individuals. The author writes only: “All this is not yet proof of ADE, but unfortunately it looks like it.” However, his conclusions are not covered by the study. PEI writes on its website “To date, there is no evidence of the occurrence of ADE-induced infection amplification in animal models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, nor in COVID-19 recovered or SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals.” Nor, to my research, have there been any meaningful studies to date on ADE after vaccination that would suggest an occurrence of ADE.

Statement by “Jochen Ziegler” (pseudonym):

“The author of the objection attempts to refute a single aspect of my statements on ADE without appreciating the overall context. My central argument is that ADE and VAH have occurred in the past in animal models with vaccines based on the SARS Cov-1 and MERS spike proteins. The cited study from Israel shows that vaccinated individuals have a nearly 30-fold higher risk of reinfection with SARS-Cov-2 than unvaccinated individuals. Since the SARS-Cov-2 spike protein is very closely related to the other two, these facts together indicate that there may be ADE/VAH with the spike protein in SARS-Cov-2 vaccination. However, I never said that this had already been proven. When vaccine development still followed the extremely sensible and necessary norms of setting up clinical trials, after vaccinating a few hundred subjects in phase II, one waited to see if such or other adverse effects would occur. Since this was neglected, it will be seen in the next few months in 2 billion people. This was not a good idea, even if it does not come to ADE / VAH.

The reference to PEI data is scientifically irrelevant. The PEI also underestimates the acute toxicity of the vaccines by a factor of 10 to 20. As outstanding as it is on other issues, it can no longer be taken seriously as an institution when it comes to the SARS Cov-2 vaccine, nor can the STIKO, which has made recommendations that are clearly inadmissible given the lack of 4 years of clinical development of the vaccines to determine their safety. One will have to completely recast the STIKO in the necessary social management of the COVID vaccination scandal. Whether lay people who do not distinguish between the toxic SARS-Cov-2 vaccine and the extremely valuable basic vaccines we have will even get vaccinated again then remains to be seen.”

Question from Elena Bernard:

The article
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/wie_ich_asozial_wurde

claims, among other things: “A safe dead vaccine is not produced because the doctor who developed it illegally vaccinated himself and his family with it.” As far as I could understand, the statement refers to Winfried Stöcker’s vaccine, which did not go through a clinical testing procedure – although the PEI offered the manufacturer just this way. The vaccine is not produced because its safety and efficacy have not been proven due to a lack of clinical trials.

The author, Nicole Schneider, has not yet sent in a statement, so here is my statement as the responsible editor (Dirk Maxeiner):

This article is a recognizably feuilletonistic and subjective description of the author’s very personal dilemma, whether to be vaccinated or not. She writes right at the beginning in the “I” form: “This is how I think I can judge it with all the information I have googled. I am unvaccinated and have no plans to get vaccinated.”. Note that she uses the phrase “I think”. Ms. Schneider googled the information, as she does write, and that googled information includes the sentence, “A safe dead vaccine is not produced because the doctor who developed it illegally vaccinated himself and his family with it.” That was relevant to her personal decision, whether the statement was true or not. This is not a statement of fact at all, but of Ms. Schneider’s personal process of discovery. And it was just as she describes it. If one approaches such a rather autobiographical text with a fact-checking attitude, one would have to warn against half the world’s literature. After all, we cannot begin to correct the personal-subjective account of a sequence of thoughts. Ms. Schneider has googled this sentence, that’s the way it is.

Question from Elena Bernard:

In the article
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/impffolgen_wieviele-wird_es_treffen

with reference to a study by Krammer et al., it says that after vaccination “only a very narrow spectrum of antibodies is produced. For the most part, however, these do not have a neutralizing effect on the viruses. They are there, but can do little against the virus.” Krammer himself described this statement to the AFP news agency as “complete nonsense and a misinterpretation of the study (I assume on purpose).” He explained, “The vaccines induce a very strong neutralizing antibody response. The non-neutralizing antibodies that are also induced can also have a strong protective effect in vivo.” This is consistent with what the study says.

