NewsGuard, a company that rates news outlets’ accuracy using what it calls “apolitical journalistic criteria…to identify reliable sources of information,” has filed a lawsuit to block the Federal Trade Commission’s demand for a list of all its customers.
The FTC in May 2025 launched a wide-ranging probe into NewsGuard and 16 other groups—including left-leaning watch group Media Matters for America, and the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit media ratings service. The agency alleged the groups were part of “a conspiracy to boycott conservative and independent media.”
Deadline (2/6/26) reported that FTC chair Andrew “Ferguson has targeted NewsGuard, suggesting that it violated antitrust laws and that it was biased, as NewsGuard had given a low score to Newsmax, the conservative news site.”
NewsGuard’s lawsuit accuses the FTC of “brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce, but rather to censor speech simply because it disagreed with NewsGuard’s judgments about the reliability of news sources” (AP, 3/23/26).
NewsGuard also accused the FTC of holding up a $13 billion merger of advertising heavyweights Omnicom Group and IPG unless the merged company agreed not to use NewsGuard’s services.
Media Matters filed a similar lawsuit last summer to block sweeping FTC demands for documents; a federal judge ruled in the group’s favor, calling that FTC probe “a straightforward First Amendment violation” (Bloomberg, 1/22/26). The FTC has appealed the ruling against it.
Ferguson is yet another representative of the Trump regime trying to silence any criticism of the government or its right-wing support network. For regime apologists, of course, the FTC chief is a sacred warrior against liberals, protecting conservatives from insults and disagreement.
Hellbound and Down 