I think this research seems a little bit suspicious. First of all, it focuses almost entirely on the brawl the NewsGuard is having with one guy[1]. Notice how that's where most of the "fake news" they mention come from. Secondly, asking the LLM a "leading question" is a very well known way to get biased answers and they did that to an extreme extent in this piece. Read this article to understand how you can get LLMs to say almost anything that supports whatever you want it to support[2]. That unfortunately weakens what may have been good points they had: that LLMs seem to just trust any news websites equally regardless of their "accuracy". I would like to point out that American news websites are not known for their accuracy either and the proliferation of fact-checking websites that routinely debunk their half lies proves that.

I do agree with you that there are many news sites spreading misinformation, but I think that most of it is not coming from governments... and while governments are also doing this, most, I would think, do it with good intentions (they do believe the information is true and barely verify that when it favours their preconceived points of view). When propaganda spreads information you like, you tend to call it just news.

The way current Western media is currently dismissing anything at all that comes from Russian sources as lies and propaganda, however, is way overblown in my opinion. That's causing a huge blind spot in the public discourse which just makes the fake news sources seem even more attractive, since they seem to be whistleblowers fighting against a campaign of silence from the mainstream media, which is not completely incorrect.

[1] https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/john-mark-doug...

[2] https://medium.com/@amithnmbr/why-its-important-to-know-how-...