NewsGuard has wielded its censorship efforts like it was a Biden administration apparatchik.
NewsGuard is a censorship outfit which works with Big Tech firms to cut off access and ad revenue to conservative, libertarian and other right-of-center media outlets. Though NewsGuard presented itself as independent and nonpartisan, the reality is that for years the for-profit corporation maintained a highly lucrative partnership with the Biden administration to further the left’s agenda.
President Joe Biden’s National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) of the Defense Intelligence Unit (DIU) paid NewsGuard to provide “nutrition labels” for news sources. As the Media Research Center has demonstrated repeatedly, NewsGuard’s ratings system downgrades right-leaning sources while amplifying left-leaning sources. NSIN also paid NewsGuard to develop a catalog of “Misinformation Fingerprints,” or trigger words and phrases to be censored.
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and the Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER) then assisted NewsGuard in further refining the censorship methodologies created with NSIN on the field. Together, they worked to craft a database with a “unique identifier” for each “narrative” to be censored.
The State and Defense departments’ work with NewsGuard began in 2020 but stretched into the Biden administration. Both the DIU and ARCYBER retained the same commanders for the duration of the project, overseeing the censorship endeavor during two separate presidential administrations.
Also in 2021, the United States Air Force (USAF)’s Department of Small Business gave left-wing censorship outfit NewsGuard a nearly $750,000 grant to keep working on more “misinformation fingerprints.” Unlike most of the USAF, which serves to protect America militarily in a 21st -century world, the Department of Small Business’s purpose is to funnel extra money to private firms (such as weapons manufacturers) which are tangentially connected to the military-industrial complex.
Concurrently with the Defense Department’s gifts, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funnelled $545,750 to NewsGuard. Spun off from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NED is a congressionally-chartered organization that is largely funded by congressional appropriations.
After extensive reporting from the Washington Examiner and the MRC highlighting NewsGuard’s misconduct, the NED pledged to no longer fund a similar censorship outfit so as “to avoid the perception that NED is engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly,” according to ADN America. Shortly afterwards, it was discovered that at the time of its announcement, the NED had already awarded an additional grant to NewsGuard. It did nothing to prevent that additional money — $315,750 — from further censoring American speech.
After outcry over that choice, the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor (DHRL) gave the NED “special authorization” not to disclose its grants anymore, according to Foundation For Freedom Online. This means that congressional money can be funnelled to censorship in secret. It should be noted that NED Expert Scott Carpenter is simultaneously Managing Director for Google’s censorship spin-off, Jigsaw.
This type of deception regarding NewsGuard was not abnormal for the State Department. When called to testify to Congress over unrelated censorship his agency conducted, then-GEC Principal Deputy Coordinator Daniel Kimmage insisted that the GEC did not assist in the censorship of American news sources or do “any work” evaluating the credibility of American media. However, NewsGuard’s own statement touting its partnership with the GEC explained how it provided the State Department ratings for “news and information websites in the U.S.” and would “prebunk” sources “across the U.S.” that were “flagged as publishing misinformation,” regardless of their country of origin.
NewsGuard’s website states: “NewsGuard’s team believes in transparency and accountability, so in addition to our team, all of our investors are disclosed prominently on our website.” Its investors’ page claims: “NewsGuard’s revenue comes from Internet Service Providers, browsers, search engines, social platforms, education providers, hospital systems, advertising agencies, brand safety providers, researchers, and others paying to use NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels and associated data.”
Nowhere on the page does it make any mention of the millions it received from the Biden administration.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that they investigate NewsGuard’s ties to the government. If you have been censored, contact us at the CensorTrack contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
