[For background, readers can see WUWT’s experience with NewsGuard ~cr]
By Lee Fang
November 15, 2023
In May 2021, L. Gordon Crovitz, a media executive turned start-up investor, pitched Twitter executives on a powerful censorship tool.
In an exchange that came to light in the “Twitter Files” revelations about media censorship, Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, touted his product, NewsGuard, as a “Vaccine Against Misinformation.” His written pitch highlighted a “separate product” – beyond an extension already on the Microsoft Edge browser – “for internal use by content-moderation teams.” Crovitz promised an out-of-the-box tool that would use artificial intelligence powered by NewsGuard algorithms to rapidly screen content based on hashtags and search terms the company associated with dangerous content.
Verbatim: NewsGuard’s Inquisitiveness, and RCI’s Reply
How would the company determine the truth? For issues such as COVID-19, NewsGuard would steer readers to official government sources only, like the federal Centers for Disease Control. Other content-moderation allies, Crovitz’s pitch noted, include “intelligence and national security officials,” “reputation management providers,” and “government agencies,” which contract with the firm to identify misinformation trends. Instead of only fact-checking individual forms of incorrect information, NewsGuard, in its proposal, touted the ability to rate the “overall reliability of websites” and “’prebunk’ COVID-19 misinformation from hundreds of popular websites.”
NewsGuard’s ultimately unsuccessful pitch sheds light on one aspect of a growing effort by governments around the world to police speech ranging from genuine disinformation to dissent from officially sanctioned narratives. In the United States, as the Twitter Files revealed, the effort often takes the form of direct government appeals to social media platforms and news outlets. More commonly the government works with through seemingly benign non-governmental organizations – such as the Stanford Internet Observatory – to quell speech it disapproves of.
Or it pays to coerce speech through government contracts with outfits such as NewsGuard, a for-profit company of especially wide influence. Founded in 2018 by Crovitz and his co-CEO Steven Brill, a lawyer, journalist and entrepreneur, NewsGuard seeks to monetize the work of reshaping the Internet. The potential market for such speech policing, NewsGuard’s pitch to Twitter noted, was $1.74 billion, an industry it hoped to capture.
Instead of merely suggesting rebuttals to untrustworthy information, as many other existing anti-misinformation groups provide, NewsGuard has built a business model out of broad labels that classify entire news sites as safe or untrustworthy, using an individual grading system producing what it calls “nutrition labels.” The ratings – which appear next to a website’s name on the Microsoft Edge browser and other systems that deploy the plug-in – use a scale of zero to 100 based on what NewsGuard calls “nine apolitical criteria,” including “gathers and presents information responsibly” (worth 18 points), “avoids deceptive headlines” (10 points), and “does not repeatedly publish false or egregiously misleading content” (22 points), etc.
Critics note that such ratings are entirely subjective – the New York Times, for example, which repeatedly carried false and partisan information from anonymous sources during the Russiagate hoax, gets a 100% rating. RealClearInvestigations, which took heat in 2019 for unmasking the “whistleblower” of the first Trump impeachment (while many other outlets including the Times still have not), has an 80% rating. (Verbatim: the NewsGuard-RCI exchange over the whistleblower.) Independent news outlets with an anti-establishment bent receive particularly low ratings from NewsGuard, such as the libertarian news site Antiwar.com, with a 49.5% rating, and conservative site The Federalist, with a 12.5% rating.
As it stakes a claim to being the Internet’s arbiter of trust, the company’s site says it has conducted reviews of some 95% of news sources across the English, French, German, and Italian web. It has also published reports about disinformation involving China and the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars. The model has received glowing profiles in CNN and the New York Times, among other outlets, as a viable solution for fighting fake news.
NewsGuard is pushing to apply its browser screening process into libraries, academic centers, news aggregation portals, and internet service providers. Its reach, however, is far greater because of other products it aims to sell to social media and other content moderation firms and advertisers. “An advertiser’s worst nightmare is having an ad placement damage even one customer’s trust in a brand,” said Crovitz in a press release touting NewsGuard’s “BrandGuard” service for advertisers. “We’re asking them to pay a fraction of what they pay their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem,” Crovitz told reporters.
