NewsGuard will
rate online news brands based on nine criteria of credibility and
transparency, ostensibly to help readers judge what is true in order to
avoid fake news. It is currently focusing on U.S.-based media brands,
but plans to expand online site reviews globally
NewsGuard
received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe, a global
communications group whose clients include the drug and tobacco
industries
NewsGuard,
clearly influenced by Wall Street and indebted to big industries through
its funding, is being positioned to eliminate competition, which will
allow Big Industry to reign as the leading shaper of public opinion and
government health policies
Americans’
trust in the media is at an all-time low. According to a 2017 Survey on
Trust, Media and Democracy by the Knight Foundation, 43 percent of
Americans have a negative view of news media
Sixty-six
percent believe “most news media do not do a good job of separating fact
from opinion,” and only 44 percent believe they’ve identified a news
source that reports news objectively
Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low. According to a 2017 Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy1
by the Knight Foundation, 43 percent of Americans have a negative view
of news media compared to 33 percent reporting a positive view, while 66
percent believe “most news media do not do a good job of separating
fact from opinion.”
Seventy-three percent believe the proliferation of “fake news” on the
internet is a major problem, and only half feel confident that readers
can get to the facts by sorting through bias.
However, individual perception about what is true and what actually constitutes fake news varies. As reported by Medium,2
“A majority of Americans believe people knowingly portraying false
information as if it were true ‘always’ constitutes fake news.”
NewsGuard — The New Strategy Used to Deceive You
All of this brings me to the topic at hand, and the strategy the
media is using to restrict your access to the truth from websites like
mine, namely the latest self-appointed arbiter of trustworthiness in
online media, NewsGuard.3 According to the group’s website:4
“NewsGuard uses journalism to fight false news, misinformation
and disinformation. Our trained analysts, who are experienced
journalists, research online news brands to help readers and viewers
know which ones are trying to do legitimate journalism — and which are
not.
Our Green-Red ratings signal if a website is trying to get it
right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods
or propaganda.”
Currently, the NewsGuard “SWAT team” is only focusing on U.S.-based
media brands, but is planning on expanding “to serve the billions of
people globally who get news online.”
In other words, NewsGuard is setting itself up as the self-appointed
global arbiter of what information is “trustworthy” — based on nine
“credibility and transparency” factors — not only for information viewed
on private electronic devices, but also for information accessible in
public libraries and schools. Librarians will even provide instructions
to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal
computers, tablets and cell phones.
Once you’ve installed the NewsGuard browser plugin on your computer
or cellphone, the NewsGuard icon rating will appear on all Google and
Bing searches and on articles featured in your social media news feeds:
Green icon = sites that follow “basic standards of accuracy and accountability” based on nine criteria,5
which include full disclosure of possible conflicts of interest,
financing, and “notable ideological or political positions held by those
with significant financial interests in the site”
Red icon = sites that do not fulfill NewsGuard’s criteria for credibility and transparency
Orange icon = sites that primarily hosts user-generated content
Purple icon = satire and humor sites that mimic real news
Gray icon = as yet unrated site
These icons are meant to influence the reader, instructing them to
disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. While the
warnings may be enough to prevent someone from clicking these links, I
believe the true intent will be to bury this content entirely from
search results and social media feeds.
It is very likely Google, Facebook,
Twitter, and other platforms will use these ratings to lower the
visibility of content — making nonconformist views disappear entirely.
NewsGuard’s Own Transparency Is Wanting
Fake news is certainly a problem. But determining who should have the
final word on credibility and what is “truth” is not a simple one. Who
is going to verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers,
i.e., NewsGuard?
It was hard to believe multibillion-dollar companies would rely on the likes of Snopes
or Web of Trust to be the guardians of truth and credibility, and in
fact they didn’t. Over time, most people using the internet learned to
disregard article and website ratings dispensed by either Snopes or Web
of Trust.
But now, enter NewsGuard, which for all its promises to vet any and
all independent online media for conflicts of interest, credibility and
transparency, apparently does not expect you to put them under that same
scrutiny. On NewsGuard’s United States Securities and Exchange
Commission Form D filed March 5, 2018, there is an option for disclosing
the size of its revenue, but that box was checked, “Decline to
disclose.”6
Shouldn’t a corporation setting itself up as the judge and validator
of the transparency of others be 100 percent transparent as well?
NewsGuard also claims a Rule 506(b) exemption,7 which among its benefits allows for an unlimited amount of money to be raised from an unlimited number of accredited investors.8
Well, in doing some digging of our own, aside from internet giants Microsoft9 and Google — one of the largest monopolies in the world
— it appears NewsGuard is backed by companies that are presently
involved, or have been in the past, in advertising and marketing of
pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids. Are
we to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no
influence on NewsGuard’s ratings of individuals, organizations and
companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products?
