Tom Lenard
Hello and welcome back to the Technology Policy Institute’s Podcast Two Think Minimum. It’s Friday, January 17th 2025. I’m Tom Lenard, President Emeritus, Senior Fellow at TPI and I’m joined by my colleague, Scott Wallsten, TPI’s President and Senior Fellow, and Senior Fellow, Sarah Oh Lam. We’re delighted to have as our guest today, Gordon Crovitz, who’s one of the founders and Co-CEO’s of NewsGuard. NewsGuard provides reliability ratings for news and information websites— very much a hot topic these days. Gordon is a veteran journalist and news entrepreneur. He was the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and a columnist for the paper for many years. So welcome to you, Gordon.
Gordon Crovitz
Tom. Nice to be with you. Thank you.
Tom Lenard
So NewsGuard has become controversial. Recently, having been accused by Conservatives, and notably the incoming FCC Chairman of having a left wing bias and facilitating a quote, “censorship cartel.” Obviously, this is not the first time government officials have criticized or attempted to influence the media, but it does raise the question of how appropriate or even legal that is in the American system. It also raises the whole issue of fact checking which has come under increasing scrutiny. Facebook’s recent decision to drop the practice is the most recent example. So all of this is in the general context of widespread distrust of all sorts of media and information sources. So we’ve got a lot of information, a lot of issues to discuss. But first, perhaps you can help us understand what it is that NewsGuard does, and how it does it.
Gordon Crovitz
Appreciate that, and I really do appreciate the chance to explain to your listeners what it is exactly that NewsGuard does, and importantly, what it is we don’t do. We started NewsGuard, and my co-CEO is Steve Brill, who, like me, is a gray haired journalist. Steve started American lawyer and Court TV and also the CLEAR Registered Traveler Program. In 2018, it was obvious to us that as more and more people were getting their news from indirect sources like Facebook, Twitter as it was, and other social media platforms, that it had become virtually impossible for regular news consumers to have any idea of the reliability of the sources they were seeing in their, say, Facebook newsfeed. For those of us of a certain age, you can recall an era where you’d go to a newsstand, and you’d say “I like a copy of the Philadelphia Enquirer. I don’t want National Enquirer.” For your younger readers, National Enquirer was at one time a very well-known print gossip rag, that is still published, but it’s quite different from the Philadelphia Inquirer, a traditional metropolitan newspaper.
So we set out to do a very simple journalistic thing, which is we wanted to see if we could provide more information for news consumers, as they were trying to decide which sources and which claims were generally trustworthy and which ones were generally not. We identified 9 criteria of basic journalistic practice. Does a website have a corrections policy? Does it disclose its ownership, for example. And we’ve now rated 35,000 sources of all kinds. There are websites that get high scores from us, and there are websites that get low scores from us. We have more conservative websites that get generally trustworthy ratings than we have liberal ones, making it surprising to me that we’re accused of being liberal. It’s especially surprising to me, by the way, as a lifelong conservative, I find it a slander to be called liberal. But, it is true that some websites object to their rating. We have a long back and forth in our rating, for example, with the editor of RT, Russia Today—the Vladimir Putin funded disinformation site from Moscow— where she tries to make the claim that her site is more trustworthy than it is. Our process is very journalistic. We identified 9 apolitical criteria. We reach out to publishers iIf it looks like they’re going to fail any of our 9 criteria. We quote them in our rating and give them a chance to comment. More than 20% of the websites that we’ve rated have engaged with our analysts and have taken some steps to improve their rating typically with more disclosure.
But there are sites, in particular these days Newsmax, that get a very low rating from us. It’s one of the sites that’s had to settle a lawsuit with a voting system company, for example. Instead of doing what thousands of other websites have done, which is to take a look at their practices and see if they can’t improve them, they’ve done what I consider the very un-American thing of lobbying Government officials and legislators to try to censor our work rather than trying to improve their own. And as a result there are Tom, as you said, government officials who have attacked us. Brendan Carr, the new chairman of the FCC, in his letter to several technology companies actually cited Newsmax as an authority on NewsGuard, despite the fact that Newsmax has published a long list of false claims about how we operate.