NewsGuard’s BrandGuard tool provides an “exclusion list” that deters advertisers from buying space on sites NewsGuard deems problematic. But that warning service creates inherent conflicts of interest with NewsGuard’s financial model: The buyers of the service can be problematic entities too, with an interest in protecting and buffing reputations.
A case in point: Publicis Groupe, NewsGuard’s largest investor and the biggest conglomerate of marketing agencies in the world, which has integrated NewsGuard’s technology into its fleet of subsidiaries that place online advertising. The question of conflicts arises because Publicis represents a range of corporate and government clients, including Pfizer – whose COVID vaccine has been questioned by some news outlets that have received low scores. Other investors include Bruce Mehlman, a D.C. lobbyist with a lengthy list of clients, including United Airlines and ByteDance, the parent company of much-criticized Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok.
NewsGuard has faced mounting criticism that rather than serving as a neutral public service against online propaganda, it instead acts as an opaque proxy for its government and corporate clients to stifle views that simply run counter to their own interests.
The criticism finds support in internal documents, such as the NewsGuard proposal to Twitter, which this reporter obtained during Twitter Files reporting last year, as well as in government records and discussions with independent media sites targeted by the startup.
And although its pitch to Twitter (now Elon Musk’s X) “never went anywhere,” according to Matt Skibinski, the general manager of NewsGuard, his company remains “happy to license our data to Twitter or any platform that might benefit.” Coincidentally (or not), X comes in for criticism in NewsGuard’s latest “misinformation monitor” headlined: “Blue-Checked, ‘Verified’ Users on X Produce 74 Percent of the Platform’s Most Viral False or Unsubstantiated Claims Relating to the Israel-Hamas War.”
Meanwhile, one of the sites targeted by NewsGuard earlier, Consortium News, has filed a lawsuit against it claiming “First Amendment violations and defamation.”
Beginning last year, users scanning the headlines on certain browsers that include NewsGuard were warned against visiting Consortium News. A scarlet-red NewsGuard warning pop-up said, “Proceed With Caution” and claimed that the investigative news site “has published false claims about the Ukraine-Russia war.” The warning also notifies a network of advertisers, news aggregation portals, and social media platforms that Consortium News cannot be trusted.
But Consortium News, founded by late Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Robert Parry and known for its strident criticism of U.S. foreign policy, is far from a fake news publisher. And NewsGuard, the entity attempting to suppress it, Consortium claims, is hardly a disinterested fact-checker because of federal influence over it.
NewsGuard attached the label after pressing Consortium for retractions or corrections to six articles published on the site. Those news articles dealt with widely reported claims about neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian military and U.S. influence over the country – issues substantiated by other credible media outlets. After Consortium editors refused to remove the reporting and offered a detailed rebuttal, the entire site received a misinformation label, encompassing over 20,000 articles and videos published by the outlet since it was founded in 1995.
The left-wing news site believes the label was part of a pay-for-censorship scheme. It notes that Consortium News was targeted after NewsGuard received a $749,387 Defense Department contract in 2021 to identify “false narratives” relating to the war between Ukraine and Russia, as well as other forms of foreign influence.
Bruce Afran, an attorney for Consortium News, disagrees. “What’s really happening here is that NewsGuard is trying to target those who take a different view from the government line,” said Afran, He filed an amended complaint last month claiming that NewsGuard not only defamed his client, but also acts as a front for the military to suppress critical reporting.
“There’s a great danger in being maligned this way,” Afran continued. “The government cannot evade the Constitution by hiring a private party.”
Joe Lauria, the editor in chief of Consortium News, observed that in previous years, anonymous social media accounts had also targeted his site, falsely claiming a connection to the Russian government in a bid to discredit his outlet.
“NewsGuard has got to be the worst,” said Lauria. “They’re labeling us in a way that stays with us. Every news article we publish is defamed with that label of misinformation.”
