Why Healthcare Bullshit Is Clogging Up The Internet

Every so often I have the chance to catch up with Gordon Crovitz and Steve Brill, the founders of NewsGuard. I was an advisor to their company for several years, and we keep in touch, as we share something of an obsession around the decline of journalism and the related erosion of fact-based information online. Both Crovitz and Brill have long and storied careers in “traditional” media — Brill started American Lawyer and CourtTV and authored countless pieces of long form reporting, and Crovitz was the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

NewsGuard launched as something of a bullshit detector during the ascendence of social media eight years ago. The company’s first product created “reliability ratings” of news and information-based websites. Not surprisingly, the company immediately became a target of the far right media ecosystem, and remains one today.

NewsGuard initially covered a few thousand well-trafficked sites, but now covers more than 35,000 sources around the world. Along the way the company has built a tool for advertisers to identify quality inventory for programmatic advertising, several AI-related products, and a database of false claims circulating like microplastics in the information ecosystem’s bloodstream.