For example, Newsmax has falsely claimed that we said that the Hunter Biden Laptop couldn’t have been legitimate. The opposite is true. The only publishers we criticized were ones that declared as a factual matter, that it was Russian disinformation. Similarly, Newsmax has falsely claimed that we objected to people who said that Covid could have been from a lab leak. We have always said that Covid could have come from a lab leak. There are others who have made mistakes on both of those counts, both the laptop and Covid, including social media platforms.
So when we started NewsGuard, we were trying to do essentially 3 things: inform consumers so they can make better choices, and as a public policy matter, try to create a situation where we don’t have to rely on Government censorship of the internet or rely on Silicon Valley companies’ secretive, unaccountable ratings of news sites. As former publishers, Steve and I knew that no publisher has any idea what his rating is. News sites get trust ratings from Facebook, Google/YouTube, and Twitter, now X. Every publisher has such a secret score from the social media platforms continuing to today. So while there are complaints about our ratings, which are public and fully transparent, at least publishers know what ratings they get from NewsGuard and how they can improve the ratings.
Newsmax has no idea what its rating is from the social media platforms. Historically, conservative media have been skeptical of Silicon Valley platforms. We’ve done research that says consumers generally are quite skeptical of technology companies trying to assess the trustworthiness of sites or of claims. I think there’s a lot of reason to be skeptical of technology companies. They’ve turned out not to be very good judges of news topics. For example, for many years RT alternated with CNN as the most popular source of news on YouTube. YouTube didn’t explain to its viewers what RT was until relatively recently, and it allowed RT to hijack our open internet and to spread Russian disinformation with no protection by YouTube of its users. So the problem we set out to try to address was how do we get transparent, accountable, apolitical information into the hands of news consumers in an era when the social media platforms are increasingly the main source of news and when it continues to this day to be impossible for news consumers to have any idea of the nature of the sources feeding them the news.
Tom Lenard
So do you? I mean, in addition to rating like the initial sort, do you rate the sites like YouTube or Facebook.
Gordon Crovitz
We describe the nature of the platforms, but if they’re platforms that are carrying other people’s content, we don’t rate them the same way. We’re really trying to give news consumers information about whether it says it’s coming from the Philadelphia Inquirer or whether it’s coming from National Enquirer.
Scott Wallsten
Think the response by some policymakers like you mentioned Brendan Carr to the platform is kind of indicative of the times that we live in. And one of the reasons that you did this, or do you think there would have been similar reactions in earlier time periods, too.
Gordon Crovitz
I think government officials would always love to censor if they’re given half a chance. There’s a long history of that. We may see more of it. I find it particularly irritating that we’re being accused of being censors, somehow. I do not know how a mid-sized private company can be a censor. In the case of Brendan Carr’s letter, by the way, to the 4 technology companies, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Apple, essentially saying, you know, it’d be a shame if you lost your Section 230 immunity by working with NewsGuard. You could lose that immunity. And the fact is, as Meta and Google both made public, those two companies have never worked with us. And the reason, by the way, that they haven’t worked with us is that they have no commercial interest in alerting their users to the misinformation, disinformation, and unreliable sources that pollute their platforms.
So I think you know, really, what’s going on is that websites like Newsmax are egging on Government officials, providing them with false information. They don’t like to be rated. It would be as if, to use an analogy, it would be as if a microwave company that got a low rating from Consumer Reports magazine attacked Consumer Reports as being biased against that microwave. It’s absurd. And that’s the position that we’re in. But to have government officials citing unreliable sources that have made provably false claims about us, to cite them as authorities and to accuse us of being a cartel is, I think, quite surprising. And Scott, to your question, Government officials will censor if they can. They will grab power if they can. And I’m just surprised to see people who are calling themselves Republicans and conservatives like me think that it’s appropriate for Government officials to intervene in the market, to want to try to undermine a private market solution to this problem and to call for government censorship of journalism. Absurd.
Sarah Oh Lam
Can you speak to the demand from advertisers and brands for brand safety? To have a metric for that? Seems like yes, there’s a speech and political component. But then there’s kind of a more practical component of your business. What are they looking for? Why do they want brand safety?
