America | Censorship
Microsoſt Disavows Leſt-Wing NewsGuard
M F
Tech giant ends funding after pressure from Sen. Ted Cruz. BY CHARLIE MCCARTHY
icrosoft has dis- avowed its affiliation with NewsGuard after Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas,
slammed the Big Tech company for funding a censorship tool created by the left-wing media monitor. In December, Cruz fired off a
strongly worded letter to CEO Satya Nadella demanding to know about
Top NewsGuard Adviser Stripped of Security Clearance
BY MARK SWANSON
ormer CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, who is on the advisory board of NewsGuard, had his national security clearance revoked by President Donald Trump. In an executive order on Jan. 20,
the day he was inaugurated, Trump cited election interference in stripping Hayden and 49 other former intelligence oficials of their clearances to remedy the “abuses of public trust.” Hayden was among
those who signed a 2020 letter that falsely tried to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop report as Russian interference. Hayden stood by the letter last summer, despite the laptop story’s validity being established by the DOJ and FBI months earlier.
18 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2025
Microsoft’s promotion and apparent funding of the online “media litera- cy” tool.
NewsGuard claims to have created
it to guide “learners of all ages through the overwhelming landscape of online news and information.” Conservatives say NewsGuard’s
tool and its blacklisting efforts are sim- ply about suppressing viewpoints and news using highly subjective ratings. Microsoft told Cruz its support of NewsGuard was limited to a one-time donation in 2018. The website had a notice that read “NewsGuard’s Media Literacy Pro- grams are made possible thanks to generous support from Microsoft,” according to a Senate Commerce Committee spokesperson. NewsGuard has since removed any
mention of Microsoft on its website. “Big Tech is finally beginning to
recognize the censorship of conser- vative viewpoints will no longer be tolerated by the American people,” Cruz, chairman of the Senate Com- merce Committee, said in a statement to Newsmax. “I am happy to see that the lead-
ership at Microsoft has renounced their support of NewsGuard’s so- called media literacy tool in response to my letter. “NewsGuard’s biased
HAYDEN
rating system stifles intel- lectual diversity, hinders critical thinking among young students, and under- mines our nation’s core val- ues of free expression.” In his letter to Nadel- la, Cruz pointed out that
NewsGuard claims such outlets as The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and Newsmax are “unreliable,” while left- wing outlets such as Jacobin, The Atlantic, and The New Republic are
deemed reliable. Cruz also noted that NewsGuard
“has found a willing partner” in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to spread the “media literacy” tool browser extension, which the company says is used by educators and more than 800 public libraries worldwide. In November, Federal Communi-
cations Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr, now chairman, wrote to the CEOs of Apple, Meta, Micro- soft, and Alphabet demanding that they fess up about their censorship activities targeting conservatives. Federal Trade Commission Chair-
man Andrew Ferguson noted that NewsGuard has been used by major advertising agencies to block the flow of advertising and revenues to conser- vative media. So-called “misinformation” and “fact-checking” groups have been a recent target of the new Trump admin- istration, which views these organiza- tion as highly political with the intent of censoring conservatives. NewsGuard is the most notorious
of the misinformation activists. Steven Brill, a businessman and Democratic Party activist, found- ed NewsGuard in the wake of the 2016 election and President Donald
CRUZ/KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES / HAYDEN/DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGES
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