Newsmax analyst Tom Basile hailed a groundbreaking move by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, calling it a "huge deal" in the country's fight against the "censorship industrial complex" on "Newsline" with host Bianca de la Garza.
Last week, DeSantis signed Florida's 2025-2026 state budget bill, which includes a pivotal provision aimed at curbing the influence of media monitoring and so-called "fact-checking" organizations like NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), and others.
The new law prohibits state agencies from allocating funds to any advertising or marketing agencies that rely on these media monitoring services.
The law, backed by Florida House Speaker Danny Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton, effectively blocks public money from supporting advertising groups that target conservative outlets using so-called media monitors.
Basile explained that ad agencies have used third-party and far-left organizations like NewsGuard and GDI to suppress conservative outlets by labeling them as unreliable, which in turn restricts their access to advertising revenue.
"These news rating agencies were effectively choking the finances and the revenue for a whole host of conservative media," Basile said.
By cutting off state funding to advertising agencies that partner with such groups, Florida's law aims to dismantle what Basile described as a coordinated effort to censor conservative voices.
"They can't regulate speech, so they created this scheme to do it by other means," he added, pointing to a troubling alliance between state actors, public funding, and left-leaning organizations.
"This is a pivotal win for free speech and for the many Floridians who rely on independent voices to keep them informed," said Christine Czernejewski, a spokesperson for The Independent Media Council, an organization representing more than a dozen media groups and voices, including Newsmax.
"The state has sent a clear message: Florida will not bankroll censorship disguised as oversight," Czernejewski said, applauding DeSantis, Perez, and Albritton.
De la Garza noted a parallel development at the federal level, referencing last year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which banned the Department of Defense from using Pentagon funds earmarked for recruitment campaigns through ad agencies that employ media monitoring groups like NewsGuard.
This, she suggested, reflects a growing recognition of the need to protect free speech from censorship.
The discussion also touched on another significant development: the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) recent approval of a merger between Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG), creating the world's largest advertising agency.
Basile expressed surprise the Trump administration's FTC had approved the merger with a lack of stringent oversight in the approval process.
While the FTC issued a Consent Order stating that the companies had broken laws related to advertising practices and targeting based on ideological viewpoints, it nonetheless approved the merger with no penalties or significant requirements.
The FTC Consent Order does not require either company to admit guilt, it requires no fines for the damages the violations caused to conservative media, and significantly, the FTC Order allows both companies to continue their significant DEI practices unabated.
While the Consent Order prevents the merged entity from engaging in "boycotts" or using "exclusion lists," Basile lamented that it failed to address the role of groups like NewsGuard and GDI in enabling censorship which do so by using ratings.
Basile highlighted how dangerous these organizations have been.
He cited Newsmax's track record of breaking critical stories that were initially dismissed or ignored by mainstream outlets, such as the origins of COVID-19 at the Wuhan lab, Hunter Biden's laptop, and concerns about former President Joe Biden's cognitive health.
"We were right on all of those issues and right for reporting on them," Basile asserted.
Yet, Newsmax has faced repeated criticism from left-wing groups, including NewsGuard, which rates the outlet below 20% for reliability.
Meanwhile, Basile said NewsGuard gives liberal media like The New York Times scores above 90%, despite their failure to cover these stories early on.
For profit NewsGuard was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill, a longtime Democratic activist and prolific donor who has backed dozens of liberal candidates including Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
His co-CEO of NewsGuard, Gordon Crovitz, describes himself as a Republican, but his wife is a leader in Human Rights Watch, an organization at the forefront of international efforts to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested under ICC charges.
The conversation with de la Garza underscored a broader battle over media freedom, with Basile arguing that Florida's new law and similar efforts are critical steps toward dismantling a "cabal" of state and private actors working to suppress dissenting voices.
Basile is not alone in his concerns.
Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, has been a vocal critic of NewsGuard.
Turley argues that NewsGuard's rating system, which evaluates media outlets based on subjective criteria like "credibility" and "transparency," poses a significant threat to free speech by enabling what he calls "censorship by surrogate."
By targeting the revenue streams of media sites, particularly conservative and libertarian ones, NewsGuard's low ratings can effectively marginalize or bankrupt these outlets without direct government intervention.
Turley argues that NewsGuard is part of a broader "censorship industrial complex" that indirectly suppresses free speech by influencing advertisers, educators, and funders to avoid outlets deemed unreliable.
De la Garza, however, said she expects the new DeSantis-signed Florida law could become a model for states around the nation and a significant pushback against censorship.