[The audio version of this post can be found on Spotify, or the Podcast section of this blog]

I’ve got a new bogy on my radar, but the story starts with a friendly.

Jonathan Turley (the friendly) is a commentator on news programs, political opinion writer, and a legal analyst of some renown. He has worked for NBC News, CBS News, the BBC and Fox News, and frequently contributes to USA Today and The Hill. He is, in short, a respected and respectable journalist with impeccable credentials— a rare commodity these days. What’s more, the left has accused him of being a conservative and the right has accused him of being a liberal. In other words, he exhibits all the characteristics of a free-thinker.

So, it gave me pause when I came across an article on his blog indicating that he was being criticized by a media watchdog group for exhibiting right-wing bias.

Bias just isn’t his thing.

I’ll link to all the articles in question below, but the gist of the story is this: Mr. Turley wrote an article in The Hill that was critical of so-called watchdog organizations that tout themselves as the gatekeepers of truth and the arbiters of what constitutes disinformation. He points out that these groups increasingly work to squeeze “the financial life out of conservative or libertarian sites by targeting their donors and advertisers” while giving left-leaning sites who parrot the Approved Narrative™ a free pass. Clearly an effort to censor or silence voices they cannot otherwise control, they are in essence trying “deplatform” or “demonitize” these sites out of existence.

[They are] pushing a rating system as an euphemism for blacklisting. For targeted sites, NewsGuard is now the leading racketeer in that system. It makes millions of dollars by rating sites — a new and profitable enterprise with dozens of other academic and for-profit groups.

In the article, he names a number of organizations engaged in such practices, including the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which is an offshoot of the World Federation of Advertisers, which in turn is a branch of… wait for it… the World Economic Forum. He also calls-out NewsGuard.

Then things take a turn for the ominous, if not downright Orwellian:

Roughly a week later, NewsGuard came knocking at my door. My blog, Res Ipsa (jonathanturley.org), is now being reviewed and the questions sent by NewsGuard were alarming, but not surprising. …

For any site criticizing the media or the Biden administration, the most chilling words today are “I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you.” …I was first asked for information on the financial or revenue sources used to support my blog, on which I republish my opinion pieces from various newspapers and publish original blog columns. …

So, who is this NewsGuard?

First, a little background.

Bouncing somewhere between a truism and a cliché, it is said that Jews control the media. This article is not an exposé on that topic (a good one for the future though), but to put NewsGuard in proper context, it is important to at least survey the landscape. People get their news from somewhere. Let’s look at a few examples and what minority owns or controls them:

• CNN: owned by Warner Brothers; run by David Zaslav (Jew) and owned by BlackRock (Jewish), State Street (Jewish) and Vanguard
• Wikimedia: largest donors are Google (Jewish) & the Wojcicki Foundation (Anne Wojcicki- Jewish)
• E.W. Scripps: Scripps is the second largest operator of ABC affiliates, plus twelve CBS affiliates, eleven NBC affiliates, six Fox affiliates, and eight CW affiliates; President & CEO is Adam Symson (Jew), largest shareholder: BlackRock (Jewish)
• ABC News: owned by Disney; run by CEO Bob Iger (Jewish) and owned by BlackRock (Jewish), State Street (Jewish) and Vanguard
• NBC News: President Rebecca Blumstein (Jew); Owned by Comcast which is run by CEO Brian Roberts (Jewish) and owned by BlackRock (Jewish), State Street (Jewish), and Vanguard
• CBS News: owned by Paramount/Viacom; run by Chairwoman and largest shareholder Shari Redstone (Jewish). Largest institutional shareholders are… wait for it… BlackRock (Jewish), State Street (Jewish), and Vanguard
• Yahoo, Inc: owned by Apollo Global Management; Private asset manager whose former CEO was Leon Black (Jewish, ran into trouble with his Epstein connection). Current CEO is Marc Rowan (Jewish)
• USA Today (largest newspaper in the US); owned by Gannett, whose largest shareholders are the aforementioned Apollo Global Management (Jewish) and BlackRock (Jewish)
• New York Times (this one is low-hanging fruit): owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust (Jewish)

Not a comprehensive list of course, but you get the idea. If someone says that Jews control the news in this country there is at least a kernel of truth to the statement, as they own or manage a vast number news outlets. To say otherwise is simply disingenuous. In moments of veracity, even Jews admit it.

I’ve heard it argued that it is not Jews per se that own or control the media, it’s liberals. That is certainly true too, but considering that Jews make up less than 3% of the US population, 2.4% actually as of 2021, their influence and/or control of the news and entertainment industries far, and I mean FAR, outstrips their percentage of the general population. And they tend to be liberals. So both statements (Jews control the media, Liberals control the media) can be true at the same time.