Gordon Crovitz
You’re absolutely right, and that’s the core of the complaint from news sites like Newsmax. Newsmax gets a score about 50 points below Fox News from us. That means that they’re not on an inclusion list of the kind that we license to advertisers. And the fundamental problem is that these days, the bulk of advertising is being purchased programmatically. What that means is, it’s not like the old days where, when I was publisher of the Wall Street Journal, I’d go to an advertiser, and I’d say, “Gee, you really ought to advertise more in the Journal and less in the New York Times, or less in Business Week.” That’s not how it’s done anymore. The way it’s now done is brands will say, “I’m looking for this kind of target audience. Find them for me anywhere on the internet for the cheapest price.”
The average programmatic ad campaign these days runs on 40,000 websites. The brands have no idea where their ads are running. One year Warren Buffett was the biggest advertiser on Russian disinformation because his company, Geico, the insurance company, was the biggest advertiser on Sputnik News. Warren Buffett and Geico never intended to support Vladimir Putin’s disinformation. And there are hundreds and hundreds of blue chip companies still advertising on Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation unwittingly, unintentionally. It’s a multi-billion dollar problem and one of the solutions that we offer to advertisers is an inclusion list. There are thousands of different news sites of all kinds–digital-only, legacy, conservative, liberal, somewhere down the middle. Brands do not want to advertise on Russian disinformation or crazy conspiracy sites or crazy healthcare hoax sites. And there’s a real demand in the market for that protection from advertisers.
There’s also a real need by news publishers. In 1980, the percent of advertising that ran in newspapers and magazines was 60%. The percent of advertising now running on news websites is 1.28%–from 60% to 1.28%. Many, many advertisers these days have told their agencies, “Just keep me off news altogether. It’s too risky. I don’t want to be near it,” and they’re essentially boycotting even the highest quality news websites. And that’s taking money away from the news industry at a time when it desperately needs revenue. And one of our missions is to try to give brands the courage to return to advertising on news sites by giving them a list of thousands of sites that are high quality, that won’t embarrass them that are brand safe. And there are advertisers who have recognized the problem and are now supporting journalism in a way that they did not before. And they’re finding it brand safe and ironically, if that’s the word, they’re even finding it more efficient because news websites don’t charge that much for advertising these days because the demand is so low. So that is the reason that we were attacked by news sites like Newsmax. They like to get more of that advertising. They can get more of that advertising If they improve their journalistic practices and get a high enough score to be on our inclusion list, with many, many other conservative sites that are getting advertising they never would have gotten otherwise.
But that is the problem that’s driving so much of this issue. I don’t know if the government regulators really understand that–honestly, even people in the programmatic advertising market don’t fully understand it. It’s a very opaque market. The idea that the average ad campaign is on 40,000 websites gives you an idea of just how difficult it is for brands to have any idea where their ads are running. And we’re not the biggest provider in this industry. There are multi-billion dollar companies with names like IAS and Double Verify that are much larger, that are trying to provide similar services. So when we’re attacked by regulators it’s really surprising to us, because this is a multibillion dollar business aimed at
trying to help brands by giving them more information to protect themselves against the dangers of programmatic advertising.
Tom Lenard
So you obviously, you have lots of competition from what you’re saying these, those companies that you just mentioned today also give Newsmax a low rating?
Gordon Crovitz
So Tom, far as I know, NewsGuard is the only company in this entire industry that is transparent about the ratings. We do know that some of those companies work with another entity, called Global Disinformation Index GDI, which is a UK based nonprofit. That is, oh, how do I put it? Those ratings belie a certain partisanship. They issued their 10 most dangerous websites to advertise on and they were all conservative sites.
So you know, because our ratings are apolitical, we’ve got conservative sites that do very well. We’ve got conservative sites that score higher than their liberal equivalents. Fox News gets a higher NewsGuard score than MSNBC. The Washington Examiner gets a higher score than the New York Times. But there are entities that are left wing like GDI, that do work with some of these much larger ad tech companies. But the reason we’re singled out, I think, is because we’re the only ones whose ratings are transparent and known to publishers.
