In a new report, the Washington Times details watchdog group NewsGuard's close funding ties with Big Pharma as the media monitoring organization has sought to close down criticism of vaccines and COVID policies.
"I think it's a really sinister organization, and it's the enemy of good journalism everywhere," The Daily Sceptic Editor-in-Chief Toby Young told The Washington Times.
Young's publication was targeted by NewsGuard as it covered the COVID-19 pandemic, including publishing criticisms over lockdowns, mandates, and experimental vaccines.
But now Young is decrying the $6 million founding funds provided to NewsGuard in part by Publicis Groupe, which represents leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies including Pfizer, according to the Times.
NewsGuard was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill, a well-known Democrat activist and donor.
Media Research Center analysis has shown NewsGuard consistently gives conservative media low rankings while bestowing high rankings to liberal media.
The group's rankings are, in turn, used by major ad agencies to block conservative media from airing advertisements and denying them revenue.
Billionaire and X owner Elon Musk expressed this support behind Newsmax coverage of NewsGuard's bias in October, agreeing it is "not cool" for it to push a "political agenda" with its ratings.
"Yeah, it's not cool. Pushing a political agenda in the name of 'guarding' the public," Musk posted on X after he called NewsGuard a "scam" and said it should be "disbanded immediately.
When Publicis helped launch NewsGuard, Chair Maurice Levy hailed the idea.
"NewsGuard will be able to publish and license 'white lists' of news sites our clients can use to support legitimate publishers while still protecting their brand reputations," Levy said then.
Now legitimate criticism of health mandates is being squelched with the help of NewsGuard.
Dr. Joseph Mercola's natural health website was one targeted for the defunding operation when it reported COVID-19 potentially originated in a coronavirus lab in Wuhan, China.
"NewsGuard is clearly in the business of censoring the truth," Mercola wrote in a statement, according to investigative reporter Lee Fang.
"Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it's not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard's ratings of drug industry competitors."
NewsGuard has denied any conflict of interests and said donors do not have say over their ratings, according to the Times.
"If you are receiving funds from a group and supporting their editorial position, you are, ipso facto, conflicted," a Newsmax spokesperson said. "There's only one way for NewsGuard to not have a conflict, that's by Publicis not having any financial interest in their business."
Newsmax noted, while it generally supports vaccine use, NewsGuard has made an issue of its publication of minor criticisms of vaccines, including stories citing medical doctors and scientific studies.
Other organizations see NewsGuard's conflicted ratings as defamatory.
Last month Consortium News filed a lawsuit against NewsGuard and the U.S. government claiming First Amendment violations and defamation.
The publisher, Consortium for Independent Journalism, accused NewsGuard of defaming Consortium News and the government for colluding with it.
The publisher also is accusing an alliance between NewsGuard and the government — specifically the Pentagon's Cyber Command — of coercing news organizations to "alter viewpoints" that differ or dissent from policies of the United States and its allies," via a program called the "misinformation fingerprints" project.
The publisher is suing for more than $13 million in damages while also seeking a permanent injunction "declaring the joint program unconstitutional" and barring the practices of NewsGuard and the government.
When reached for comment, NewsGuard's Matt Skibinski said his organization was effectively outsourcing government censorship, since his company served as "an alternative" to official action.
But The Daily Sceptic says the "sinister" NewsGuard — through its founding dollars from Big Pharma — has effectively defunded them for merely reporting the truth on COVID-19, rating its website as "red zone" of 37.5, which warns NewsGuard readers and advertisers to "proceed with maximum caution," the Times reported.
"We've got almost no advertising in the past 12 months, close to zero, and I think that's largely as a result of NewsGuard effectively blacklisting us," Young told the Times, adding his efforts to appease the NewsGuard censors were futile.
"Had I realized at the beginning of the process that I was being given no choice — that the only way to improve our rating was to delete the articles NewsGuard disapproved of — I wouldn't have wasted so much time engaging with them. I stupidly thought NewsGuard wanted a genuine dialogue and didn't just want to censor."