Facebook isn’t the only Silicon Valley firm with partisan oversight of what we see: the bipartisan billionaire class and their security state have partnered with tech firms since the dawn of the internet to control the parameters of users’ thinking.
by Morgan Artyukhina
Part 8 - Guarding you from the news
In August 2018, Microsoft rolled out the NewsGuard app, which vets news outlets according to a list of highly subjective standards presented as the site’s “Nutrition Facts,” which include “gathers and presents information responsibly” and “does not repeatedly publish false content,” among some more mundane items.
The advisory board that oversees NewsGuard is a whos-who of security state figures, including Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush; Ret. General Michael Hayden, who has headed both the NSA and CIA; and Richard Stengel, a former TIME editor who served as Barack Obama’s Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. In other words, the power over determining what is true and false about U.S. foreign policy falls on central figures who helped craft it.
The advisory board that oversees NewsGuard is a whos-who of security state figures, including Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush; Ret. General Michael Hayden, who has headed both the NSA and CIA; and Richard Stengel, a former TIME editor who served as Barack Obama’s Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. In other words, the power over determining what is true and false about U.S. foreign policy falls on central figures who helped craft it.
Naturally, NewsGuard has given conservative outlet Fox News a green checkmark of authenticity and WikiLeaks a red exclamation mark advising caution because, in their words, “this website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.” This, despite the fact that NewsGuard later states that “WikiLeaks does not appear to run corrections,” something it faults the site for, “although it almost exclusively publishes primary source documents, which have never been shown to be fake.”
The third-largest investor in NewsGuard is Publicis Groupe, which also owns Qorvis Communications, a consulting firm hired by the Saudi Embassy in Washington “to shape the media coverage of Saudi Arabia” since early 2002, The Intercept reported. Qorvis has provided vital PR coverage for Riyadh’s brutal war in Yemen, about which there was an almost total blackout in the Western media until a U.S.-made bomb dropped from a Saudi plane killed dozens of school children in August 2018. The Intercept noted that in the six months following the outbreak of war, Qorvis billed the Saudi government nearly $7 million for its PR services.
The Saudi monarchy are also major investors in some of the most powerful think tanks in Washington, including the Atlantic Council, which has a seat at the table of Facebook’s anti-fake news campaign.
NewsGuard is also backed by the Knight Foundation, a group that receives funding from the Omidyar Network and Democracy Fund, both part of the agglomeration of institutions managed and supported by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
The Saudi monarchy are also major investors in some of the most powerful think tanks in Washington, including the Atlantic Council, which has a seat at the table of Facebook’s anti-fake news campaign.
NewsGuard is also backed by the Knight Foundation, a group that receives funding from the Omidyar Network and Democracy Fund, both part of the agglomeration of institutions managed and supported by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
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