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A company that rates news sites says the Trump administration is strangling it

The Washington Post · Will Oremus · last updated

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.

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