Efforts to Censor NewsGuard: False Claims by FCC Chairman-select Brendan Carr
Read about how a government official was misled by Newsmax into making false accusations against NewsGuard in a letter to four tech companies — and threatens censorship.
December 4, 2024
“We find it ironic that sites like Newsmax report falsely about us, misleading government officials into threatening us, then call us censors, even though we’re First Amendment absolutists.” – NewsGuard Co-CEO Gordon Crovitz
In the media: our fight against censorship
Read The Washington Post, “This company rates news sites’ credibility. The right wants it stopped.”
Read Deadline, “Attacking The Watchdog: How Media Rating Site NewsGuard Ended Up As A Target For GOP Lawmakers And Regulators.”
Listen to Two Think Minimum, “Future of News Ratings and Media Trust with NewsGuard CEO Gordon Crovitz.”
NewsGuard initial statement in response to Commissioner Carr
Every key claim in Carr’s letter to technology companies about NewsGuard is false: Contrary to the accusations, NewsGuard does not censor and is apolitical. Carr was misled by the main source he cites in his letter, Newsmax, which has a NewsGuard Trust Score of 20/100.
Read NewsGuard's Full Statement on the Letter.
NewsGuard letter to Commissioner Carr
NewsGuard sent a letter to Commissioner Brendan Carr on Dec. 10, 2024 via email.
Our media advisory on alerts to Carr’s censorship
Media and free-speech defenders raise alarm about Carr’s efforts to censor NewsGuard.
Magazines, podcasts and free-speech advocates accuse Carr of censorship
Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is accused of censorship in various pieces published in Reason, Techdirt., The Gist podcast and FIRE.
Joe Lancaster, Reason Magazine: “How the FCC's 'Warrior for Free Speech' Became Our Censor in Chief”
Jacob Sullum, Reason Magazine: “First Amendment: Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's Beef with NewsGuard Is Legally Dubious and Empirically Shaky”
Mike Masnick, Techdirt: “Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He’s Eager to Be America’s Top Censor”
Mike Pesca, The Gist Podcast: “Best of the Gist: NewsGuard Edition”
Ari Cohn, FIRE: “Commissioner, Regulate Thyself: The Incoming FCC Chair Is Threatening to Censor Views He Doesn't Like”
NewsGuard Reality Check Commentary: “FCC Commissioner Gets Hoodwinked About NewsGuard”
So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast Ep. 236 “JD Vance, 60 Minutes, The Associated Press, the FCC, and more,” minutes 49-52.
The problem in the programmatic advertising industry that NewsGuard solves
Helping advertisers place their ads is a multi-billion-dollar industry. NewsGuard helps place publishers — conservative and liberal — on “inclusion lists” to generate more ad revenues, while helping brands avoid supporting Russian disinformation, healthcare hoaxes and conspiracy sites.
Read this excerpt from NewsGuard Co-CEO Steven Brill’s book, “The Death of Truth,” explaining why services like NewsGuard are needed in the programmatic ad market.
Apolitical ratings of news publishers are needed
Read opinion pieces in The Washington Examiner from NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz.
2/13/2023: “Only Transparent, Apolitical Ratings for News Publishers Can Be Trusted”
7/19/2024 “Advertisers Fear Supporting Journalism, Here’s How to Fix That”
Testimonials from conservative and libertarian news publishers
Reports in Reason magazine and the UnHerd and Spiked websites contrast NewsGuard’s apolitical ratings with the partisan ratings they received from the left-wing advocacy group, Global Disinformation Index.
Reason Magazine:
Jacob Sullum, “The Perils of Trying To Curtail Hazily Defined 'Disinformation'“:
"NewsGuard, a service that rates adherence to basic principles of good journalism, gives this website its highest possible score. Yet the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British organization that aims to steer advertisers away from disreputable websites, claims Reason is one of the 10 "riskiest" online news sources in the United States."
Robby Soave, “U.S. State Department Funds a Disinformation Index That Warns Advertisers To Avoid Reason”
"If a self-described disinformation-tracking organization [Global Disinformation Index] wants to loudly proclaim, in partisan fashion, that advertisers should only use mainstream and liberal news sites, it has that right. But advertisers should take note of its obvious bias, total lack of transparency in detailing media outlets' scores, and other methodological issues. When evaluated by a misinformation-tracking organization that uses transparent and objective metrics, Reason fares much better. NewsGuard—an evaluator co-founded by Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal—gives Reason a perfect score of 100/100 and does not steer advertisers away."
UnHerd
Editor-in-Chief of UnHeard, Freddie Sayers, “How ‘fighting disinformation’ turns into political censorship”
"I can attest that UnHerd has been substantially affected: Though NewsGuard, another disinformation ratings organization, gives us a trust score of 92.5 percent (five points ahead of the New York Times), the GDI at some point last year mysteriously placed us on their “dynamic exclusion list” of publications that supposedly promote disinformation and should be boycotted by advertisers."
Spiked
Tom Slater, “The spiked Christmas give-a-thon”
"Dodgy ‘anti-disinformation’ organizations such as the Global Disinformation Index are effectively telling advertising firms not to work with sites like spiked. This is despite us being a reputable, decades-old publication with high journalistic standards. For what it’s worth, we have a 100 per cent score on NewsGuard, another big news-rating system. (The New York Times only has an 87.5 rating there.)"
Irony: Carr supported NewsGuard-focused reform in his “Project 2025” chapter
NewsGuard is cited as the leading solution for the reform Brendan Carr proposed in his "Project 2025" chapter in the section entitled “Support efforts to empower consumers." Carr wrote, “One idea is to empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.”
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama calls this approach a “middleware solution.” Fukuyama cites NewsGuard ratings giving readers information about sources online as the leading way to empower consumers. “NewsGuard is an example that we would like to see more of,” Fukuyama said. “Consumers should have a choice among a variety of middleware options rather than leaving it all up to the internet platforms.”
