A House committee revealed Friday that the Pentagon, other U.S. agencies, and the European Union — alongside the State Department — have funded a for-profit “fact-checking” firm, NewsGuard, which blacklisted The New York Post.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to NewsGuard demanding details about its collaboration with public agencies. This follows a lawsuit last year in which conservative outlets, labeled as more “risky” than their liberal counterparts, sued the State Department over these allegations.
NewsGuard has already briefed committee staff on its 2021 contracts with the Defense Department, including U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and the EU’s Joint Research Centre.
“The Committee seeks additional documents and communications from NewsGuard related to all past and present contracts with or grants administered by federal or foreign government entities,” Comer wrote to NewsGuard CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz.
The Oversight Committee began investigating NewsGuard in June, alleging that its government-funded efforts amounted to a “censorship campaign” aimed at discrediting and demonetizing news outlets by sharing reliability ratings with advertisers.
Comer also raised concerns about NewsGuard employees showing left-wing bias on social media, violating company policy, and flagged instances where the firm labeled content, including an academic study on COVID-19 lockdowns, as “misinformation.”
“These extensive ties between NewsGuard and various government agencies are occurring as the government rapidly expands its involvement in content moderation,” Comer wrote, citing over 570 grants and contracts between 2016 and 2023 related to combating “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
Conservative outlets like The Daily Wire and The Federalist filed a civil suit against the State Department in December 2023, alleging that taxpayer dollars were used to fund firms like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which rated them as purveyors of “disinformation.”
NewsGuard and GDI have connections with major platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, as well as advertisers such as Dell, ExxonMobil, and Nike. This has sparked concerns about how “disinformation” ratings could influence their business.
In 2022, GDI released a “Disinformation Risk Assessment” that flagged outlets like The Federalist, The Daily Wire, Newsmax, The American Conservative, and The New York Post as “high risk” for disinformation. In contrast, The New York Times and The Washington Post were ranked as “low risk.”
The debate over misinformation and disinformation has intensified following the Hunter Biden laptop controversy during the 2020 election, when the story was falsely labeled as a Russian disinformation campaign by Joe Biden.
Comer has requested that NewsGuard provide all records of its contracts, grants, or other collaborations with the Pentagon, the State Department, or other federal agencies by Nov. 8.
