NewsGuard Being Deployed Against Conservative Sites, Says Former Ambassador

(NewsReady.com) – NewsGuard is a rating system that lets readers know how trustworthy a news site is. The idea is to combat mis- and disinformation in order to create a more informed country. Not everyone agrees the company has the best interests of Americans in mind.

Richard “Ric” Grenell served as former President Donald Trump’s acting director of National Intelligence in 2020. Prior to that, he was the US ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020. He also served in George W. Bush’s administration as a US State Department spokesperson to the United Nations. In other words, he has a lot of experience.

Recently, Grenell spoke to Newsmax about recent reports that NewsGuard won a Pentagon contract in 2021. He said the company was “trying to be referees,” but instead of flagging actual disinformation, he believes it’s “calling out dissenting information.” He pointed out that the behavior is reminiscent of how “regimes control the narrative” and the media.

"I see what's happening with NewsGuard: They're trying to be the referees, and instead of really calling out misinformation, which I think the State Department could do, they're calling out dissenting information," Ric Grenell told NEWSMAX's "The Count." https://t.co/mb2UFCAdxu

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) March 12, 2023

Grenell took it a step further, saying he believes NewsGuard is a “far-left organization taking taxpayer dollars” and manipulating the rating system to control the media and Big Tech. He told Newsmax that he thinks they are trying to “push out conservative media” by calling Republican news sources “disinformation machines” when they are just offering differing opinions that go against the mainstream media narrative.

NewsGuard was part of a Twitter Files dump recently. Matt Taibbi posted a series of tweets revealing the company received almost $750,000 from the Department of Defense in 2021. The journalist claimed non-governmental organizations don’t just “seek content moderation” but apply ratings that “can result in reduction in revenue,” hurting Conservatives financially.

Taibbi, who received the files from Elon Musk, accused NewsGuard of censoring or slanting information from Conservatives and others.

25. Some NGOs, like the GEC-funded Global Disinformation Index or the DOD-funded Newsguard, not only seek content moderation but apply subjective “risk” or “reliability” scores to media outlets, which can result in reduction in revenue. Do we want government in this role? pic.twitter.com/s9tobM9rf8

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 9, 2023