NewsGuard awards websites a score of 0 to 100, depending on how many of NewsGuard's nine credibility and transparency criteria the site meets. A site scoring below a 60 earns a Red, or generally unreliable, rating. In this list, we have identified the least credible sites-meaning those that score below a 10- that garnered the most social media engagement in 2020, starting with the most widely shared site at number one. These websites have a record of routinely publishing falsehoods and, in most cases, refusing to disclose to readers who owns the site or who creates its content. Eight of these sites have published misinformation about the coronavirus or about the U.S. election. Again, these are the misinformation sites with the most engagement. Although NewsGuard has also rated liberal-leaning sites Red (such as the Courier Newsroom chain of pseudo-local news sites that are funded by a Democratic-allied nonprofit), you'll see that many of the sites below lean sharply to the right, suggesting that conservative misinformers are better at attracting and engaging an audience.
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