NewsGuard, because we need to control the news.

[acptulsa]

Of course, the green could mean 'the Big Money position' and the red could mean 'the no corporate money position'.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/1088499865062174721

[Origanalist]

https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/1088499865062174721

Tweeter won't let me read that , because I'm a big meanie.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/1088857002577670145

[Brian4Liberty]

Tweeter won't let me read that , because I'm a big meanie.

You won't believe the problems I had trying to post some Matt Welsh articles related to this. My browser was blocking them because they had been reported as "attack pages". Twitter blocked posting the URLs or even the text of the warning message. Kind of ironic considering the subject.

[Origanalist]

You won't believe the problems I had trying to post some Matt Walsh articles related to this. My browser was blocking them because they had been reported as "attack pages". Twitter blocked posting the URLs or even the text of the warning message. Kind of ironic considering the subject.

I'm at Minds, won't even consider going back. It's still a ittle quirky but it's not ruled by lefty $#@!stains.

[Swordsmyth]

On Friday’s Fox & Friends, Kurt Knutsson gushed over Microsoft’s NewsGuard blacklist as “fair” and a “good idea.”

Knutsson said:

This is a filter. So Microsoft has decided, in their latest mobile browser called Edge, that they’re going to make this as part of the browser that you can just simply see a badge. … What it does is it comes in red if it’s “unreliable,” and it comes in green if it’s “reliable” or trustworthy sources.
…
The [browser] add-on is from NewsGuard Tech and its former journalists … that run it. There are actually human beings behind it, and it’s actually a good idea. When I looked pretty closely at it, it’s pretty fair. They’re giving some criticism to the left, to the right–pretty right down the middle, and they’re calling it like it is.

Watch the full segment here at the 36-minute mark.
Knutsson’s only concern is if Silicon Valley, is if Facebook grabs control of NewsGuard, but as is, with establishment types running the blacklist, he thinks it’s pretty freakin’ awesome.
Well, of course, the backstabbers at Fox News love this blacklist. Why wouldn’t they? 1) Fox News is not blacklisted and 2) Fox News’s competition at Breitbart News and other right-leaning sites are blacklisted.
And so, what we have here from Fox News is a perfect example of “I’ve got mine” or “I’m going to appease the alligator, hoping he eats me last.”
Question…
What is Fox News going to do when Microsoft and NewsGuard add Fox News to this blacklist?
Seriously, what is Fox going to do now that it is on record gushing over just how “fair” and “down the middle” NewsGuard is? In brief, what is Fox News going to say for itself when Fox is blacklisted just in time for the 2020 presidential election, which is probably what’s going to happen?
Fox News has no principles.
This is a news outlet that will rage against Silicon Valley when Silicon Valley harms Fox News.
But if a Microsoft (which I believe is part of Silicon Valley, Kurt) launches a blacklisting tool and Fox News is not blacklisted, well, then, Hell, yeah, this thing is awesome! And it hurts our competition and it might send more advertisers our way and since we have no principles, we love this thing, Hoss, and so should you!
Fox News is also misleading its viewers into believing Microsoft’s NewsGuard is “fair” and “straight down the middle” because, as Breitbart News reported, NewsGuard is blacklisting Breitbart News only for the sin of reporting stories the establishment does not want reported.
In its lengthy critique of Breitbart News, NewsGuard did not list one story — not one — that Breitbart got wrong. All the blacklisters do is whine about our opinion pieces (which are clearly marked opinion) and crybaby over our accurate reporting on things NewsGuard does not want the public to know. It is all laid out right here.
Meanwhile…
While NewsGuard is blacklisting Breitbart News for telling the truth, this very same NewsGuard is marking as “credible” proven hoaxes and news so fake they have been retracted.
You think I’m kidding? Read this.
Behold NewGuard’s mighty green checkmark informing readers that first lady Melania Trump was an illegal alien, the Russians hacked Vermont’s electric grid, and so on and so forth…



More at: https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/...ist-good-idea/

[Brian4Liberty]

NewsGuard: A Neoconservative Contrivance Which Promotes an Establishment View
Written by Philip Giraldi - Monday January 28, 2019

There’s a new thought policeman in town. He calls himself NewsGuard and he promises to restore “Trust and Accountability” to what one reads online. His website elaborates that “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.”