Statement by “Jochen Ziegler” (pseudonym):

I have already addressed this objection transparently and refuted it in detail in this article on Achgut.com.

https://www.achgut.com/artikel/covid_imfpstoffe_wie_faktenchecker_von_afp_die_realitaet_umdeuten

Question from Elena Bernard:

The article
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/who_beendet_epidemische_lage_von_nationaler_tragweite

claims that the WHO has announced: “The worldwide excessive for about a year – “Test! Test! Test!” – PCR test used worldwide for about a year to detect infection with the “novel SARS CoV-2″ is not at all unseen suitable to detect infection” and would have ended the “Epidemic Situation of National Significance.” In the document referenced in the article, however, the WHO merely points out that laboratory personnel should follow the instructions for use of the tests and that a second test should be performed if the results are inconclusive. In an email to Correctiv, a WHO spokeswoman clarified, “WHO did not say that PCR tests for COVID-19 are unreliable or faulty.” Moreover, she emphasized, “A PCR test is the most sensitive test to detect the presence of a pathogen. It detects that the patient has been infected with the pathogen.” Apart from that, the epidemic situation of national importance in Germany cannot be ended by the WHO, but by the Bundestag. However, WHO also confirmed in January 2021 “that the COVID-19 pandemic still constitutes an extraordinary event, a public health risk to other States through international spread, and continues to require a coordinated international response.”

Statement by Carlos A. Gebauer:

“I would like to comment on the following:

1a.) To claim that the WHO in its “Information Notice for Users 2020/05” of January 20, 2021 “merely points out that laboratory personnel should follow the instructions for use of the tests and that a second test should be carried out in the event of ambiguous results” turns out to be decidedly incorrect.

1b.) Rather, it is correct that on January 20, 2021, the WHO explicitly addressed the possible discrepancy between PCR test results on the one hand and the clinical condition of a tested person on the other. In this context, the WHO confirms: The probability for the actual infection of a positively tested person correlates with the prevalence, which is why with decreasing prevalence there is also a decreasing probability for an accurate positive test result.

It is also true that on January 20, 2021, the WHO explicitly pointed out the regulatory character of PCR testing as a mere “aid for diagnosis”. In this context, the WHO confirms: therefore, all test results must be evaluated in the context of the concrete clinical condition of a test person and his or her individual disease history. Without such a concrete differential diagnosis, all PCR test results remain without any reliable significance with regard to the actual presence of an infection in the individual case – and consequently with regard to the calculation of incidence based on them in general.

1c.) The accusation of substantively incorrect and unsubstantiated claims is therefore recognizably directed exactly the other way round against the person who formulates that the WHO on January 20, 2021 “merely points out that laboratory personnel should follow the instructions for use of the tests and that a second test should be carried out in the event of ambiguous results”. So those who read the original text know better.

1d.) It is therefore not the author’s responsibility that “NewsGuard” has conspicuously failed to grasp the semantic content of the original WHO information.

2a.) The representation of the “NewsGuard” that the article in question also contradicts the statement of a WHO spokeswoman quoted there is also decidedly incorrect.

2b.) The spokesperson emphasizes the reliability of a PCR test “for COVID-19”. If COVID-19 is properly diagnosed in the context of the specific clinical condition of a patient and his or her individual disease history, then the PCR test that is further used in an auxiliary manner can indisputably reliably detect the presence of the pathogen for which it is searching.

2c.) The accusation of substantively incorrect and unsubstantiated claims is therefore again directed only against the critic himself: Wherever a patient shows COVID-19, there is necessarily also SARS-CoV-2. But not everywhere where SARS-CoV-2 is, there is necessarily also COVID-19.

2d.) It is not the responsibility of the author that “NewsGuard” cannot distinguish between a pathogen on the one hand and a disease on the other hand in medical terms. Who reads carefully, however, can already recognize by the different letters and the different numbers as well as their sequence that SARS-CoV-2 is something to be distinguished from COVID-19.

3a.) Also the further quotation of a WHO spokeswoman, according to which the PCR test “detects that the patient has been infected with the pathogen” is actually not contradictory to the statements of the article in question.

3b.) It is rather correct that the PCR test is in principle suitable to detect the contamination of a test person with SARS-CoV-2 as pathogen. However, even this mere contamination is referred to as “infection” in English. The English language – unlike the German – does not distinguish between infection and contamination. However, a contaminated person does not have to be infected with a pathogen he or she has ingested. According to § 2 No. 2 of the German Infection Protection Act, an infection exists only where an ingested pathogen develops or multiplies in the human organism.

3c.) The reproach of contentwise incorrect and unsubstantiated assertions turns therefore also here again against the critic: If he had properly translated the original English text into German instead of merely repeating it without understanding it (sham translation), the lack of contradiction between the article and the statement of a WHO spokesperson would have become obvious.

3d.) It does not fall into the area of responsibility of the author that “NewsGuard” – although itself English designated and in Germany actively – is incapable of a factually correct transmission of the English-language source text without sense distortion.

4a.) That the mentioned information text of the WHO of 20 January 2021 contradicts the further existence of an “epidemic situation of national importance” in Germany is also not incorrect.

