NewsGuard

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Group.png NewsGuard Twitter WebsiteRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
NewsGuard RT.png
NewsGuard warns that RT is unreliable
Founder• Steven Brill
• Gordon Kravitz
InterestsFake news
Sponsored byPublicis Groupe, US/Air Force
A tech company which is teaming up with Microsoft as regards "fake news"

NewsGuard is a company which purports to tackle "disinformation" through its browser extension.

Activities

" A new app claiming to serve as a bulwark against "disinformation" by adding "trust rankings" to news websites has links to a PR firm that received nearly $15 million to push pro-Saudi spin in US media, Breitbart reports.

NewsGuard and its shady advisory board – consisting of truth-lovers such as Tom Ridge, the first-ever homeland security chief, and former CIA director Michael Hayden – came under scrutiny after Microsoft announced that the app would be built into its mobile browsers. A closer examination of the company's publicly listed investors, however, has revealed new reasons to be suspicious of this self-declared crusader against propaganda. As Breitbart discovered, NewsGuard's third-largest investor, Publicis Groupe, owns a PR firm that has repeatedly airbrushed Saudi Arabia."[1]

Criticism

Breitbert notes that "WikiLeaks, which has never had to retract a story due to false or misleading information, is also given a “red” rating in contrast to the "green" which it gives to BuzzFeed, which was recently humiliated for publishing alleged details about the ongoing Mueller investigation that were contradicted by the spe[c]ial prosecutor himself. BuzzFeed did not retract the story, and even led with it on its frontpage … after Mueller contradicted it."[2]

Uncritical usage by Wikipedia

Whitney Webb described in 2019 How a Small Group of Pro-Israel Activists Blacklisted MintPress on Wikipedia. The article describes, among other things, how Wikipedia cited Mint Press News' unfavourable rating from Newsguard, "several months after MintPress authored a viral exposè of Newsguard’s connections to neoconservatives and former government officials, including former CIA director Michael Hayden."[3]


 

Known members

8 of the 18 of the members already have pages here:

MemberDescription
John BattelleHelped launch Wired in the 1990s. Young Global Leaders. On the Advisory Board of the CIA-front NewsGuard
Arne DuncanEducational bureaucrat; United States Secretary of Education under 7 years of Obama.
Michael HaydenUS Spook, NSA Director 1999-2005, CIA Director 2006-2009, News Guard advisory board
Anders Fogh RasmussenBilderberger, ex Danish PM, ex-Secretary General of NATO.
Richard Sambrook
Richard StengelChief Propagandist
Ed VaizeyUK politician, Merton College Oxford, Henry Jackson Society, NewsGuard/Advisory Board, Notting Hill Set
Jimmy WalesFounder of super-influential Wikipedia. Tony Blair aide's is (strategically?) married to him.

 

Sponsors

EventDescription
Publicis GroupeFrench multinational advertising and public relations company
US/Air Force
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References