Both Lauria and Afran said that they worry that NewsGuard is continuing to collaborate with the government or with intelligence services. In previous years, NewsGuard had worked with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. It’s not clear to what extent NewsGuard is still working with the Pentagon. But earlier this year, Crovitz wrote an email to journalist Matt Taibbi, defending its work with the government, describing it in the present tense, suggesting that it is ongoing:
For example, as is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the U.S. and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China. Our analysts alert officials in the U.S. and in other democracies, including Ukraine, about new false narratives targeting America and its allies, and we provide an understanding of how this disinformation spreads online. We are proud of our work countering Russian and Chinese disinformation on behalf of Western democracies.
The company has not yet responded to the Consortium News lawsuit, filed in the New York federal court. In May of this year, the Air Force Research Lab responded to a records request from journalist Erin Marie Miller about the NewsGuard contract. The contents of the work proposal were entirely redacted.
Asked about the company’s continued work with the intelligence sector, Skibinski replied, “We license our data about false claims made by state media sources and state-sponsored disinformation efforts from China, Russia and Iran to the defense and intelligence sector, as we describe on our website.”
The Daily Sceptic
Other websites that have sought to challenge their NewsGuard rating say it has shown little interest in a back-and-forth exchange regarding unsettled matters.
Take the case of The Daily Sceptic, a small publication founded and edited by conservative English commentator Toby Young. As a forum for journalists and academics to challenge a variety of strongly held public-policy orthodoxies, even those on COVID-19 vaccines and climate change, The Daily Sceptic is a genuine dissenter.
Last year, Young reached out to NewsGuard, hoping to improve his site’s 74.5 rating.
In a series of emails from 2022 and 2023 that were later forwarded to RealClearInvestigations, NewsGuard responded to Young by listing articles that it claimed represent forms of misinformation, such as reports that Pfizer’s vaccine carried potential side effects. The site, notably, has been a strident critic of COVID-19 policies, such as coercive mandates.
Anicka Slachta, an analyst with NewsGuard, highlighted articles that questioned the efficacy of the vaccines and lockdowns. The Daily Sceptic, for example, reported a piece casting COVID-19 lockdowns as “unnecessary, ineffective and harmful,” citing academic literature from Johns Hopkins University.
Rather than refute this claim, Slachta simply offered an opposing view from another academic, who criticized the arguments put forth by lockdown critics. And the Hopkins study, Slachta noted, was not peer-reviewed. The topic is still, of course, under serious debate. Sweden rejected the draconian lockdowns on schools and businesses implemented by most countries in North American and Europe, yet had one of the lowest “all-cause excess mortality” rates in either region.
Young and others said that the issue highlighted by NewsGuard is not an instance of misinformation, but rather an ongoing debate, with scientists and public health experts continuing to explore the moral, economic, and health-related questions raised by such policies. In its response to NewsGuard’s questions about the lockdown piece, Young further added that his site made no claim that the Hopkins paper was peer-reviewed and added that its findings had been backed up by a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Yet to NewsGuard, Young’s site evidently posed a misinformation danger by simply reporting on the subject and refusing to back down. Emails between NewsGuard and the Daily Sceptic show Young patiently responding to the company’s questions; he also added postscripts to the articles flagged by NewsGuard with a link to the fact checks of them and rebuttals of those fact checks. Young also took the extra step of adding updates to other articles challenged by fact-checking non-governmental organizations. “I have also added postscripts to other articles not flagged by you but which have been fact checked by other organisations, such as Full Fact and Reuters,” Young wrote to Slachta.
That wasn’t enough. After a series of back-and-forth emails, NewsGuard said it would be satisfied only with a retraction of the articles, many of which, like the lockdown piece, contained no falsehoods. After the interaction, NewsGuard lowered the Daily Sceptic’s rating to 37.5/100.
“I’m afraid you left me no choice but to conclude that NewsGuard is a partisan site that is trying to demonetise news publishing sites whose politics it disapproves of under the guise of supposedly protecting potential advertisers from being associated with ‘mis-’ and ‘disinformation,’” wrote Young in response. “Why bother to keep up the pretence of fair-mindedness John? Just half my rating again, which you’re going to do whatever I say.”
NewsGuard’s Skibinski, in a response to a query about the Daily Sceptic’s downgrade, denied that his company makes any “demands” of publishers. “We simply call them for comment and ask questions about their editorial practices,” he wrote. “This is known as journalism.”
