NewsGuard, because we need to control the news.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/RonPaulInstitut/status/1089904200811724806

 

[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...-fake-news-nanny-linked-pro-saudi-media-blitz

 

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/RonPaulInstitut/status/1089904200811724806

 

[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]

[h=2]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. [/h] 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...advises-advertisers-to-avoid-pro-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/showth...here-was-NewsGuard-now-there-is-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 shitstains.

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...partnership-between-newsguard-teachers-union/