House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced Thursday he would begin an investigation into the news ratings system, which aims to curb misinformation by scoring news and information sites based on their credibility, trustworthiness and financial conflicts of interest.
Comer said the investigation would focus on “NewsGuard’s impact on First Amendment protected speech and its potential to be an opaque tool in a censorship campaign.”
In a letter to NewsGuard’s CEOs, veteran news executives Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, Comer demanded documents about the company’s contracts with federal agencies, “its adherence to policies aimed at avoiding the appearance of bias” and how the company avoids conflicts of interest.
“The Commission seeks to make an independent determination as to whether NewsGuard’s interference with protected speech is in any way sponsored by federal, state, local, or foreign governments,” Comer wrote in the letter.
“The Committee is not concerned about companies providing data-based analysis to other companies and customers in order to protect their brands. Rather, we are concerned about government agencies’ potential involvement in interfering with freedom of expression. Truth and transparency regarding the purpose and origins of research, and management of conflicts of interest that may affect the public interest, are also important,” Comer added in the letter.
NewsGuard is a web extension that rates the credibility of news sources like a nutrition label: The scores are calculated by a team of “expert journalists” who rate publishers on a scale of 0 to 100 based on “non-political criteria for journalistic practice.” Website.
Criteria include whether a site repeatedly publishes “false or materially misleading content,” whether it presents information “responsibly,” whether it has “effective practices for correcting errors,” and whether it distinguishes between opinion and news. Other criteria include avoiding misleading headlines, disclosing ownership and funding, and disclosing potential conflicts of interest.
“I look forward to clearing up the committee’s misunderstandings about our work for the Department of Defense,” Crovitz said in a statement to The Hill. “Our work for the Department of Defense involves exclusively hostile disinformation campaigns in coordination with the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments targeting Americans and our allies.”
Crovitz, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, also praised NewsGuard as “the only apolitical service” that rates news organizations, saying “the others are either digital platforms running secret reviews or left-wing partisan advocacy groups.”
He noted that the rating system gave right-wing and left-wing media outlets positive and negative ratings, respectively.
“In NewsGuard’s non-political ratings system, many conservative media outlets rank higher than similar left-leaning brands. The Daily Caller ranks higher than the Daily Beast, the Daily Wire ranks higher than the Daily Kos, Fox News ranks higher than MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal ranks higher than the New York Times,” he wrote.