The experience mirrored that of Consortium. Afran, the attorney for the site, noted that NewsGuard uses an arbitrary process to punish opponents, citing the recent study from the company on misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war. “They cherry-picked 250 posts among tweets they knew were incorrect, and they attempt to create the impression that all of X is unreliable,” the lawyer noted. “And so what they’re doing, and this is picked up by mainstream media, that’s actually causing X, formerly Twitter, to now lose ad revenue, based literally on 250 posts out of the billions of posts on Twitter.”
The push to demonize and delist the Daily Sceptic, a journalist critic of pharmaceutical products and policies, reflects an inherent conflict with the biggest backer of NewsGuard: Publicis Groupe.
Publicis client Pfizer awarded Publicis a major deal to help manage its global media and advertising operations, a small reflection of which is the $2.3 billion the pharmaceutical giant spent on advertising last year.
The NewsGuard-Publicis relationship extends to the Paris-based marketing conglomerate’s full client list, including LVHM, PepsiCo, Glaxo Smith Kline, Burger King, ConAgra, Kellogg Company, General Mills, and McDonalds. “NewsGuard will be able to publish and license ‘white lists’ of news sites our clients can use to support legitimate publishers while still protecting their brand reputations,” said Maurice Lévy, chairman of the Publicis Groupe, upon its launch of NewsGuard.
Put another way, when corporate watchdogs like the Daily Sceptic or Consortium News are penalized by NewsGuard, the ranking system amounts to a blacklist to guide advertisers where not to spend their money.
“NewsGuard is clearly in the business of censoring the truth,” noted Dr. Joseph Mercola, a gadfly voice whose website was ranked as misinformation by NewsGuard after it published reports about COVID-19’s potential origin from a lab in Wuhan, China.
“Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors,” Mercola added, in a statement online.
Lee Fang is an independent journalist based in San Francisco. He writes an investigative newsletter on Substack via www.leefang.com.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations, leefang.com and made available via RealClearWire.
Branching our from climate alt.reality to COVID I see. Or are you merely content starved, given your internal urge to put something out every 4-6 hours…?
Just because every post has now become commenter OpenWorks is no reason for you all to similarly sprout out, Q wise….
So your support censoring true facts in a scientific debate, like the government agencies did with Covid?
Anyone that supports that type of framework cannot be considered a scientist in any sense of the word.
The “media” can print anything not “Fire in a crowded theater” that it wants. Or not. Only the most childish whiners equate that with “censorship”.
How on earth do you equate concern about a clear massive collusion to to censor free speech with whining and the classic “ common since” and legal test of the limits of free speech ?
Oh oh I see – I think you are now full blown illogical troll looking to get a rise out of people. A waste of our time , but fortunately for you WUWT is not in to systemic censorship. Your a waste of good whinning time so I think I will get back to work.
To those on the left, any tactic that advances their narrative is good, and may not be criticized.
Formally described in Herbert Marcuse’s essay Repressive Tolerance. That’s basically the operational manual of the left currently.
Free speech ?
Doesnt exist and never has on private media. Did William Randolph Hearst allow views he didnt align or agree with ? Does Rupert Murdoch in his Fox news allow any thing like that.
Its simple congress shall make no law…. abridging the freedom of speech or of the press
Doesnt apply to the owners or managers of their own publications
Does it apply to those publications when they become government proxies?
The “fire in a crowded theater” is not legal precedent. Please stop spreading this lie, which is used to excuse government censorship.
And calling out “fire in a crowded theater” is legal, when there is a fire in a theater.
““fire in a crowded theater””
Very similar to the “climate emergency” caterwauling, though.
Chicken-little on steroids.
…. like the big oily blob.
Wrong
“Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that the “most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
1919 Schenk v United States
A Socialist Party Official who distributed leaflets opposing the Draft
“The Court unanimously rejected his appeal, reasoning that the First Amendment’s protections yield to a “clear and present danger”
Note he was prosecuted by the government over self published leaflets, not a press story
It was (correctly) overturned in 1969. Educate yourself: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep395/usrep395444/usrep395444.pdf
Or there are plenty of articles that would take less time to read, just search.
Was precedent
‘The Court famously analogized to a man who cries “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. In a quiet park or home, such a cry would be protected by the First Amendment, but “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
It wasnt just shouting fire – but causing a panic: would mean if prosecuted by government couldnt rely on the 2nd amendment as a defence. That was the “Clear and present danger test” in the Oliver Wendell Holmes decision
1969 Bradenburg v Ohio case just refined the judicial test to “imminent lawless action” when the government could take action ( not private media)
The nuance is really impossible for mere mortals like us to comprehend, but certainly not the complete abandon of government imposed restrictions like you suggest.
Climate alarmism is of course neither clear and present danger nor imminent lawless action which might allow government restriction
Thanks for your clarification ( which I also mentioned below)
G’Day Duker,
“It wasnt just shouting fire – but causing a panic: would mean if prosecuted by government couldnt rely on the 2nd amendment as a defence.”
The ‘Second Amendment’? The right to “keep and bear arms”?
Your ignorance is showing…..
Goodbye.
“falsely shouting fire in a theatre “
And yet the climate glitterati do it every day !!!
And it is causing immense harm to society.
My answer was to this claim
‘The “fire in a crowded theater” is not legal precedent. Please stop spreading this lie”
I have proved so called ‘independent’ was saying big fat lies, often the case when claiming someone else is lying
I dont think you have understood the precedent – I think there was a later adjustment but the full falsely claiming fire may not be protected – against government regulation, NOT private owned media who can regulated their own outlets as much or little as they like
Poor Duker.. cannot accept that falsely yelling “fire” in a theatre is exactly the same as falsely yelling “climate emergency”.
Just on a much smaller scale.
What are you talking about? I showed where that precedent was overturned in 1969, and you admitted it, saying it “was precedent” (not IS). You’re the one who is lying, since it’s not precedent, as I said. No wonder you’re so wedded to climate lies, you can’t even accept when you’re proven factually wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Not ‘overturned’ at all. Baden v Ohio just moved the judicial test a little bit
Plus you havent gotten the yelling fire in a theatre analogy . It required the the ‘yellee’ to cause a panic as well
Even you dont get my views correct , Im not a follower of the climate alarmist lies either.
In a much larger “theatre”.
I’m impressed! I was going to mention the “fire in a crowded theater” nonsense, but you and others have it well in hand.
Oliver Wendll Homes stated later (not immediately afterwards) that that decision was not correctly decided.
Guy calling others whiners opens with a whine of his own. Funny.
More of a RME chortle actually. The aimless pearl clutching here is seemingly boundless.
“More of a RME chortle actually.”
No, Bob. It’s a whine.
Giggling to yourself in the mirror again ???.
You poor unfortunate waste of space. !!
branding a news article or post in a media site as disinformation is getting close to censorship
YouTube has a history of blocking and/or demonetizing channels it considers disinformation. Others do also but I don’t use them so I don’t know their history.
“branding a news article or post in a media site as disinformation is getting close to censorship”
“close to censorship”. Ah, the predictable breaking out of the motorized goal posts. Once again. FYI. no it’s not…
Full, old time censorship means you get shot or dissapear. Now, you get branded as a liar and/or ignoramus with a term like disinformation or misinformation. It’s one thing for just another citizen to say that about someone (though you should rightly be careful about libel) but when a corporation or government agency does it- it’s censorship. And if on a social media site you may get locked out or demonetized.
Meanwhile, you’re welcome to your lying/ignorant perspective. 🙂
Ha ha Beth. You think you’re soooo smart signing mom’s assisted living lunch partners into WUWT.
Ok ladies. I’ve already shut down your inchoate whines about nonexistent “censorship”. Now for the day to days:
Funny Beth. Laugh it up until the next time you want to borrow my truck for your furniture refinishing gig. Yes, I know that your SIL is also in on this, but I’m hiding the keys….
I can’t tell if Boob thinks he’s being funny, or if he has completely lost touch with reality.
He does appear to be living in some sort of delusional fantasy world. Maybe drug addiction?
