NewsGuard

About NewsGuard

NewsGuard is a New York-based news-rating service founded by journalists Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz that provides credibility ratings for news and information websites. Launched in 2018, the company employs trained journalists as analysts to rate websites on a trust scale of 0 to 100 and to produce detailed "Nutrition Label" write-ups explaining each rating. Its ratings cover the thousands of news and information sites that account for 95 percent of online engagement across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, and Italy. The service's clients include advertisers, technology platforms, search engines, cybersecurity firms, libraries, schools, and government agencies. Its official website is newsguardtech.com.

Founding and the 2018 Launch

Longtime journalists and media entrepreneurs Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz announced NewsGuard on March 5, 2018, after raising $6 million from a group of 18 investors led by Publicis Groupe, one of the world's leading advertising holding companies. Brill, the founder of The American Lawyer, Court TV, and Brill's Content magazine and an author of two bestselling books, and Crovitz, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said they would hire dozens of trained journalists as analysts to review the 7,500 news and information websites most accessed and shared in the United States, in time for the November midterm elections. Those sites accounted for 98 percent of the news articles read and shared in the English language online in the United States. The founders framed the venture as a human-powered answer to the misinformation crisis, arguing that trained journalists applying common sense under a transparent, accountable process could succeed where algorithms had failed.

Nine Apolitical Criteria

NewsGuard's journalists rate each site using nine criteria of journalistic practice that the company describes as apolitical. The criteria examine whether a site repeatedly publishes false or egregiously misleading content, whether it gathers and presents information responsibly, whether it regularly corrects or clarifies errors, whether it handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly, whether it avoids deceptive headlines, whether it discloses ownership and financing, whether it clearly labels advertising, whether it reveals who is in charge and how to contact them, and whether it provides the names of content creators along with either contact or biographical information. Each criterion carries a weighted point value — for example, avoiding repeated publication of false content is worth 22 points, gathering and presenting information responsibly 18 points, and avoiding deceptive headlines 10 points. The weighted scores are summed into a trust score from 0 to 100.

Green and Red Ratings

Based on the weighted scoring, each site receives an overall rating of "Green," indicating the site is generally reliable, or "Red," indicating that it is not reliable. A score of 60 or above earns a Green rating, while a score below 60 earns Red. The binary rating is displayed alongside the numeric trust score and per-criterion breakdowns in a detailed "Nutrition Label" that explains the rating and provides examples of the site's editorial practices. The label concept borrows from food packaging: just as a nutrition label tells consumers what is in their food, NewsGuard's label tells users what journalistic practices lie behind the news they are reading. Users encounter the ratings through the company's browser extension, which displays an icon next to website names in search results and social feeds, and through partnerships with technology companies that surface the ratings directly.

Journalists Instead of Algorithms

A defining principle of NewsGuard is that its ratings are produced by human beings rather than automated systems. The company hires experienced, trained journalists as analysts to research and rate each site, and it publishes its criteria and methodology openly so that publishers can see exactly how they were judged and contest findings. Early newsroom hires included Joyce Purnick, a former bureau chief and editor at The New York Times, and Amy Westfeldt, an editor with 25 years at the Associated Press. The ratings process is designed to be transparent and accountable: publishers are contacted during the review process, given the opportunity to respond, and can appeal ratings, and the detailed Nutrition Labels document the evidence behind each score.

The Product Family

NewsGuard Technologies has built several products around its ratings infrastructure. The flagship NewsGuard browser extension and rating service serves consumers, libraries, schools, and platforms. HealthGuard applies the same journalist-driven rating methodology to health and medical misinformation websites. BrandGuard helps marketers and advertisers concerned about brand safety direct their programmatic advertising toward legitimate journalism and away from misinformation. The Misinformation Fingerprints catalog tracks top recurring hoaxes and false narratives across the web. Together, the products serve advertisers, advertising agencies, ad-tech companies, search engines, social media platforms, cybersecurity firms, and government agencies, each of which licenses the ratings data for different defensive and commercial purposes.

Partnerships With Platforms and Libraries

NewsGuard licenses its ratings to social media platforms and online search companies, and companies such as Microsoft make NewsGuard ratings and labels available to their users, including through the Microsoft Edge browser, to help protect them and their families from misinformation and hoaxes. In January 2020, NewsGuard announced it would become a paid, member-supported browser extension while remaining free for libraries and schools; early adopters received a discount, paying about $1.95 per month. The company has also partnered with firms such as Meltwater, the media-intelligence company, to help organizations understand and combat the spread of misinformation, and with Turnitin to provide media-literacy tools for students and teachers. Research by Gallup has found that access to information about the trustworthiness of online sources, produced by journalists with diverse backgrounds, leads to less belief in and sharing of misinformation.

International Expansion

After launching in the United States, NewsGuard expanded its coverage to news in European languages such as French and German ahead of the 2019 European Parliament election. In April 2019, the co-founders announced talks with British internet service providers to incorporate the credibility scoring system into consumer internet packages, under which users would see a warning message before visiting a misleading site without needing the extension installed, with the option to disable the feature. The company now rates the news and information websites that account for 95 percent of online engagement across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, and Italy, and in March 2023 it launched in Australia and New Zealand. As of 2025, it offers reliability scores of news sources across web, social media, and mobile platforms.

Serving Advertisers and Institutions

A significant part of NewsGuard's business is helping advertisers avoid funding misinformation. Advertisers, advertising agencies, and advertising technology companies license NewsGuard's ratings to steer their programmatic advertising spending toward legitimate journalism and away from sites that publish false or misleading content. The brand-safety pitch was central to the company's founding: lead investor Publicis Groupe's participation signaled the advertising industry's interest in tools that keep client brands from appearing alongside misinformation. Cybersecurity firms use the data to identify malicious and deceptive domains, and government agencies license the ratings and misinformation-tracking services as part of their efforts to understand and counter false narratives.

Recognition and Ongoing Debate

NewsGuard's journalist-led model has drawn both endorsement and scrutiny. Supporters point to its transparent criteria, its use of experienced journalists rather than opaque algorithms, and its accountability mechanisms, including publisher contact and appeals, as strengths that distinguish it from automated content-moderation systems. The company describes its nine criteria as apolitical and grounded in basic journalistic practice — correcting errors, disclosing financing, avoiding deceptive headlines — rather than in ideological judgments. Like other organizations in the anti-misinformation field, it operates in a contested space where questions of who judges news reliability remain subjects of public debate. The company continues to publish its methodology openly and to expand its analyst teams as it extends coverage to new countries, languages, and platforms.