NewsGuard and Microsoft are also partners in the Defending Democracy
Program, a program aimed at safeguarding electoral processes by working
with government.
According to Microsoft’s April, 2018, announcement,10
“The Defending Democracy Program will work with all stakeholders in
democratic countries globally” to protect campaigns from hacking,
increase transparency in political advertising, exploring technological
solutions to protect electoral processes and remediate cyber threats,
and ward against disinformation campaigns.
Overall, it appears NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at
keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream
media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competition,
which likely includes yours truly and many others who empower you with
information that helps you take control of your health.
What You Need to Know About NewsGuard Backer, Publicis Groupe
NewsGuard's $6 million startup was funded in part by the Publicis Groupe,11 the “third largest global communications group,” according to the Publicis website.12
Publicis was founded in 1926 by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, a French
entrepreneur, with the goal of improving the image of advertising and
turning it into “a real profession.” In fact, Publicis Groupe’s name is
derived in part from the French word for advertising.13
The Publicis Groupe has been manipulating what people think about
commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, this
advertising and communications firm bought or partnered with targeted
advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV,
cinema and the internet. Some of its self-described accomplishments
include:
The first press advertising appeared in 1927
In 1930, Bleustein-Blanchet pioneered the first radio advertising
In 1935 Publicis started acquiring cinemas
In 1958, after becoming heavily involved in
newspapers and expanding into partnerships with major industry names
like Colgate, he created the “industrial information” department
In 1972, he entered the technology world
In 1983, he introduced the concept of global communication driven by marketing
With revenue avenues secured, Publicis’ clients and partners built a
global presence that dominated the advertising world. Be it tobacco or
junk food, Publicis Groupe found a way to promote and strengthen big
industries. Within the Publicis Groupe are four networks serving its
clients,14 including Publicis Health,15 which boasts its clients are "some of the biggest and most exciting names in health and wellness.”
The wallpaper on the Publicis Health site shows Lilly, Abbot, Roche,
Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, Astra Zeneca, Sanofi and
Bayer, to name a few of those clients. The Publicis Health board also
consists of a power pack of high-profile individuals with Big Pharma
position backgrounds or affiliations.16,17,18,19,20,21
Leo Burnett, the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad
campaigns that made Marlboro the best-selling cigarette in the world and
led to the nicotine addiction of millions, many of whom died from
smoking, is also part of Publicis.22,23
If a company such as NewsGuard has such atrocious conflicts of
interests, they should take their own advice and be transparent about
their inverstors’ sources of income. How can you trust a group known for
promoting cigarettes, drugs and junk food?
In the 21st century, industry advertorials are looking more like
editorial writing in mainstream publications, while news stories
increasingly parrot press releases with no probing questions to balance
industry perspectives that are being presented as indisputable facts.
And, when news reporters like Sharyl Attkisson dare to tell the truth, they are bullied, threatened and/or fired to prevent damage to the bottom line.
Simultaneously, another proverbial fly in the ointment for industry
has emerged — the growth of alternative internet media, beginning in the
early 1990s. It’s easy to imagine how these independent, online news
sources posed problems for the brand marketing initiatives that Publicis
and similar mass communication corporations had worked so hard to
develop for their industry clients.
So, consider how distraught those industry giants must have grown
over time, as alternative internet media grew into a whole New Fourth
Estate, with sourced analyses and investigative reporting that reflected
what the old Fourth Estate used to do. Additionally, this alternative
internet media has become a place where news and exchange of opinions
are free, and where people all over the world can talk to each other in
real time without being controlled by advertising dollars.
These alternative online news sources attract people who want to know
more than what they see on TV or in paid subscription magazines and
newspapers — they are people who don’t take everything at face value and
who intelligently question marketing and propaganda tactics.
But, as more and more independent-thinking people gravitate toward
alternative journalism in ever-growing numbers, everything these Wall
Street corporations have built to influence mainstream media is at
stake. Again, you can imagine what they were thinking: They had to come
up with a way to stop the wide reach of these New Fourth Estate internet
sites.
Their answer was to create a policeman, an arbiter of truth and
credibility who appears upstanding and trustworthy but who, under the
radar, with a single tap on a keyboard, can “undercut” those alternative
websites, independent journalists and consumer advocates. That
policeman is NewsGuard. And better yet, when they chose a policeman,
they made sure those heading up this final arbiter of “truth” and “fake
news” came from the original Fourth State itself.
This trend of industry infiltrating the Fourth Estate — media — was
in many ways the very root and beginning of the fake news problem. So,
it’s ironic that NewsGuard, fronted by Publicis, connected to The Paley
Center, is now cashing in on the fake news trend it fostered.