He manages to survive censorship here despite that what he posts is often drivel.
the latter
He (it) is just a Troll.
You can’t lose touch with reality if reality was / is totally removed from every facet of your existence.
Exhibit #1 – bigoilbob.
They do say that can be an effect of a social disease.
Sounds like Bidenspeak to me
I was wondeing that myself.
Sorry to see you have Alzheimers, Mr. Bigoilbob. There is no cure. To help you recover, I suggest others here will ignore you or you’ll slip away even faster.
Ginko Biloba is said to help, if one starts taking it early enough.
Describing your day-to-day issues, really greasy one !!
… no-one is interested.
What a tool … and a blunt one at that.
If the left brand something as “misinformation”…
.. it is only a matter of time until it is revealed as truth.
As a private business that can reject or approve anything they wish
I dont use it but it appears that they have content moderation guidelines for all to see.
Dont like the rules of the game ? Start your own league
Its never censorship of the state kind as is specifically excluded in the constitution – with caveats
So you think that pressure from paid operatives of big pharma, to follow the big pharma line… or else get your advertising revenue cut… is OK.??
Really ??
You really think that is “free” enterprise ???
That is a very sick point of view… “1984” style thinking. Mafia style.
Hello . Big advertisers pressure the legacy media and have done so for decades and decades .
Even now the Twitter/X is being abandoned by its big advertisers because…..
The government regulating commercial speech ? … thats been a dead duck for some decades and the current court aint changing it.
So having the government pay an organization to down rate and pressure advertisers to avoid any site that the government disagrees with, is OK with you?
Where does it say the government is paying a private business which supplies a service to other private businesses to regulate media IN AMERICA.
Just seems to be keeping track of worldwide data for Pentagon , State etc
“Where does it say the government is paying a private business “
Seems Duker either can’t read or can’t comprehend.
“ It notes that Consortium News was targeted after NewsGuard received a $749,387 Defense Department contract “
Glad you think that government paying companies to downgrade and censor people that are bring to light government LIES and MISINFORMATION, is OK !!
“1984” was a novel.. NOT an instruction manual.
Not in America is it . The Pentagon wants to target misinformation overseas, especially where US troops might be affected. State
I suppose you might think because the CIA does spying thats what they do inside the US . But maybe you understand their interest lies soley offshore. Also the other agency is State …guess what they do ..duh
Its you who cant read
Thanks for confirming that the government was trying to cover up /censor information that they didn’t want made public…
… and using a paid “Fact-Checker” (lol), to do so.
Seems you have understood… you just think it is what governments should do.
The Pentagon wants to target misinformation overseas,
And the Patriot Act only targeted foreign nationals…
Its like popping bunnies. Why is it those who say read the story DONT read the story
“For example, as is public, our work for the Pentagon’s Cyber Command is focused on the identification and analysis of information operations targeting the U.S. and its allies conducted by hostile governments, including Russia and China.
My god man they are using agaisnt US enemies….clue its the Pentagon and State
Your little fantasies and your denial that government is paying off a company to pressure newspapers and others to hide “inconvenient” information, shows that you are either fooling yourself, or you think that governments should be hiding facts from the population.
Are you foolishly naive, or just a slimy totalitarian fascist ???
“hostile governments”… there, you just listed the U.S. “Pentagon and State”. Kudos!
It says so in the article, which you obviously didn’t bother reading.
Wow, are we living in the USA or Communist China?
Where are the Thought Police…it’s like an Orwellian version of 1984 in 2023
QED. Whiny, tender tissues 2.0. Would you please use this Ken doll to show us where Newsguard touched you…?
ANyone else notice that boob is completely incapable of actually defending the odious positions that he takes.
BOOB must be in the pay of Big Green/Red
Judging by his last post he’s in the pay of big Barbie.
Do Ya Kennit?
Poor oily blob…. relating his history…. “touched” again.. so sad
So what exactly is your point. Do you think all this exists in a sociological or political vacuum? What is wrong with using examples of censorship from other sectors of current events. I can think of nothing more Orwellian than the government and media outlets contracting with a outfit like News Guard.