One might well stop reading immediately after running into “our trained analysts” with all that implies, but that would deny the greater pleasure derived from considering news-sites that have “…a hidden agenda or knowingly [publish] falsehoods or propaganda.” Excuse me, but hidden agendas, lies, and propaganda are what the mainstream media is all about, note particularly the recent feeding frenzy over the Covington school incident at the Lincoln Memorial. Catholic racist white boys vs. elderly Native American war hero was how the story was framed all over the mainstream media before it became clear that the entire chosen narrative was upside down. Only a couple of news outlets bothered to apologize when the truth became known.

NewsGuard claims to have a staff of 50 that evaluates 2,000 websites in something like real time. How exactly it does that is not clear, but The New York Times repeats company claims that “the sites it rates account for 96 percent of online news and information engagement in the US.” NewsGuard also told The Times that it intends to quadruple its vetting of sites and seeks to make its coverage “ubiquitous.”

Make no mistake, NewsGuard is a neoconservative contrivance which promotes an establishment view of what is true and what is false. Its co-founder Gordon Crovitz is an ex-editor of The Wall Street Journal, who has enthused over the project, saying that it is “a milestone in the fight to bring consumers the information they need to counter false information, misinformation and disinformation online.” Crovitz has also been associated with the leading neocon foundation The American Enterprise Institute while the NewsGuard advisory board includes Tom Ridge, who was head of the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, and Michael Hayden, who directed both the CIA and NSA. It is as government-establishment in orientation as it is possible to be.

In a sense seeking to establish “accuracy” in news reporting is nothing new as the social media, to include Facebook and Twitter, have had that objective for some time, but NewsGuard defines itself as having as its target the screening of the entire media in a politically impartial fashion, as “an information resource.” And the real danger is that it will soon be appearing on your computer or phone whether you want it there or not. It is already installed on local library computers in Hawaii and Ohio and is working with university and even high school libraries to include its software on all public computers. Worse still, NewsGuard is in partnership with Microsoft as part of the latter’s Defending Democracy Program. Microsoft currently has NewsGuard on its Edge browser and it intends to install the tool on its Microsoft 10 operating system as a built-in feature. Microsoft 10 is the standard operating system on nearly all computers sold in the United States.
...
More: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/arch...lishment-view/

[AuH20]

THEY ARE SCARED. HA HA!!!!!!! WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE WHAT'S COMING!!!! GREEN CHECKS WON'T SAVE YOU, CORPORATE PIGS!

[Brian4Liberty]

NewsGuard Packs Board with Neo Conservatives, D.C. Power Players

Newsguard, the purportedly non-partisan browser extension aimed at rating the trustworthiness of news websites, is created and backed by a founding team and advisory board packed with neoconservatives and Obama-Clinton alumni, as well the Trump-hating former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden.

Newsguard, which assigns websites a “red” or “green” rating to signal their trustworthiness, is currently installed by default for users of the Microsoft Edge browser on smartphones. A spokesman for Microsoft said the company wants to “help our customers evaluate news sources.”

What Microsoft didn’t tell its users was that the team behind Newsguard are all swamp creatures, part of the same media-political bubble brought us fake news debacles like the bogus Iraq WMD story, and “Bin Laden’s secret fortress.”

Newsguard was co-founded by journalist and author Steven Brill, and L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Crovitz has a long pedigree in neoconservative circles. As far back as the 1980s, Crovitz can be found defending neocon policy objectives, including the covert sales of arms via Iran to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, which sparked the explosive Iran-Contra scandal.

Crovitz is also a member of numerous establishment think-tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations and the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), whose other members have included Iraq war cheerleaders Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.

Newsguard’s advisory board is, if anything, even more neocon. It includes the first Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, Tom Ridge, vocal Trump critic and former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, and a former speechwriter to George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

It goes without saying that the website of the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the most vocal cheerleader for the bloody Iraq war in 2003 — waged on the basis of fake news about chemical weapons and the regime’s purported links to Al Qaeda — is given a “green” rating by Newsguard.

Completing the picture of an outpost for exiled members of the deep state, other members of the board include alumni of the Clinton and Obama administrations.

One of the top investors in Newsguard is John McCarter, a member of the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board. The Atlantic Council, a think tank made up of leading lights of America’s foreign policy establishment (including Henry Kissinger), has also been advising Facebook on tackling fake news around the world.

Shortly before the 2018 midterm elections, Facebook banned a vast number of anti-war, anti-establishment news pages. Many were harsh critics of America’s foreign policy establishment.
...
More: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/...power-players/

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/RonPaulInstitut/...04200811724806

[AuH20]

I wonder if this is a reaction to the Trump election? They are trying to head off a further radicalization of the population? My opinion is that if you aren't radical at this point, you haven't been following the narrative too well.

