Company makes a profitโincluding from US government fundsโthrough a business model that leads to defunding and censoring of independent media
As di๏ฌcult as it is to run an independent media outlet, thereโs a company making it substantially harder. Its name is NewsGuard. The company claims to rate online content, including from media outlets, for trustworthiness, but a closer look shows it does much more than thatโits business model produces censorious pressure on news organizations. An investigation by The Epoch Times has revealed troubling questions regarding the quality of and the agenda behind NewsGuard’s o๏ฌerings.
Founded in 2018, NewsGuard dispatches its โanalystsโ to prepare reviews of online content creators and to issue ratings โto help readers have more context for the news they read online.โ The ratings display as small badges with scores next to search results.
That, however, represents only a small part of the picture. The bigger picture shows that NewsGuard’s most potent function stems from its relationships with advertising agencies, which have steered their clients to cut off advertising dollars for content creators disfavored by the company’s “analyst” reviews. As it so happens, corporate, establishment-friendly media tend to receive high scores while independent media skeptical of the establishment tend to receive low scores, even if they adhere to high journalistic standards.
The Epoch Times emailed NewsGuard questions regarding its products, activities, personnel, and funding, but received no response.
Subjective Criteria
NewsGuard presents itself as objective and nonpartisan. Its ratings, the company says, measure media quality on nine criteria, including transparency of authorship and ownership and adherence to standard editorial practice, such as issuing corrections and labeling opinion pieces. In practice, however, most of the score boils down to whether the media present content that, in NewsGuardโs opinion, is truthful.
The ๏ฌrst criterion speci๏ฌcally looks at whether the target repeatedly publishes false claims. Another examines whether it publishes news โresponsibly.โ But failing the ๏ฌrst one means failing the second one, NewsGuard explains on its website. Yet another criterion is whether the target uses accurate headlines.
Again, if the headline says something NewsGuard considers to be untrue, that counts as a failure. Another criterion looks for a policy of regularly correcting errorsโor what NewsGuard considers to be errors. Together, these four criteria add up to more than 60 points of the 100-point score.
Even if NewsGuard canโt ๏ฌnd anything to dispute, it can still dock points if the target doesnโt su๏ฌciently represent opinions the company would like to see.
Such content providers โegregiously cherry pick facts or stories to advance opinions,โ it argues.
Meanwhile, at least 60 points are needed for NewsGuard to issue its โcredibleโ rating.