Come on man! To quote the “ Dear Leader”
There is no “censorship”. The WSJ used a vendor that they trusted to vet info. You don’t like what they found. Feel free to whine away here in subterranea. Or write a letter to the editor…
There is really something wrong with the part of your brain that distinguishes between fine shades of meaning and difference. It’s obvious you came here like a drunk in a bar looking for a fight.
He’s trying to defend the indefensible and not doing a very good job of it.
Making a complete MOCKERY of himself.
Probably doesn’t realise who PATHETIC he has become in his dotage.
Vetting that is ideological isn’t vetting- it’s censorship.
There is no “censorship”
Not so much stand-up as fall down comedy. Keep the encore to yourself
And THAT is part of the problem with today’s media. They TRUST other media to vet the words THEY print and do little to no vetting of their own
Apparently you have reading and imagination deficiencies. The story is here because this censorship regime has impacted this web site and all others that don’r serve the needs of our tech/oligarchy/big government … add at will… overlords. Do you see this as important in any way? Is it connected to any of the core mission of this website?
In other words, BugOilBoob likes censoring those who disagree with him.
I notice that Boob has nothing to say about the contents of the article. Not that he ever does.
Yeah, something about B O Bob doesn’t quite pass the sniff test
“doesn’t quite pass the sniff test”
Sewage is often like that.
Content such as this is known as SUNLIGHT, Bob.
Your comment is certainly DEVOID of any content.
Only contains malcontent.. in line with your whole life-choice.
WOW, what an utterly CHILDISH and PETULANT WHINGE from the big oily blob !
Anyone, like Newsguard, that rates the NYT at 100% is a partisan hack.
Or The Federalist as 12.5%.
Newsguard measures a Gleichschalung index (government submissivity). Google it if needed.
Why did they name it NewsGuard?
Was the name, Goebbels Propaganda and Censorship Company already taken?
Don’t know but TASS (truth) was taken
And what you get with the Government in charge of disseminating proper-ganda
Pravda means Truth. TASS stands for Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union.
What did the fish say as it swam into the concrete wall?
DAM
“NewSpeakGuard” was too long.
Narrashield protects any narrative from attack by truth
The Ministry of Truth and Big Brother will decide what is real and what is misinformation/disinformation…so just SHUT UP!
NewsGuard exists to protect the official government propaganda narrative by threatening the livelihoods of those who refuse to close their eyes. Government officials who violated their oaths of office by hiring NewsGuard to censor should be prosecuted for that, while NewsGuard should be prosecuted for fraudulently representing they are a neutral evaluator of so-called misinformation.
Story tip – America Has an EV Charging Problem and No One Is Talking About It – PJ Media
That’s an excellent article on PJ Media about problems with charging machines for electric vehicles.
Why do these charging machines have problems reading credit or debit cards for payment?
Somehow, the technology of reading credit or debit cards for payment seems to work very well at thousands of gasoline stations across the country, including those in remote areas far from major cities. You swipe your card, enter your PIN or Zip code, pump the gasoline, and the machine multiplies the number of gallons pumped by the price per gallon and charges that amount to your account, and prints out a receipt.
But nobody has figured out how to bill a person for the number of kilowatthours used to charge an electric car? Power companies have mastered this problem decades ago for electricity use at home, but not to charge a car? Why not?
There’s a much bigger problem they’re not talking about – the vast majority of Americans DON’T WANT ELECTRIC CARS.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion other than the climate emergency religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press unless its disinformation; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances unless it’s about covid restrictions.”
Looks like somebody modified the first amendment, secretly of course, but don’t mention this or it’ll be discovered by NewsGuard and you’ll be branded as disinformation and you’ll be canceled.
You missed the part about “the right of liberals to violently assemble and destroy”
Story tip:
BMW to invest $400 million to convert Munich plant to EV production
https://afronomist.com/bmw-to-invest-400-million-to-convert-munich-plant-to-ev-production/
Considering the FACT that most countries in Europe have pledged to outlaw the sale of non-EV cars in the next decade or so. It’s hardly surprising that automakers are preparing to build fewer real cars and more EVs.
Then there are some countries who spell “fact” the normal way, and they are banning those lithium bombs outright.
