It wasn’t that many years ago there was some actual b-partisan consensus on concerns news sites and social media in particular weren’t doing enough to battle disinformation. Remember those hearings where Congress Critters raked Zuckerberg and others over the coals. Alas, that spirit didn’t last and Trump got conservatives back to trashing news outlets as being ‘biased’ and/or ‘censoring’ conservative viewpoints. Out of all this two seasoned journalist, one conservative and one liberal created NewsGuard as a tool that could be used to rate the accuracy/credibility of a given website or news outlet publishing on the web. NewsGuard developed a sustainable and profitable model as well as a solid reputation. So, naturally conservatives including and especially some on Capitol Hill are trying to kill it!
I’d encourage you to read this article from the Washington Post (before it gets hidden behind a paywall) which might not be a lively or ‘entertaining’ piece of work but it details an important issue and story. Anyone reading this knows that dictatorships and countries that aspire to iron-fisted conservative rule that will turn into one HATE the notion of a free press. Of fairness and truth in news reporting. Propaganda is the name of the game. Flooding the zone with disinformation and outright lies and falsehoods takes them a long way. Think about it. When thoughtful people want to look up what’s going on with an issue that’s important to them how are they to trust what they hear and read?
Digging deeper as the WaPo has done it goes beyond consumers of news to the people who pay the advertising fees to keep news outlets (and websites like this one) in business. In the Trump era we’ve seen advertisers flee certain outlets as the worry about the damage to their brand from being associated with them. What NewsGuard does that a site like Fact-Check.com doesn’t is offer a tool that entities can ‘plug in’ that will rate news sites for them. Although the linked article doesn’t provide many names, it seems Microsoft and even the DOD are clients. It’s also worth noting they work with sites that have low ratings for compliance/accuracy to help them improve their scores.
I don’t know about you but all that seems like a GOOD thing. However for all their ‘tough guy’ bluster conservatives have long been whiny little school kids. They have an entire effing MAJOR network that for three decades has spouted propaganda and often outright lies. Not to mention some smaller online ones. For even longer they’ve had a stranglehold on AM Talk Radio which in much of the country is the only reliable radio signal people can get! Even non Fox News major media outlets regularly have some awfully hard core conservatives on their air or writing articles, and sometimes even on the payroll. Yet they complain they are being “censored.”
From where I sit the conservative’s goal has LONG been to censor the bejesus out of anything that isn’t RWNJ conservative!
That’s why a site like NewGuard gets them in fighting mode. An objective means by which news consumers, advertisers, businesses and others can measure news reporting is the last thing conservatives want. NewsGuard the WaPo tells us isn’t a large company, about fifty employees. However they’ve got something substantial that became trusted and it seems for good reason. Their creators (and their employees) the Post tells us never anticipated becoming the focus of such conservative ire. Including being subjected to Congressional investigations with the GOP in charge. (Remember I mentioned a DOD contract?) We can only assume things will get worse with the new Congress.
On top of all that it seems they are on the radar of the incoming administration. And will have an enemy that will bring Executive Branch pressure to bear:
But conservatives now question the company’s premise. Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, accused the company of facilitating a “censorship cartel,” in a November letter to leading tech platforms. Noting that key legal protections depend on tech executives operating “in good faith,” Carr continued: “It is in this context that I am writing to obtain information about your work with one specific organization — the Orwellian named NewsGuard.”
I’ll tell you right now it’s a detailed article from the Post and takes a while to read and digest but it’s important for you to know what’s going on. There are seriously huge First Amendment issues at stake here. Conservatives want only one news source. That is still a tough place for them to get to. However crippling and killing smaller news sites (or opinion blogs that cite news) is increasingly within their capability. One weapon conservatives can bring to bear is killing off sites that ‘fact check’ and have reputations for letting folks know who’s accurate/truthful and who is not. It’s not just NewsGuard that’s drawn the ire of some big name conservatives (including asshats like “Gym” Jordan and even Elon Musk) but what matters is the people Trump is putting into place that already have been grinding an axe:
Since Trump’s election victory, some of his picks for top regulatory positions have made tackling online “censorship” a priority and cast NewsGuard as an emblem of the problem. His pick to succeed trustbuster Lina Khan as Federal Trade Commission chair, Andrew Ferguson, wrote in a December filing that he would support using antitrust laws to break up censorship “cartels,” mentioning NewsGuard by name.
So we’ve got (just to name a few) Jordan and his committee, the FCC, the FTC and Musk with his DOGE (those DOD and State Dept. contracts) on the warpath. That’s why I say we need to keep an eye on this. It’s just the beginning of what’s to come and we have to be ready to raise hell about it.
How ‘Orwellian’ of him to use the word Orwellian.