Tom Lenard
Has it had an impact on your business?
Gordon Crovitz
You know I want to knock on wood, if wood were available on a podcast, but you know, really, not so far. The advertisers that work with us, the ad tech companies that work with us, others, they know that there’s a dire problem that we’re helping them solve. It’s a private market, private sector problem with a private sector solution. And government officials making false claims about us is not going to solve their problem for them.
Scott Wallsten
How do you deal with the uncertainty inherent in what’s right and what’s wrong? And do you have feedback mechanisms to adjust or calibrate your methodologies. You know, how do you decide whether you’re doing whether you’re finding ratings, where they’re coming up with ratings that seem right in some world.
Gordon Crovitz
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So we’ve been at this now since 2018. We were lucky that the 9 criteria that we selected at the beginning seemed to have really held up and hold up in all markets. We operate in 9 markets around the world, and applying the same journalistic standards, whether it’s in Germany or Italy, or the UK or Ukraine, or here in the US. All of our work is transparent, so that means that if we get something wrong, we hear about it. We reach out to publishers before we publish anything. We send publishers their ratings whenever they’re written or updated. Publishers are not reluctant if we’ve made an error to tell us so, and we correct them, and we indicate mistakes when we’ve made them, and we have made them.
But I think our operating principle of radical transparency has been our best defense and our best insurance that we’re applying our criteria equally to everybody, and that we’re you know, doing as good a job as we can. We expected we would have more competition, honestly, at this point than we have. We are the apolitical provider. I thought by now that there might be a right wing provider and a left wing provider. Maybe that will happen. I think it’d be great if there were more that operated more the way we do. Which is to say, transparently. And fewer of them operating the way the social media platforms do, and the biggest ad tech companies do, and some of the ad agencies do, of secretly rating news sites, which I think is really a malign way to operate.
Tom Lenard
And you might just to kind of follow up on what Scott was talking about, what you mentioned earlier? Maybe when we were before— before the podcast started, that you don’t consider yourselves in the fact checking business, as you know, as I guess, it’s commonly understood. And you know, and you gave the example of the Covid lab leak theory. I think you also mentioned something about Hunter Biden’s laptop. So, and I obviously I don’t know this for a fact, but my general impression is that very mainstream, you know, Press, you know, New York Times, Washington Post. Probably for a long time. We’re saying, you know, the lab leak theory is preposterous or don’t believe it. And probably were saying for a long time, you know, that Hunter Biden’s laptop was somehow not real. So how do— How have you treated that?
Gordon Crovitz
Yeah, one of our criteria is, does this website repeatedly publish false content that drives us to look at particular claims, And we did indicate, when a website made the false claim, for example, that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, that was evidence that they might well fail that criterion. Similarly, websites that denied that Covid could have been a lab leak and had to have been from a wet market, for example, we ding those sites as well.
We do have a separate database just to be clear, which we call our “misinformation fingerprints,” and that is a catalog of the most significant, provably false claims circulating on the internet, and that arose out of some demand from defense and intelligence entities that were particularly concerned about Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation. We have analysts with domain expertise in Russia, China, and Iran. We monitor in real time new claims from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation sources and we’re often the first to spot a new false claim. And we’ve identified, for example, a network of 170 websites with names like DC Weekly, Boston Times, made to look like local websites that are actually operated from Moscow that are part of a Russian disinformation operation that are run by an American fugitive based in Moscow, John Mark Dougan, who’s a very prolific spreader of false claims. And that misinformation fingerprints database identifies false claims, and again, as I say, a real emphasis on what the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians are up to, which I have to say is a lot. And you know the public debate in Washington right now, as you correctly identified, Tom, has to do with these claims that they’re somehow censorship by us or by entities that are unclear.
In the meantime, the US Government and the social media platforms are unilaterally disarming against Russian, Chinese, and Iranian hostile information operations, abusing the open Internet, spreading false claims on Meta, spreading false claims on X, on TikTok, on every social media platform. This is one of the problems that we are trying to address. We’re trying to give people the information that they need about provably false claims, about how foreign disinformation is traveling, the provenance of the foreign of the claims. We have licensees among the NATO Allies, for example, and we provide data to the Ukrainians and others about Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation. To me, that’s the debate that we should be having in Washington. Which is, are we going to take steps to protect Americans? And we’ve hoped that the social media platforms would do more than they’ve been willing to do or other steps to try to inform Americans when they’re being targeted by hostile information operations, which is happening every day.