And these countries are…?
Is there any facet of reality that you are still in contact with?
You could also add that production of cars is migrating from Germany due to the high cost of electricity in the country thanks to its green obsession. Slovakia is now a major home of car production from complete cars to components.
There’s $400 million down the toilet!
What your link fails to mention is BMW are moving their ICE production to other countries.
#disinformation
From the article:
“…over 60 years of combustion engine production in Germany. The baton has been passed to production facilities in Austria and the United Kingdom.”
The sad thing is that you have completely agreed with Redge, you just don’t have the wit to realize it.
roflmao.
Where do they think they will get the electricity to run the factory from !!
RIP… BMW. !
After her recent comments, how much did NewsGuard contribute to the Nikki Haley campaign?
I don’t know, do you?
Warning, massive email news letter censorship
Still trying to understand exact details but..
Substack, wordpress(watts up), epoch times emails are being lost in Gmail and relabeled Google hosted email servers.
From my records, started in Feb 2023
More as this develops …..
That would hardly be a surprise. Google has caused 80-90% of Republican Party fundraising emails to be labeled as spam while only 10-20% of Democrat Party fundraising emails are labeled the same. I’m sure they do it to other organizations they don’t like. I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would voluntarily use Google, an evil company that hates anyone who isn’t part of the far left.
It is worse than being labeled as spam. They just disappear.
It is not just Gmail, It also happens on all private label email systems hosted by Google. You do not know they are google based. My telecom with there own address for example. Have been using as backup.
Check this link, 2 years old and techniques have changed. But not result.
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-06-14/newsletters-were-supposed-to-cut-out-the-middlemen-but-what-about-gmail
Reason 2,469,236 not to use Gmail or any other Google “service” unless absolutely necessary.
The dream is to retain the old system, where publishers and printers were licenced, unionised and brotherhooded. In other words, there was total control over what gets allowed into the public sphere. With the internet, it would mean limiting the ability to upload and/or host public data, has to be reserved for the licensed only…a sure fire way to start a riot, I think.
So, we can’t regulate you, we can’t tax you, but we can deny you income if we all gang together and ignore you, even gossip a bit behind your back. So all those with an interest in the status quo are banding together, shaming each other into conformity, lest their precious propaganda machine drop from their misanthrope little paws.
Frankly, I shiver at the thought of Coca Cola or Monsatano advertising on my website…I think they will soon force their own pop-ups onto every site, reminding us of our privileges and duties…and a Pfizer add or two. If we complain, they’ll tell us Russian hackers caused the glitch by corrupting the Internet’s main doooflebox.
There is indeed no algorithm for truth.
At the moment what concerns me most is the number of people and companies that fall for people selling them a slightly advanced spell checker that they, or their associates, have trained to screen certain words or phrases.
If these shysters had a real product to sell they would be making bank in the online advertising industry.
I think the real issue here is the word misinformation. Misinformation means different things to different people and can easily be misused. NewsGuard and outfits like them take full advantage of this lack of clarity. It can mean false information, half truth, incomplete details and so on. The other deceitful tactic is a form of circular reasoning. I have read many articles disagreeing with a government policy or statement. The article is classified as misinformation because the fact checker checked with the government and were assured what they said was right. That is so lame and it happens a lot. I never believe outfits like NewsGuard or Facebook fact checkers. They lie.
Why in the world would the Department of Defense issue a $749,387 contract to a company to identify “false narratives” in the media concerning the Russian – Ukrainian war?
The US Department of Defense has access to ALL interagency intelligence which is supposed to be the finest in the world. So does Joe Biden, the Commander in Chief.
Sounds like a buddy – buddy deal to me that accomplishes nothing except the transfer of US Treasury assets to private companies.
The definition of “crony capitalism”
I think it is about time to reign in these radical Leftwing millionaires and billionaires who are using their money to ruin the United States.
You like protests by Hamas supporters? Radical leftwing millionaires and billionaires are paying for these violent demonstrations attacking the fabric of the United States.
The Republican Congress has another existential threat to investigate: Control of information by radical leftists, with the aim of advancing the radical left agenda.