The self-appointed arbiters of “truth” on the internet — journalists Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz — appear to have reached the apex of their careers with their creation of NewsGuard, an app that gives arbitrary “trust” ratings to websites around the world.
In this profile of their so-called success in weeding out sites they believe no one should be reading, the duo blame the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for the proliferation of untruths circulating cyberspace.
Putting red flags and warnings on websites they’ve decided are not worthy of being seen, most recently NewsGuard’s 50 employees have been concentrating on targeting COVID and Russia-Ukraine “misinformation.”
That aside, what’s most intriguing is their admission that when it comes to funding their efforts, “most revenue comes from major companies such as Microsoft seeking to protect the integrity of material on its Edge browser, all five of the international advertising holding companies such as Interpublic and pharmaceutical groups wanting to avoid fake news sites.” The drug companies alone can invest a modest $100,000 or so “to keep their ads away from health care hoax sites.”
For the near future, NewsGuard is expanding to rating television news and signing up with teacher unions in an effort to reach the country’s 20 million schoolchildren with its “news literacy” program.
SOURCE: InPublishing April 4, 2022