Response from Mercola.com chief editor Janet Selvig, Feb. 1, 2022, to NewsGuard questions for an update to the website’s Nutrition Label. NewsGuard’s response is below in italics:

John Gregory, health editor at NewsGuard is a lab leak denialist who has used his political bias to penalize websites for sharing information about the SARS-CoV2 lab leak. Additionally, NewsGuard is owned by the pharmaceutical public relations firm, Publicis, currently being sued for marketing opioids illegally, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Who Fact Checks the Fact Checkers? A Report on Media Censorship – AIER
Publicis Sued For Deceptive Opioid Marketing (neuralit.com)

NewsGuard’s association to the deaths of so many Americans and deliberate politicization and bias regarding the lab leak demonstrate that you have no ability to defend your position as a “fact checker”.

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NewsGuard Response: NewsGuard has repeatedly acknowledged that whether the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab is an open question, but has also quoted the overwhelming consensus of experts in the field as concluding, unlike Dr. Mercola, that the virus has none of the characteristics of something that was deliberately made in a lab. And although Publicis is a minority investor in NewsGuard (as is clearly disclosed on the NewsGuard website), Publicis has no control over NewsGuard, let alone any voice at all in its ratings and Nutrition Labels, the content of which is supervised by NewsGuard’s co-chief executives.