But what of the platforms and outlets they don’t own or control? How can they influence those? The challenge of narrative control has become increasingly difficult with the rapid increase in social media platforms and non-traditional news sources such as blogs, podcasts, and privately-owned websites. What can be done with these outlets? Short answer: bankrupt them. Drive away their viewers and cut-off their ad-derived revenue.

This brings us back to the NewsGuard organization.

NewsGuard rates websites on criteria of ‘credibility’ and ‘transparency,’ ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of news and information. In reality, however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gate keeper with a mission to barricade unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from low-rated sites…Newsguard is attempting to provide approval or disapproval ratings on 7,500 news outlets, covering almost 100% of the news most people in the US see. (source)

In fact, NewsGuard’s own website now boasts “Our global team of journalists has rated the reliability of more than 35,000 news sources…”

Their rating system is designed to influence the advertisers and revenue sources of selected or targeted sites. For non-mainstream news sites, a negative rating and the subsequent loss of revenue could easily put them out of business. Says Turley, “That is an enormous amount of power to be wielded by any organization, let alone a for-profit enterprise started by two self-appointed monitors of media.”

Who are these “self-appointed monitors of media”? Using startup capital from Publicis Groupe (a Jewish led partner of the World Economic Forum) and Jewish Reuters executive Tom Glocer, NewsGuard was founded and is still run by Jewish CEOs’ Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz.

Sources of revenue for NewsGuard include corporate partnerships and a pay-per-month browser extension that will filter or rate news sites as you surf the web. They also generate revenue by licensing its ratings to advertisers, who use them to determine what sites are safe to advertise. In addition, Microsoft has paid NewsGuard to include their extension free-to-users as a “courtesy” in its Edge browser.

But wait, it gets worse.

NewsGuard has also partnered with the American Federation of Teachers (for a fee, of course). Under the terms of the licensing agreement: “AFT’s 1.7 million members, tens of millions of kids they teach, and their families, can now receive free, real-time “traffic light” news ratings and detailed “Nutrition Label” reviews, via a licensed copy of NewsGuard’s browser extension, whenever they search the web for news and information.” (source).

According to the Washington Times:

NewsGuard bills itself as providing “reliability ratings for news outlets,” but in practice, it discriminates against right-of-center media. The typical left-leaning outlet gets an A, but on the right, the average is a D. When students are looking for sources for papers or trying to keep up with the news, they’re pushed toward decidedly slanted outlets. Should Israel call a cease-fire with Hamas? Check. Is America systemically racist? Check. Is another government program the solution to this, that, and the other social or economic problem? Check, check, always check. That the American Federation of Teachers has embraced this tool is telling…the American Federation of Teachers isn’t the only entity using NewsGuard. More than 800 public libraries have adopted it, too.

Likewise, NewsGuard has partnered with Turnitin. “[In] a partnership that will help many million of students and teachers spot and avoid misinformation, improve their research abilities, and develop critical media literacy skills. Turnitin users now have free access to NewsGuard’s browser extension and mobile apps, enabling them to read NewsGuard’s credibility ratings… Turnitin’s products are used by over 34 million students in over 15,000 secondary and higher education institutions in 140 countries to support academic integrity, to check for text similarity, to verify authorship, and to support teachers and students in developing original thinking skills.” (source)

Of course, being such an effective tool for silencing critics and controlling information, the government had to get in on the game, providing a “grant” of $750,000 to the company for its services. Interestingly, this was routed through the Department of Defense to aid in the the company’s development of its “Misinformation Fingerprints” tool. Hmm.

True, in June 2024, the United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability launched a probe into NewsGuard, citing possible first amendment violations in regards to the “influence of NewsGuard’s business relationships and other influences on its ratings process”, and in particular the company’s partnerships with federal agencies.

But when was the last time anyone was held accountable for anything in Washington?

NewsGuard. The new bogey on the Jewdar.

Amerika Erwache!

Sources:

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/29/the-most-chilling-words-today-im-from-newsguard-and-i-am-here-to-rate-you/
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/15/elon-musk-is-right-end-the-online-censorship-racket/
https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/27/newsguard-is-selling-its-government-funded-censorship-tool-to-private-companies
https://nypost.com/2023/11/28/business/newsguard-sells-taxpayer-backed-fact-checking-tools-report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin
https://www.newsguardtech.com/press/turnitin-partners-with-newsguard/
https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-partners-newsguard-combat-misinformation-online
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/03/07/obscuring-the-jewish-problem-in-alt-media-an-example/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/may/27/newsguard-primes-children-in-public-schools-for-li
https://www.newsguardtech.com/about-newsguard/