Since the “Twitter Files” and congressional hearings outed NewsGuard as a player in the Censorship Complex, the media-ratings giant has been insisting it is nothing like the Global Disinformation Index, the discredited organization recently exposed for blacklisting conservative news outlets. But the two are far more alike than different.
An hour before independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government last Thursday, Taibbi released the latest installment of the “Twitter Files.” “Some NGOs, like the GEC-funded Global Disinformation Index or the DOD-funded NewsGuard, not only see content moderation but apply subjective ‘risk’ or ‘reliability’ scores to media outlets, which can result in a reduction in revenue,” he wrote, underscoring the point in his congressional testimony.
Shellenberger expanded on Taibbi’s comments, testifying: “Both the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard are U.S. government-funded entities who are working to drive advertisers’ revenue away from disfavored publications and towards the ones they favor. This is totally inappropriate.”
By Friday morning, NewsGuard had emailed Taibbi to dispute the “government-funded” label. But as I detailed Monday, NewsGuard received a $750,000 grant from the Department of Defense — which it now disputes as a “licensing fee” — to develop a “Misinformation Fingerprint” program that uses AI and “social listening tools” to target so-called “disinformation.” This is in addition to its blacklisting of certain media outlets through assigning “risk” or “reliability” scores.
While NewsGuard’s co-CEOs told The Federalist they are “sensitive to the distinction” between their organization
