Recently, I wrote a Hill column criticizing NewsGuard, a rating operation being used to warn users, advertisers, educators and funders away from media outlets based on how it views the outlets’ "credibility and transparency."

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.

I do not know whether the sudden interest in my site was prompted by my column. I have previously criticized NewsGuard as one of the most sophisticated operations being used to "white list" and "black list" sites.

My new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” details how such sites fit into a massive censorship system that one federal court called "Orwellian."

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."

Conservatives have long accused the company of targeting conservative and libertarian sites and carrying out the agenda of its co-founder Steven Brill. Conversely, many media outlets have heralded his efforts to identify disinformation sites for advertisers and agencies.

Brill and his co-founder, L. Gordon Crovitz, want their company to be the media version of the Standard & Poor's rating for financial institutions. However, unlike the S&P, which looks at financial reports, NewsGuard rates highly subjective judgments like "credibility" based on whether they publish "clearly and significantly false or egregiously misleading" information. They even offer a "Nutrition Label" for consumers of information.

Of course, what Brill considers nutritious may not be the preferred diet of many in the country. But they might not get a choice since the goal is to allow other companies and carriers to use the ratings to disfavor or censor non-nutritious sites.

The rating of sites is arguably the most effective way of silencing or marginalizing opposing views. I previously wrote about other sites supported by the Biden administration that performed a similar function, including the Global Disinformation Index........

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