A media-rating company says a Trump agency is threatening its livelihood

https://apnews.com/article/trump-administration-newsguard-media-
monitoring-ftc-investigation-291c71ebc2d00020326a56807ffccf5f

As media organizations go, NewsGuard cuts a low public profile as it 
follows its mission of issuing credibility ratings about news outlets. The 
Trump administration knows about it, though, and the company has joined a 
lengthening list of journalism organizations to face the White House’s 
wrath.

A dispute between President Donald Trump’s regulators and the news 
monitoring service has spilled into court, with NewsGuard Technologies 
suing the Federal Trade Commission and its chairman, Andrew Ferguson, to 
shut down an investigation. The FTC accuses the company of trying to 
suppress conservative speech. NewsGuard says it is being forced to kneel 
before vindictive power.

Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Republican 
administration has fought The Associated Press in court over the outlet’s 
claim it is being punished for not adopting his preferred name for the 
Gulf of Mexico; settled with CBS News’ corporate parent in a dispute over 
“60 Minutes” editing; sued The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on 
Trump and Jeffrey Epstein; and is in a legal fight with The New York Times 
over Pentagon reporting restrictions.

NewsGuard’s lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in the 
District of Columbia, accuses Trump’s FTC of “brazenly using its power not 
for any issue concerning trade or commerce but rather to censor speech 
simply because it disagreed with NewsGuard’s judgments about the 
reliability of news sources.”

The FTC calls NewsGuard’s accusations “untethered from both law and fact.”

The FTC, normally low-key, is busier under Trump
Like the Federal Communications Commission under Brendan Carr, Ferguson’s 
FTC is a normally sleepy federal agency that has sprung to life to address 
issues of importance to Trump and his supporters, particularly involving 
the media. The FCC has launched investigations of media companies and this 
weekend Carr, responding to a Trump complaint about negative coverage of 
the Iran war, warned broadcasters “running hoaxes and news distortions” to 
correct course or see their licenses threatened.

Ferguson has made no secret about where he takes his cues. He said in an 
interview in July that “I am a law enforcer, and I will follow the law. 
But the policy priorities are set by the man the people chose to run this 
government.”

The liberal lobbying group Media Matters for America was one of his 
targets. A federal judge last summer halted an FTC investigation over 
efforts to promote advertising boycotts of companies the group opposes, 
saying the inquiry violated MMA’s free speech rights.


While NewsGuard may not be a big name, money is at stake for news outlets 
friendly to the president. The company began in 2018, started by Court TV 
founder Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, a former Journal publisher. 
NewsGuard uses journalists to examine thousands of news outlets and 
websites, giving them ratings based on the credibility and reliability of 
their journalism.

A monthly subscription costs $4.95. Much of its business comes from 
companies that advise advertisers where to hawk their products, showing 
them which news sites may be toxic to their brands, and artificial 
intelligence companies looking to see where they would be more likely to 
find information they could trust.

Making a powerful enemy in Newsmax
NewsGuard made an enemy of the Trump-friendly television network Newsmax, 
giving its website a 20 on a scale where 100 is the best score. NewsGuard 
says “this website is unreliable because it severely violates basic 
journalism standards.” Newsmax has since repeatedly urged Republican 
lawmakers or regulators to do what they can to silence NewsGuard, the 
company said in its lawsuit.

“NewsGuard was started by Steve Brill to target conservative media and get 
ad agencies to deny them advertising revenue as a means of censorship,” 
Newsmax spokesman Bill Daddi said. “Brill is a Democratic Party activist 
and donor over many decades with a long history of advocating for liberal 
causes. He is not a respected journalist and in no way should be running a 
ratings service used by major ad agencies.”

Brill said his only political activity was working for Republican John 
Lindsay, New York City’s mayor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while a 
college and law school student. “I have been a journalist ever since,” 
Brill said, adding that he has not donated money to any politicians.

NewsGuard says its ratings are based on clearly defined criteria, such as 
whether or not an outlet publishes false or misleading material, whether 
it distorts arguments and uses multiple sources, whether it distinguishes 
between news and opinion and regularly corrects errors. To counter charges 
that it unfairly boosted liberals, the company noted times where Fox News 
scored higher in its ratings than the former MSNBC.

Yet the conservative Media Research Center has published studies 
contending that NewsGuard is more likely to give higher ratings to outlets 
with a liberal bent. In court papers, the FTC said it began investigating 
NewsGuard because congressional investigators connected the company’s 
services to “coordinated actions to demonize disfavored media entities.”

The agency has asked the company to produce reams of internal documents, 
emails, financial reports and subscriber lists dated to its founding. Not 
only does NewsGuard consider that task unduly expensive and burdensome, it 
worries that regulators will use that information to target its 
subscribers.

The FTC, as a condition to approving a merger of two of the world’s 
biggest media buying firms, Omnicom and IPG, prohibited the new company 
from using a service that reviews and rates news sites. That is designed 
to eliminate the company’s ability to deny advertising based on politics, 
the agency said.

It has already cost NewsGuard business, the company asserts.

“The whole idea that any speaker has to justify to the government that 
it’s not biased is a really troubling thought,” Brill said in an 
interview. “We have a constitutional right to be biased. It just so 
happens that we started the company on the core principle that we were 
going to be totally apolitical.”

Continuing until NewsGuard ‘knuckles under’
The FTC’s press department did not return a message seeking comment. But 
in court papers, the agency said it was conducting a broad investigation 
into whether advertiser boycotts violated antitrust laws and that it has 
issued more than a dozen orders for information similar to the one given 
to NewsGuard. The company’s charges are “completely meritless,” the agency 
said.

If its order was so demanding, the FTC wondered why it took NewsGuard 
eight months after it was issued to sue.

“We tried to cooperate in the belief that the more that we told them what 
we do, the more likely it would be that they would decide that they didn’t 
have any case,” Brill said. “We soon realized that they weren’t worried 
about the merits.”

The company argues that the FTC actions “will continue until NewsGuard 
knuckles under.” Asked if he thought the government agency’s goal was to 
put his company out of business, Brill declined to comment.


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.