4b.) Pursuant to Section 5(1)(6) of the German Infection Protection Act, an “epidemic situation of national importance” exists if there is a serious threat to public health throughout the Federal Republic of Germany because (1.) the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international scope and there is a threat of introduction of a threatening communicable disease into the Federal Republic of Germany, or (2.) there is a threat of or a dynamic spread of a threatening communicable disease across several countries in the Federal Republic of Germany. § Section 5, paragraph 1, sentence 2 of the Act orders – note: without naming any further factual requirements for this!: “The German Bundestag shall revoke the determination of an epidemic situation of national significance if the prerequisites according to sentence 6 no longer exist.”

4c.) If accordingly neither the introduction of a threatening transmissible disease nor also its dynamic spread threatens, because the incidence numbers, which supposedly indicate this, contrary to the specifications of the WHO of January 20, 2021, were not determined properly on the basis of individual clinical differential diagnostics in each case, but merely methodically inadequately on the basis of infectious-medical and epidemiologically unreliable contamination indications, then the prerequisites from § 5 para. 1 sentence 6 of the German Infection Protection Act are not (any longer) present. The Bundestag must immediately pronounce in formal-legal terms what is already the case in substantive-legal terms.

4d.) It does not fall into the area of responsibility of the author that “NewsGuard” did not grasp the legal-technical systematics of the German infection protection law to the epidemic situation of national range, to its statement and to its termination legally properly.

Overall, the critics of “NewsGuard” can at least be credited with having dared to take up a topic of this complexity, despite their apparent lack of professional competence. Not all journalistic laymen have the courage to act in this way. After a proper study of medical terminology, some translation experience with scientific texts, in-depth semantic-logical language comprehension and with the help of legal expertise, similar undertakings could perhaps achieve initial factual success in the medium term. In any case, all beginnings remain difficult. Good luck!

Best regards

Carlos A. Gebauer”

Dirk Maxeiner’s additional statement from November 2021:

Dear Mrs. Bernard,

Thank you for your interesting responses.

We submit the following statement documenting our disagreement on certain points. Please include this in your “Nutrition Label”.

You do not make transparent the standards and criteria you use to judge the political orientation of a medium. Your assessments appear to be based largely on unsubstantiated opinion and arbitrariness (in your words, “common definitions,” “editorial discretion”). Your criticism that our medium does not sufficiently separate news and opinion because it does not disclose an allegedly existing “conservative” political orientation thus lacks a sustainable basis and must be rejected.

Yes, we believe that you are incorrect in describing Achgut’s political orientation. Many of our authors do not see themselves as “conservative”, but as liberal or left-wing or left-liberal. Achgut.com stands first and foremost for criticism of authorities and good entertainment, and is open to authors of all political persuasions that are at home in the democratic spectrum, including so-called “anti-Germans,” economic liberal Hayekians, ex-Trotskyists, former GDR civil rights activists, social democrats, greens, feminists, humanists, ex-Muslims, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Christian democrats. If you are of the opinion that our medium reports predominantly from a “conservative” perspective, then you must disclose what you specifically understand by this in terms of content. Since you refuse to make this disclosure (see 1.), your approach seems dishonest and unserious.

You yourself do not provide what you demand from others, namely a clear classification of your political orientation. You write that you disclose the background of all your investors and team members in detail on your websites, so that readers can decide for themselves whether they trust your assessments. That’s exactly how we do it. We disclose the background of all our shareholders and authors in detail on our website so that readers can decide for themselves whether they trust our assessments. We reject as misleading your claim that your assessment process is “designed to be apolitical.” An assessment procedure that operates with arbitrary political attributions based on non-transparent standards (see 1.) is certainly not “designed to be apolitical.”

4.)

Considering that one of NewsGuard’s largest investors is the French media group Publicis Groupe, conflicts of interest are obvious. Publicis is currently accused by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office in the USA of having driven hundreds of thousands of people into a drug addiction through pharmaceutical campaigns out of greed for money, which killed many or made them permanently ill. At the center is the highly addictive drug OxyContin, which was marketed by the now-bankrupt pharmaceutical company Purdue since 1996 and, according to the indictment, was “aggressively and misleadingly” advertised by Publicis. We find it implausible that NewsGuard, with such a funder, can provide an independent and unbiased assessment of other media’s pharmaceutical and health coverage.

The mistake you make in the case of our author “Jochen Ziegler” and his reflections on a possible ADE danger for vaccinated people is that you presume to conclusively decide differences of opinion between scientists, although you are not even scientifically qualified to do so. Mr. “Ziegler” comes in his article “And again: Does vaccination possibly worsen COVID?” in a scientific peer review of study results of a retrospective study from Israel to partially different interpretations of the results than the authors of the study itself. In particular, he equates non-vaccinated and recovered individuals in terms of immune status, which he considers medically justified given the near-complete natural SARS-Cov-2 contamination (see here for the status of cellular immunity in early 2019: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-00808-x) in all OECD countries. In doing so, he makes it sufficiently clear that he sees only evidence of an ADE threat, but by no means considers this already proven. He formulates a scientifically based opinion in a situation that is still characterized by uncertainty. You may have a different opinion, but that does not yet legitimize you to rise to the supposedly neutral final authority for the conclusive assessment of opinions. That is a presumption that we firmly reject.

