A company that rates news sites says the Trump administration is strangling it
NewsGuard files lawsuit alleging censorship after Trump’s FTC barred a major ad agency from using its ratings.
NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of online news outlets, is suing President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission, alleging the agency has tried to drive it out of business because it disagrees with its assessments.
Founded in 2018 by a pair of veteran media executives, NewsGuard researches news sites and assigns them “reliability ratings” based on their journalistic standards, selling these scores to readers, tech platforms and advertisers that want to steer clear of low-quality sources. The company, which insists it is rigorously nonpartisan, has made enemies in recent years by giving low ratings to conservative outlets such as the right-wing cable news channels Newsmax and One America News.
Related stories
Related Knowledge Center: The White House vs. the press
Whether it’s the Des Moines Register’s publication of an unfavorable election poll, a routine edit of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, or the Associated Press’s decision in its authoritative stylebook to continue to use “Gulf of Mexico,” Donald Trump and the White House have used executive authority and legal reprisals in an effort to punish and suppress press coverage that runs contrary to the administration’s preferred narratives.
Democracy and politics | Signalgate | The CBS submission | Voiceless America
Related Knowledge Center: Free speech and public protest
The First Amendment is facing challenging times: Crackdowns on campus protests prompted both-sides claims of intolerance. Attempts to head off dangerous health misinformation have been characterized as violations of free speech. Donald Trump is publicly punishing news outlets that deviate from his administration’s version of events while privately suing some outlets into submission.
The White House vs. the press | Voiceless America
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.