[Origanalist]

Tweeter won't let me read that , because I'm a big meanie.

I can read them on my pc, I installed Firefox after I was suspended I guess.

[Swordsmyth]

Reporting extensively on this topic, Breitbart's Allum Bokhari and John Nolte have catalogued NewsGuard's neocon-packed board, its promotion by Fox News and the plugin's selective and rampant bias. Now - Bokhari reports that NewsGuard is linked to a Paris-based advertising multinational that has made millions of dollars whitewashing Saudi Arabia's image following the 9/11 attacks.

So @NewsGuardRating claims it wants to restore "trust and accountability" to the media.

Meanwhile, one of its top investors owns a subsidiary that spun positive media coverage for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.

Very trustworthy!https://t.co/z2thOVvR1K
— Allum Bokhari (@LibertarianBlue) January 28, 2019

Navigate to Newsguard’s website and you’ll be greeted with a slogan that proudly proclaims “restoring trust and accountability.”
Yet do a little digging on that same website, and you’ll discover that Newsguard’s third-largest investor is Publicis Groupe, a Paris-based advertising multinational whose subsidiaries include a vast range of P.R. firms whose sole purpose is to spin the news and influence the public on behalf of corporate clients.
Among these P.R. firms is Qorvis Group, a Washington, D.C.-based outfit whose clients include Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Bahrain. The firm has represented Saudi Arabia since the aftermath of the September 11 attacks when the Sharia-run country was desperate to protect its image amidst revelations that 15 of the 19 attacking terrorists were Saudi nationals.
The Saudis were serious about too: in a seven-month period between March and September 2002, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia spent an eye-popping $14.7 millionon Qorvis’ services. -Breitbart

Qorvis was raided by the FBI in 2004 "in conjunction with an ongoing investigation," which the company said was simply a "compliance inquiry" under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Meanwhile, in 2011 over 1/3 of Qorvis's partners quit - in part due to the firm's controversial work for foreign governments according to Slate, citing a former employee.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Qorvis/MSLGroup began defending Saudi Arabia against claims that the country was soft on terrorism. The work led three founding partners to quit over discomfort in representing the Gulf nation. Two years later, the FBI searched the firm’s offices for information about its work for Saudi Arabia in connection with an investigation into compliance with foreign lobbying regulations. (No charges were filed.)
In 2011, more than a third of the firm’s partners quit. The firm’s work for foreign governments was at least partially responsible for some of the departures that year, said a former Qorvis/MSLGroup employee who did not want to be named. Saudi Arabia, the firm’s biggest foreign client, has spent $46 million in total on contracts to improve its image in the United States over the past five years. It is the top spender on representation among countries with poor human rights records. This year, it hired five firms. -Slate

And what did Qorvis do for the Saudis? According to Mother Jones, "Qorvis launched a TV campaign with ads on political talk shows featuring a procession of Saudi royals appearing alongside U.S. presidents, to highlight Riyadh as a close ally," while running TV spots in 15 US cities touting the "shared values" of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
"Saudi King Doubles Humanitarian Aid to Yemen to More Than $500 Million," read one Qorvis-placed press release.
The media blitz went beyond TV - as Saudi royals embarked on PR junkets on major media outlets while Qorvis broadcast advertisements promoting the 9/11 Commission finding that there was "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded [Al Qaeda]." Of course, said advertising failed to mention the report's conclusion that "Saudi Arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism."


According to Bokhari, Quorvis still represents Saudi Arabia as their parent company backs NewsGuard.

The P.R. campaign worked — despite former senators who served on the 9/11 commission now claiming significant links between the 9/11 attackers and Saudi Arabia, media attention (following the lead of the Bush Administration) in the aftermath of 9/11 instead shifted to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. We all know how that ended.
Qorvis continues to represent Saudi Arabia, and more recently promoted its brutal war in Yemen, which has featured numerous alleged human rights violations, including the use of cluster bombs to attack civilian locations. The Trump administration has stubbornly supported the Saudi intervention in Yemen, but bipartisan majorities in both the Senateand House have both resolved that the U.S. support lacks congressional authorization. -Breitbart

And hey, Saudi Arabia - which executed cleric Sheikh Nimr after he called for free elections, and sentenced a blogger to 1,000 lashes for writing about free speech - is on the UN's Human Rights Council, perhaps thanks tro Qorvis' PR boost.
NewsGuard co-founder Steven Brill told Breitbart that their association with Quorvis' parent company would undermine public trust in the project.
"Publicis has nothing to do with the content or operations of NewsGuard and has a small stake in the company," Brill commented. "Gordon [Crovitz] and I have the controlling interest."

