As
Newsguard’s project advances, it will soon become almost impossible
to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any
technological device sold in the United States.
by
Whitney Webb
Part
5 - Why give folks a choice?
While
even a quick glance at its advisory board alone would be enough for
many Americans to decline to install Newsguard’s
browser extension on their devices, the danger of Newsguard
is the fact that it is diligently working to make the adoption of its
app involuntary. Indeed, if voluntary adoption of Newsguard’s
app were the case, there would likely be little cause for concern,
given that its website attracts barely more than 300 visits per month
and its social-media following is relatively small, with just over
2,000 Twitter followers and barely 500 Facebook likes at the time of
this article’s publication.
To
illustrate its slip-it-under-the-radar strategy, Newsguard
has gone directly to state governments to push its browser extension
onto entire state public library systems, even though its website
suggests that individual public libraries are welcome to install the
extension if they so choose. The first state to install Newsguard
on all of its public library computers across its 51 branches was the
state of Hawaii — which was the first to partner with Newsguard’s
“news literacy initiative,” just last month.
According
to local media, Newsguard “now works with library systems
representing public libraries across the country, and is also
partnering with middle schools, high schools, universities, and
educational organizations to support their news literacy efforts,”
suggesting that these Newsguard services
targeting libraries and schools are soon to become a compulsory
component of the American library and education system, despite
Newsguard’s glaring conflicts of interest with
massive multinational corporations and powerful government
power-brokers.
Notably,
Newsguard has a powerful partner that has allowed it to start
finding its way into public library and school computers throughout
the country. As part of its new “Defending Democracy” initiative,
Microsoft announced last August that it would be partnering with
Newsguard to actively market the company’s
ranking app and other services to libraries and schools throughout
the country. Microsoft’s press release regarding the partnership
states that Newsguard “will empower
voters by providing them with high-quality information about the
integrity and transparency of online news sites.”
Since
then, Microsoft has now added the Newsguard
app as a built-in feature of Microsoft Edge, its browser for iOS and
Android mobile devices, and is unlikely to stop there. Indeed, as a
recent report in favor of Microsoft’s partnership with Newsguard
noted, “we could hope that this new partnership will
allow Microsoft to add NewsGuard to Edge on Windows 10 [operating
system for computers] as well.”
Newsguard,
for its part, seems confident that its app will soon be added by
default to all mobile devices. On its website, the organization notes
that “NewsGuard will be available on mobile devices when
the digital platforms such as social media sites and search engines
or mobile operating systems add our ratings and Nutrition Labels
directly.” This shows that Newsguard
isn’t expecting its rating systems to be offered as a downloadable
application for mobile devices but something that social media sites
like Facebook, search engines like Google, and mobile device
operating systems that are dominated by Apple and Google will
“directly” integrate into nearly every smartphone and tablet sold
in the United States.
A
Boston Globe article on Newsguard from this past
October makes this plan even more clear. The Globe wrote at the time:
“Microsoft has already agreed to make NewsGuard a built-in
feature in future products, and [Newsguard co-CEO] Brill said he’s
in talks with other online titans. The goal is to have NewsGuard
running by default on our computers and phones whenever we scan the
Web for news.”
This
eventuality is made all the more likely given the fact that, in
addition to Microsoft, Newsguard is also closely connected to
Google, as Google has been a partner of the Publicis Groupe
since 2014, when the two massive companies joined Condé Nast
to create a new marketing service called La Maison that is “focused
on producing engaging content for marketers in the luxury space.”
Given Google’s power in the digital sphere as the dominant search
engine, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, and the
owner of YouTube, its partnership with Publicis means that
Newsguard’s rating system will soon see itself being
promoted by yet another of Silicon Valley’s most powerful
companies.
Furthermore,
there is an effort underway to integrate Newsguard
into social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, as
Newsguard was launched, co-CEO Brill stated that he planned to
sell the company’s ratings of news sites to Facebook and Twitter.
Last March, Brill told CNN that “We’re asking them [Facebook,
Twitter, Microsoft and Google] to pay a fraction of what they pay
their P.R. people and their lobbyists to talk about the problem.”
On
Wednesday, Gallup released a poll that will likely be used as
a major selling point to social media giants. The poll — funded by
Newsguard and the Knight Foundation, which is a top
investor in Newsguard and has recently funded a series of
Gallup polls relating to online news — seems to have been
created with the intention of manufacturing consent for the
integration of Newsguard with top social media sites.
This is
because the promoted findings from the study are as follows: “89%
of users of social media sites and 83% overall want social media
sites and search engines to integrate NewsGuard ratings and reviews
into their news feeds and search results” and “69% would
trust social media and search companies more if they took the simple
step of including NewsGuard in their products.” However, a
disclaimer at the end of the poll states that the results, which were
based on the responses of 706 people each of whom received $2 to
participate, “may not be reflective of attitudes of the broader
U.S adult population.”
With
trust at Facebook nose-diving and Facebook’s censorship of
independent media already well underway, the findings of this poll
could well be used to justify its integration into Facebook’s
platform. The connections of both Newsguard and Facebook to
the Atlantic Council make this seem a given.
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