Congress launches probe into government-backed misinformation group

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer announced last week that the committee is launching an investigation into NewsGuard, a federally funded group which claims to fight “misinformation.”

What is NewsGuard?

NewsGuard is a for-profit company which bills itself as an organization dedicated to “fighting misinformation” in both mainstream and social media. Praised by CNN as “the Librarian of the Internet,” NewsGuard employs a team of journalists and editors who issue “trust scores” for news websites. The organization claims to base these scores on certain criteria, which are used to determine whether a site is “trustworthy.”

Once it declares which sites are trustworthy and which are unreliable, NewsGuard sells the lists to advertisers so they can steer clear of the poorly rated websites.

Studies conducted since the organization’s founding in 2018 show that NewsGuard rates Right-leaning news sites 27 points lower on average than Left-leaning news outlets.

NewsGuard has received nearly $1 million from the US government, mostly from the Department of Defense. In 2020, the Pentagon granted NewsGuard a $25,000 prize for winning a contest on “COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation.”

‘Backdoor attempt at censoring conservative media’

Last week, Rep. Comer revealed that the House Judiciary Committee will be investigating the company.

“This appears to be a very biased, very unfair service that’s getting federal funds. It could be another backdoor attempt at censoring conservative media outlets,” Comer told One America News. “What’s their criteria that just happen to give networks like MSNBC and CNN tremendous grades, and then networks like OAN, Newsmax and Fox very poor grades?”

“We want to know why they’re doing this, what the basis is for the criteria that they use to determine these grades. Because then they turn around and they offer their grades to advertisers, and this is a form of, I believe, trying to discourage advertisers from advertising on conservative networks,” he said.

“There’s a concerted effort by the federal government to censor conservative media outlets,” he added.

NewsGuard works closely with government censorship office

NewsGuard works closely with the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office within the State Department whose stated mission is to “counter foreign disinformation.” It has been described by at least one former State Department official as “the first government censorship operation within the federal government.” House Republicans have referred to the GEC as “subsidized censorship of free speech and disfavored opinions.”

Some of the GEC’s projects involve working with groups funded by billionaire George Soros and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to track “disinformation spreaders” on social media. These include users who question the safety or efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

During the pandemic, NewsGuard was a top promoter of the federal government’s messaging. The company claimed, for example, that the COVID-19 vaccine was the only cure for the virus. Its Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center continues to claim that scientific evidence showing masks and social distancing are ineffective are “false claims.”

Founded by a pharma skeptic

NewsGuard’s unquestioning support for the COVID shots was ironic given that the company was co-founded by Steven Brill, an investigative reporter known for his exposés on the pharmaceutical and medical industries.

In February 2013, Brill wrote a cover story for TIME magazine titled “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.” In the report, Brill revealed how hospitals manipulate the medical system to maximize revenue, and how medical bills have less to do with the actual care provided than we think. 

Two years later, Brill wrote a book on the same subject titled “America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.” He also released a documentary on pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, which exposed how J&J marketed Resperdal to children and the elderly while concealing the side effects. J&J made billions of dollars in profit from the drug.