Another irony is that NewsGuard's cofounders, Steven Brill and Gordon
Crovitz, have both written in the past, or supervised articles, about
Big Pharma's influence on the health care industry (Brill as an
award-winning journalist and Crovitz as publisher of the Pulitzer
Prize-winning Wall Street Journal — not to mention that The Wall Street
Journal is a business-friendly publication, anyway).27,28,29
But now, drug industry money is being used to fund the
"fact-checking" Brill and Crovitz do of websites that expose the abuse
of the people’s trust and health by the pharmaceutical industry.
Is NewsGuard Industry’s Ace Up the Sleeve?
We already have evidence that those of us providing free information
and perspective that do not conform with what industry and media giants
like Publicis want the people to think, believe and do, have been
targeted for elimination by big search engines and social media
platforms that label our information as “fake news.”
Is NewsGuard a very clever new media strategy influenced by industry
and designed to further discredit and block public access to websites
like ours? Is their real purpose a plan to squelch websites like ours
that publish referenced information questioning the safety and
effectiveness of commercial products aggressively marketed by industry,
government and mainstream media? It appears that it is.
As I already mentioned, NewsGuard was founded by two Fourth Estate veterans: Gordon Crovitz30 is an attorney and former Wall Street Journal publisher and executive vice-president of Dow Jones; Steven Brill31 is an attorney “journalist-entrepreneur” who founded The American Lawyer magazine and the Court TV cable channel.
With plans of world domination as the arbiter of the
“trustworthiness” of information published online, NewsGuard completes
industry’s ring of power. With the help of NewsGuard, Wall
Street-dominated media firms like Publicis can go on as before and
industry can keep selling products to an unsuspecting public that has no
clue they’re just pawns in the game.
While many legitimately fake news sites virtually will be eliminated
by the Google and Microsoft-backed NewsGuard rating system, many other
legitimate news sources and information-based nonprofit organizations
publishing online will also get buried by it.
The Wheel of Industry Fortune
To make sense of why NewsGuard may not be in the best interest of
truth seekers, it’s important to realize the key role of Publicis
Groupe. By methodically acquiring and partnering with media, it has kept
the wheel of industry profits going.
With the addition of the school system (Google’s domination in schools
being one example), the circle was nearly complete when the stumbling
block in the form of alternative media emerged. That's where NewsGuard
comes in — to destroy alternative media that might detract customers
from Publicis Groupe's clients — industry and their products, which
include but are not limited to vaccines, drugs and junk food.32,33
At the center of this circle is industry —from agriculture to the
drug and technology industries. The Paley Center for Media is connected
to all the major media companies, while the Fourth Estate represents the
media at large, both big and small.
The school system is an important cog in this wheel, as that’s where
indoctrination and generation of new customers begins. With NewsGuard’s
partnering with public libraries and schools, this lagging cog is now
being brought fully into the fold.
To this wheel you could add a number of other players as well, such
as the legislative branches of government, government health agencies
and governmental consumer protection agencies, the medical community,
the internet as a whole, and institutions of higher education.
But regardless of how many spokes you add, Publicis Groupe is the
organizer and therefore the anchor of this wheel of industry fortune. It
helps pave the way in various ways to allow industry to generate
revenue. As mentioned, Publicis Groupe consists of four separate but
interconnected networks that service industry clients:34
Publicis Communications, where the client’s brand image and message is skillfully and creatively crafted35
Publicis Sapient, specializing in the design of digital business platforms36
Publicis Media, where “the power of the modern media landscape” is harnessed “to drive business transformation”37
Publicis Healthcare Communications Group
Now add NewsGuard, funded by Publicis and physically headquartered in
The Paley Center. Indebted to big industry through its funding, it
appears that NewsGuard is being positioned as a “competition eradicator”
that will allow Publicis and Big Industry to maintain their undisputed
reign as shapers of public opinion about health-related issues,
including the safety of food, air and water, medical devices and
products, prescription drugs and vaccines, as well as public health policies that endorse the use of those products.
If I’m right about this, the influence of NewsGuard’s ratings of
websites could pose a serious threat to freedom of the press across the
world. With a simple check mark, this Wall Street corporation will have
the power to direct online readers to industry-approved sources of
information, and to block readers from accessing sources of information
that enable them to make fully informed decisions about how to take
control of their health.
Blowback from censorship and bias have plagued many of these
platforms for years. NewsGuard is the third party the media and social
platforms have been looking for to make nonconformist views disappear
altogether.
The age of electronic book burning is advancing quickly as corporate
elitists are losing control of the people. NewsGuard has become the
latest weapon to fortify the crumbling walls of the Wall Street castle.
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