Tom Lenard
I mean one of one of the. I guess I don’t know how this fits into your into your rating system. But I guess my impression of that, one of the main reasons some news seems biased, it’s not necessarily that they are making demonstrably false printing or conveying demonstrably false pieces of information. It’s just what they, what they stress and what they omit, what they you know, so that if you read, you know. I don’t know if you I mean, I personally find I get more accurate news from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page than I get from most news sites, you know, so called news sections. And a lot of it is just is what they cover, what they stress, what they repeat over and over again. That may be true, and what they fail to cover, you know. Does that? Do you have a way of putting that into, or do you, would you like to put that into your into your criteria?
Gordon Crovitz
Well, don’t tell my critics, but I look to the Wall Street Journal editorial page as my lodestar, having spent many years working there. And you’re absolutely right, Tom. I think there’s been a trend toward more opinionated news. And one of the criteria that we use for news websites is, does this site effectively distinguish between news and opinion? Does it present opinion under a news rubric? Are news stories filled with editorializing kind of language of the kind that is perfectly appropriate in opinion sections or opinion articles or opinion websites? And does a website informs consumers that it is a left wing website or a right wing website. Then, from our point of view, that gives them, you know, they’re in a different category than if they don’t make any disclosure about having a point of view and if they claim not to have a point of view. But, Tom. As you say, you know,if 90% of the coverage tilts one way or the other they might not pass our criterion relating to separating news and opinion. And I do think more generally there are many causes for the decline of trust in news.
One of them, of course, is that when people go to the places where they now get their news, which is social media, they see a lot of malarkey, to use a recent President’s term. They see a lot of false information. They know it’s false and crazy. And yet that media looks the same to them on social media as you know, the AP, Reuters or The Wall Street Journal. So there are an increasing number of news websites that you’ll notice are marketing themselves as being trustworthy, being independent, fair, accountable. And I think that’s a great trend. I hope it continues.
But you’re absolutely right. Not every new site that historically aimed to be down the middle is meeting that test these days, and that’s reducing trust in media generally.
Scott Wallsten
So NewsGuard is primarily a subscription-based platform. So how do you balance the goal of having widespread understanding of how much you can trust a source with the need to have an income stream to run, the, to run the platform?
Gordon Crovitz
Yeah, it, the bulk of our revenue is from enterprises, from companies that are trying to improve their trustworthiness by making sure that they’re not associated with misinformation. So we’re really a B2B company in that regard. We do license a browser extension, which gives instant access to ratings in social media feeds or in search results. It’s available on all the browsers. It’s US $4.95 a month. That’s a small part of our business, but you know we’re grateful for that revenue, and we’re glad that many people find it of value. We do as part of our mission, make our browser extension available for free to certain entities, like libraries and some schools, and that sort of thing as part of our effort to make our ratings as available as possible.
Tom Lenard
So an interesting question, at least to me. I’m not a lawyer, we only have one. Well, you’re a lawyer, aren’t you, Gordon?
Gordon Crovitz
I pay my bar dues. Yes, Tom.
Tom Lenard
So when do you think government interference, or you know, government criticism goes from just being inappropriate to being illegal?
Gordon Crovitz
Well, let’s just let’s discuss the irony: conservatives complained about Biden administration officials strong arming the social media companies, and I have some empathy with that complaint to the degree the government officials were secretly jawboning social media platforms, and especially to the degree that they were jawboning the platforms to take down content or shadow ban accurate information that the government officials found inconvenient. That’s an outrage, and to me a form of censorship. So I have empathy with that complaint. But we now have Government officials like we described Brendan Carr earlier from the FCC, doing some version of the same thing, jawboning social media companies and others to do something that he wants. Which is, he doesn’t want Newsmax to have a low rating. That’s why I earlier gave you my skeptical view that government officials, if given the chance, will censor. And to my disappointment, that turns out to be true of conservatives as well as liberals.
