Tag: NewsGuard

Federal ‘Censorship Nerve Center’ Likely to Shutter, but State Would ‘Realign’ Staff for Same Work

Just the News
Global Engagement Center website

The State Department is planning to change how it engages with the globe as it braces for unified Republican government that promises to gut the so-called censorship-industrial complex, the subject of a four-part Just the News series this fall.

But like the evolution of the broader global public-private partnership to label, throttle, remove and defund purported misinformation, disinformation and “true but inconvenient” malinformation (MDM) on tech platforms, State’s change may only be in name.

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Microsoft Promotes Media Literacy as ‘Inoculation’ Against ‘Disinformation’

Foundation for Freedom Online
Robots reading newspapers

Microsoft has staked a claim in the growing field of “media literacy” and “digital literacy,” which aims to instruct members of the public – especially schoolchildren – in what types of digital media they ought to trust and distrust. As FFO has previously reported, media and digital literacy is the latest in a long string of pretexts by the ideologically biased censorship industry to prevent the public from accessing disfavored information sources.

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Trump’s Likely FCC Chair Demands Answers from Big Tech over Alleged ‘Censorship Cartel’

Tom Pappert
Brendan Carr

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner who activist groups claim could be selected to chair the FCC by President-elect Donald Trump sent a letter to Big Tech industry leaders demanding details about their censorship practices, and seeking specific information about their relationship with the controversial, for-profit fact checker NewsGuard.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on Friday posted to the social media platform X a letter he sent to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram; Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, as well as Tim Cook of Apple and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, warning their businesses “played significant roles” in “an unprecedented surge in censorship,” which he called “improper conduct.”

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Progressive Knight Foundation Training Journalists on How to Write About Likely 2024 Election Lawsuits

Rachel Alexander
Heather Gerkin, Bob Bauer, Ben Ginsberg

The progressive Knight Foundation (KF) is providing training to journalists ahead of the 2024 general election on election related legal issues. KF announced in July that the organization would fund election news coverage “primarily in swing states.” It will also provide journalists with “explainers and training …from The Associated Press.”

“One local news organization in each swing state will also receive a grant to serve as an ‘anchor,’ bolstering the distribution of election-related coverage with editorial partners in their state.” So far, most of KF’s grants in Arizona have gone to Arizona State University.

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Disinformation Police Officer NewsGuard Goes After Free-Speech Lawyer, Olympics Narratives as Peers Fall to Scrutiny

Just the News

Two months after the for-profit business NewsGuard came under congressional investigation for whether its business relationships with domestic and foreign governments are tantamount to state-sponsored censorship, the self-described “only apolitical service rating news sources” is taking on new targets like the Olympics and a high-profile free-speech lawyer.

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Mike Benz Reveals How NewsGuard Plans to ‘Warp’ the Minds of ‘Tens of Millions of School Children’

Kaitlin Housler
Mike Benz

Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, revealed how NewsGuard is making its way into K-12 public schools and “warping” the minds of tens of millions of schoolchildren.

NewsGuard is a for-profit entity dedicated to countering what it calls “misinformation” founded by journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz.

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NewsGuard Attacks Tucker Carlson over Putin Interview

Peter D'Abrosca
Vladimir Putin Tucker Carlson

NewsGuard, the far-left self-appointed arbiter of internet truth, released a blog post criticizing Tucker Carlson for his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Chief among NewsGuard’s gripes with the interview is that Carlson did not do enough push back on claims Putin made, including that the “Poles forced [Adolf Hitler], they overplayed their hand, and they forced Hitler to start the Second World War by attacking Poland.”