You make assessments on the basis of unfounded opinions generated in non-transparent procedures (see 1.), you presume to evaluate even scientifically well-founded opinions as “misleading” (see 4.) and you display irritating business conduct (see 7.). Your criteria are based on intransparency and arbitrariness. Therefore, we do not believe that any website can meet these criteria and thus receive a positive rating from you.

Your opinion published about us can lead to competitive disadvantages for our media company and thus to a distortion of competition. NewsGuard itself writes: “Advertisers, ad agencies and ad tech companies use NewsGuard’s detailed, human-authored reviews of news and information sites to place ads on credible news sites and avoid ad placements on sites with misinformation and disinformation.” By your actions, you are potentially cutting off our inconvenient journalism from advertising money. We believe: with intent.

Your statement that you waited more than a week for a response after your 9/24/2021 request is incorrect. We responded within a week and informed you that we would comment on all issues by the end of next week. Nevertheless, you did not wait for our statement, but simply published your evaluation. This may be in line with your criteria, but it is an erratic, unserious way of doing business and reflects badly on your corporate culture. Even your first email left a lot to be desired in this regard. You simply claimed that you had “noticed false or unfounded allegations” in some articles, without mentioning which allegations were specifically meant. You only informed us of this when asked. The impression cannot be dismissed out of hand that your negative assessment of our medium was certain from the outset and that you only inquired as a pretense.

Your business practice of labeling mere expressions of opinion as “false and misleading” is presumptuous and abusive. Your attempt to intervene in a regulatory manner in the free exchange of opinions can cause great harm in an open society. We would therefore request that you increase the transparency and traceability of your procedures and improve the seriousness of your business conduct before we enter into deeper cooperation to correct alleged “misleading claims.” We also request that NewsGuard refrain from judging health and pharmacological articles as a matter of policy (and for all media) until the serious allegations against your investor Publicis are resolved in the pending court case. In the event of a conviction of Publicis, we request that you terminate the investor relationship with Publicis.

10)

You wrote: “If you disclose the perspective of your medium and continue to present it as an opinion website and not a news website, we consider the criterion of separation of news and opinion to be met.” For perspective, see 2.). Please let us know when and where, if applicable, you have found a self-representation of Achgut.com as a news website. We have never presented our medium as a news site, but always as an opinion and commentary site, as an “online feuilleton” and as an author blog. That’s why we were surprised that you feel responsible for us at all. Unfortunately, this gives the impression that you only claim to check news, but in reality want to regulate opinions. Your page currently says about Achgut.com: “NewsGuard recommends caution when using this website: it seriously violates basic journalistic standards”. This statement is unjustified for all the reasons described here. We therefore request that you remove this notice immediately.

Please confirm this to us by 23.11.2021 at the latest.

We will publish all correspondence we have had with you, your various reviews of Achgut.com, and other information about and opinions of NewsGuard on our Achgut.com website.

Kind regards

Dirk Maxeiner

NewsGuard’s response:

Dear Mr. Maxeiner,

Thank you very much for your email and additional comments. As with your last one, we will publish your full statement along with our Nutrition Label.

Regarding point 10 in your statement:

To clarify, we do not claim in our Nutrition Label or elsewhere that Achgut.com specifically presents itself as a news site. In our previous reply, we explained how we assess our criterion related to handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly. In assessing this criterion, we consider the following items in making our judgments: 1) If there are a mix of news articles and commentaries on the site, we consider whether each are clearly labeled as such, 2) If the site is an opinion site overall, we consider whether it is clear to the reader that the entire site is an opinion site (which is the case for Achgut.com), and 3) If the site appears to have an overall political leaning or perspective, we consider whether there is any disclosure of this (which we did not find on Achgut.com). Again, if you feel our assessment of the site’s overall perspective is inaccurate, we would welcome your comments on what political leaning or perspective, if any, the site takes. We are happy to incorporate your comments into our Nutrition Label.

Regarding your request to take down our Nutrition Label: We give all sites the opportunity to comment on our findings before we publish, and we include those comments in the Nutrition Label. Also, upon request, we publish the site’s full responses alongside our label. We also quickly and transparently correct any errors brought to our attention. However, we do not remove our ratings upon request, as their purpose is to serve readers.

Kind regards

Marie Richter

Managing Editor, Germany