Attacking The Watchdog: How Media Rating Site NewsGuard Ended Up As A Target For GOP Lawmakers And Regulators

deadline.com:

As Donald Trump targets news outlets for new lawsuits, his choices to lead key regulatory agencies have a media watchdog in their sights.

NewsGuard, a media reliability rating service launched in 2018, has been the source of claims made by Brendan Carr, incoming chair of the FCC, and Andrew Ferguson, incoming chair of the FTC, as well as Capitol Hill figures such as House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Their claim: NewsGuard is out to “blacklist conservative news sources,” as Johnson put it in a statement last week. But NewsGuard —along with a host of press freedom advocates — argue that not only are the attacks misguided, but they are, ironically enough, the very type of government pressure that threatens to chill speech protected by the First Amendment. “The Constitution protects the expression of groups like NewsGuard, which simply provide opinions on the credibility of content and information sources that other services may choose to adopt or ignore at their discretion,” Ari Cohn, lead counsel on tech policy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, recently wrote.

NewsGuard was launched in 2018 by co-CEOs Steven Brill, founder of The American Lawyer and Court TV, and Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal.