The Twitter files revealed that the government worked behind the scenes to control what information you were allowed to see during the pandemic.
Now there is a major move to expand the government’s reach into the news business.
But this major lawsuit, might just stop the Deep State from controlling America’s news.
Website, NewsGuard, is being sued over partnership with the DOD to rate information online
Republican Hiram Johnson is credited with saying, “the first casualty, when war comes, is the truth.”
The comment was made during World War I, but its legacy lives on today.
Consortium for Independent Journalism (CIJ) is a group that helps produce and promote independent journalists around the world.
The firm filed a lawsuit today against NewsGuard, a website that rates the “trustworthiness and orthodoxy” of news sources.
The suit was filed in response to an apparent partnership between NewsGuard and the Department of Defense Cyber command.
According to the filing, CIJ claims that the company has been “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints pertaining to Russia, Syria, and Ukraine.
CIJ argues that NewsGuard is trying to censor opinions of dissent from official US military positions.
CIJ is seeking immediate actions from the courts to stop this practice.
Plaintiff is seeking $13 million payment and a permanent end to the project
The news agency claims that this is an infringement on the constitution and that the government should never work with a group “to find trustworthy sources.”
But that’s exactly what they allege NewsGuard is doing.
The group says that “the First Amendment rights of all American media are threatened by this arrangement” and it also amounts to “defamation.”
“When media groups are condemned by the government as ‘anti-US’ and are accused of publishing ‘false content’ because they disagree with US policies, the result is self-censorship and a destruction of the public debate intended by the First Amendment,” the attorney for CIJ told TImcast News.
In the complaint, CIJ mentions that we’ve come to a point in time where many are losing trust in establishment sources and there is concern that the government is “using private entities . . . as proxies to suppress free speech” online.
The group is seeking to end the relationship between NewsGuard and the federal government permanently and payment for more than $13 million in damages done to their company.
NewsGuard responded to the court filing, mostly confirming the allegations.
Company claims they aren’t suppressing content, just helping platforms decide what to promote
While the fact-checking website claimed that they have “never worked with any government to suppress, censor, or block any content,” they did admit that they helped to “identify and track false narratives…”
The group says that this is to stop the flow of misinformation from “state-sponsored media sources” in countries like Iran, China, and Russia.
But NewsGuard General Manager Matt Skibinski says they have never worked as a proxy to suppress free speech online.
Rather, they simply provide an “alternative to the black-box algorithms that decide which content is promoted and which is not . . .”
In other words, they are providing a ratings system to search engines and social media platforms to decide which information should be shown to the public.
This is a disturbing trend in the Big Tech space, and this lawsuit could have enormous ramifications.
Informed American will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