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...di-media-blitz

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/RonPaulInstitut/...04200811724806

[Brian4Liberty]

I wonder if this is a reaction to the Trump election? They are trying to head off a further radicalization of the population? My opinion is that if you aren't radical at this point, you haven't been following the narrative too well.

Because of Trump, they unmasked themselves as socialists, leftists and Democrat partisans. As much as that came as no surprise to many of us, it was shock to a lot of people. Now their only recourse is to eliminate all competition. Big Brother must tighten the grip. The Ministry of Truth is here.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/1088857002577670145

They are already implementing a step I left out. They will integrate with advertising platforms and deny ad revenue to ungood outlets.

[Origanalist]

They are already implementing a step I left out. They will integrate with advertising platforms and deny ad revenue to ungood outlets.

No conspiracy here. Green check good.

[DamianTV]

And here’s a critique about a pro-surveillance state article written by the other major founder of this new rating service. He is Gordon Crovitz from The Wall Street Neoconservative Journal:

So get a news rating and get tracked? Joy. Oh, and according to Infowars this NewsGuard flags real news and promotes fake news! Well thats just great!

[Swordsmyth]

NewsGuard, the news-filtering browser extension recently partnered with Microsoft and run by neoconservatives, Obama-Clinton alumni, and other assorted Trump haters, has advised advertisers to withdraw their business from websites on its blacklist of “unreliable” news websites — a list that includes Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail.

NewsGuard’s tactic is similar the one used by far-left smear peddlers Sleeping Giants, whose mission is to spread baseless accusations of racism and white supremacy to the advertisers of pro-Trump media outlets in order to put them out of business and silence their voice. Two of the sites on NewsGuard’s list, Breitbart News and the Daily Mail, are also prominent targets of Sleeping Giants.
The effect isn’t merely to silence pro-Trump media. It also ensures advertisers don’t market their products to Trump voters, causing them to rely less and less on consumers in the heartland, and more on progressive consumers who read establishment news sources. The ultimate result: corporations cater their products and “corporate values” even more to the latter, and not at all to the former.

More at: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/...o-trump-media/

[DamianTV]

Its very sad that people put more trust in symbols and greedy companies than in their own ability to judge for themselves what is blatantly fake news. Of course, these very same people tend to fall victim to IRS scams and other idiot scams from India / Pakistan / where ever.

[AZJoe]

[Brian4Liberty]

Restoring Trust & Accountability

Related:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-ElectionGuard

[Brian4Liberty]

I'm at Minds, won't even consider going back. It's still a ittle quirky but it's not ruled by lefty $#@!stains.

Is that still a big alternative? Hard to keep up anymore.

[Origanalist]

Is that still a big alternative? Hard to keep up anymore.

I'm still there and haven't had my account suspended. Lot's of people there that wouldn't last a day at Twitter. It's not as big obviously, but why people stay at Twitter and Facebook I just don't understand.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/1265675515295399936

[shakey1]

Where is Origanalist anyway?

[Swordsmyth]

Where is Origanalist anyway?

He left because of the bans.

He has his own site but it's censored here so I can't post it.

[Brian4Liberty]

Have you ever looked at who is behind these new for-profit "fact-checking" companies?

"NewsGuard" is "advised" by one of the country's most famous liars—the man who secretly built the global mass surveillance system that, once uncovered, courts condemned as an outrageous crime.

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1448370619091935232

[Brian4Liberty]

Education, Tech Policy Leaders Ask Congress to Investigate Partnership Between NewsGuard, Teachers’ Union

A group of leaders from 19 education and tech policy institutions sent a letter on Thursday asking members of Congress to investigate a new partnership between the nation’s second largest teachers’ union and NewsGuard, a tool that provides “trust ratings” for news and information websites.

Under the partnership with the American Federation of Teachers, NewsGuard’s browser extension would be added to the computers of the union’s 1.7 million members, tens of millions of students they teach and their families.

AFT President Randi Weingarten has touted the deal, which was first announced in January, as a “game-changer for teachers and families drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty.”
...
More: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/...eachers-union/