But you know we have a First Amendment, and, more importantly, Americans know that they depend on reliable information, and are frustrated by the fact that the internet and social media in particular have made it really difficult to know what information is trustworthy and what is not. Democracies, as the founders put it, depend on a well-informed citizenry. And we live in an era when there is a lot of information available to people, but when even news junkies have a hard time distinguishing a reliable brand from an unreliable brand or how to assess whether a claim they’ve just heard in the news is really true or not.
Let me give you a controversial example. I mentioned earlier Russian disinformation, and John Mark Dougan, who’s one of the most accomplished artists of Russian disinformation.
There have been many claims that Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is personally corrupt. John Mark Dougan and other Russian disinformation sources have claimed that Vladimir Zelensky has used Western aid to purchase Sting’s villa in Tuscany, to purchase Highgrove estate from King Charles in England, to purchase Hitler’s favorite Mercedes-Benz, to purchase an $18 millionvilla in Saint Barts, where he is, according to these false claims, building a bunker, and gave a $1million dollar shopping spree to his wife at Cartier. The list goes on and on. These false claims get millions and millions of views. Republican Chairmen of the Intelligence and other committees have said publicly that those false claims have been repeated on the floor of the Congress. In other words, Russian disinformation operatives have spread false claims often enough, colorfully enough, that people say there must be something to it. And there’s never been anything to it. It’s bald-faced lies done with enthusiasm from Moscow, because they understand that if a lie is repeated often enough, creatively enough, that even sophisticated people, like members of Congress and Senators, will be under the misapprehension that there must be some truth to it.
It turns out in this world there are claims that are true, and there are claims that are false. There are a lot of claims in between that fact checkers should probably stay away from, but when it comes to did Vladimir Zelensky buy an $18 million villa in St. Barts,and is he building a bunker, that is either true or it is false. NewsGuard analysts spend a shocking amount of time calling brokers of real estate to ask them, “Hey, is it really true that Vladimir Zelensky bought this? I see that this Russian disinformation operatives made the claim,” and then the brokers say, “Gee! It’s still for sale. I wish somebody would buy it” So there are claims that are false, and there are claims that are true, and it is a core part of journalism when it’s done well o help news consumers know which is which.
Tom Lenard
So right, so we’re getting, we’re probably past the end of our time. But I mean, how do you think? How do you foresee the episode specifically with respect to officials criticizing NewsGuard? How do you see that kind of playing out.
Gordon Crovitz
I’m highly confident that as government officials understand what we actually do, what our standards actually are, what problems we’re actually solving and as more and more people realize that misinformation harms everybody that this will not be a partisan issue. There are misinformation attacks on people on all sides. The Iranian disinformation artists are attacking Donald Trump all the time. So I’m confident that over time people will appreciate the ability to have information about sources about claims in the news. It will be a less partisan issue.
But we’re going to be left with the urgent problem which is currently being ignored in Washington and in Silicon Valley, of essentially open hunting season on the social media platforms by the Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation operators who were already very successful at spreading their false claims and divisive themes. So we have a real problem to deal with that is currently being ignored by policymakers of both parties, and that is being completely ignored by the social media platforms that never wanted to take responsibility for what’s on their platforms in the first place. So the sooner we can get off the current misunderstood debate and get to the real problem the better.
Tom Lenard
Well, I think, I think it just fits in with other agenda items so like antitrust actions against the big tech companies, people wanting to somehow wanting to modify Section 230. It’s part of a larger agenda, I think.
Gordon Crovitz
You’re certainly right, and you know, to some degree we’re sort of caught in the middle of it. But I do want to repeat to your listeners, those are all you know, good policy debates. You can agree or disagree on the antitrust issues. Those are classic policy issues. But when it comes to censorship by government officials or efforts to take away access to information to consumers, those are also fundamental values. And I’m disappointed in government officials of my party–Republicans– who have shown every interest in censoring if they can.
Tom Lenard
Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Thank you very much.
Gordon Crovitz
Thank you. Tom.