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PR Group Behind ‘Watchdog’ NewsGuard Hit with $350 Million Settlement over OxyContin Marketing

Admin

French public and advertising giant Publicis Groupe — the lead funder of  “disinformation watchdog” NewsGuard — has agreed to pay $350 million as part of a settlement with state attorneys general over the company’s role in America’s opioid crisis. “Today’s filings describe how Publicis’ work contributed to the crisis by helping Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers market and sell opioids,” said a press release from South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson. “Court documents detail how Publicis acted as Purdue’s agency of record for all its branded opioid drugs, including OxyContin, even developing sales tactics that relied on farming data from recordings of personal health-related in-office conversations between patients and providers.” “The company was also instrumental in Purdue’s decision to market OxyContin to providers on patient’s electronic health records,” said the press release. At the same time it is paying this $350 million settlement over its marketing tactics — Publicis Groupe, headed by CEO and Chairman Arthur Sadoun (pictured above) is also the “largest corporate investor” in NewsGuard, a company whose co-founder said it is a “vaccine against misinformation,” reported Lee Fang in RealClearInvestigations. NewsGuard said it “provides transparent tools to counter misinformation” and in 2021, it announced a partnership with Publicis to “combat…

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Director of Internet Free Speech Nonprofit Says EU is Angling to Make X Purchase ‘Middleware’

Peter D'Abrosca
Elon Musk X EU

Mike Benz, the director of a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, is sounding the alarm on the European Union’s investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, for what it claims are breakages of the multinational conglomerate’s hate speech laws. 

Benz, an attorney and the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), says that the EU’s plan is to force X into implementing a mandatory “disinformation compliance” service like NewsGuard. Such products have been termed “middleware.” 

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Commentary: NewsGuard Is a Surrogate the Feds Pay to Keep Watch on the Internet and Be a Judge of the Truth

RealClearWire

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.

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Director of Internet Free Speech Nonprofit Sounds Alarm on ‘Middleware’ Censorship by NewsGuard

Peter D'Abrosca

The founder of a nonprofit that advocates for freedom of speech on the internet is sounding the alarm on government weaponization of “middleware” companies, which he said are essentially shell organizations for government censorship.

“The reason that they call it competitive middleware is because they’re trying to create a competitive industry around middleware compliance to avoid any antitrust situations that could arise,” Mike Benz, the executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), told The Tennessee Star Tuesday.

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Dem-Linked Dark Money-Funded Newspaper Promotes Far-Left Candidate in Pivotal Court Race

Admin

A Democrat-linked dark money group has used a website resembling a Wisconsin news outlet to attack the conservative candidate in the state’s current high-stakes Supreme Court election.

American Independent Media (AIM), a Washington, D.C.-registered 501(c)(4) nonprofit with ties to Democratic political operative David Brock, bought at least $90,000 in Facebook advertisements this month promoting two articles critical of former State Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly on The Wisconsin Independent, a media website labelled as an AIM “project.” Early voting is already underway in Kelly’s officially non-partisan April 4 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election contest against liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz, which will determine whether Democrats take majority control of the court for the first time in 15 years, according to NBC News.

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NewsGuard Still Gives Perfect Credibility Ratings to News Orgs That Spread Misinformation About Biden Laptop

Peter D'Abrosca

Self-appointed news media truth arbiter NewsGuard has not downgraded any mainstream press organization’s trust rating, despite several of those outlets labeling the now-infamous Hunter Biden laptop story “disinformation” just before the 2020 election. 

The Washington Post, USA Today and Politico were among the outlets to dismiss the story as possible disinformation, according to the Media Research Center. 

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Internet News ‘Truth Arbiter’ NewsGuard Won’t Say That Americans Should Trust Them After Hunter Biden Laptop Debacle

Peter D'Abrosca

After its CEO suggested the now-infamous Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian Russian disinformation, NewsGuard, the self-styled arbiter of internet truth, is not backing down. 

“My personal opinion is there’s a high likelihood this story is a hoax, maybe even a hoax perpetrated by the Russians again,” NewsGuard CEO Steve Brill said on CNBC just before the 2020 presidential election. 

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George Soros Teams Up with Billionaire Who Backed Liberal Disinformation Efforts to Fund Anti-Disinformation Media Venture

Admin

Liberal tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, a funder of numerous disinformation projects, is backing a new media venture launched Tuesday that seeks to combat disinformation, according to a report.

Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, joined ranks with financier George Soros to fund Good Information Inc., which will “fund and scale businesses that cut through eco chambers with fact-based information,” Axios reported.

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