NewsGuard, new venture to combat ‘fake news’

WASHINGTON: Two prominent American journalists announced plans Monday to launch a venture called NewsGuard which will provide online users with “reliability ratings” for media outlets. NewsGuard’s founders said they will hire dozens of experienced journalists to analyse the 7,500 news and information websites which are the “most accessed and shared” in the United States. NewsGuard will launch ahead of the November mid-term elections in the United States, founders Steven Brill, who started Court TV among other ventures, and Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said in a statement. NewsGuard will provide green, yellow and red “reliability ratings” for news sources, they said, with green being for trusted sources, yellow for those requiring caution, and red for “deliberate purveyors” of “fake news.” Brill and Crovitz said NewsGuard will provide “nutrition labels” for each of the 7,500 news sources it will review. These will be a more detailed analysis of each outlet and will explain why a publisher receives a green, yellow or red rating.