Four Months of NewsGuard in Australia/New Zealand: Our Progress and Partnerships So Far

A summary of the highlights of our first few months in Australia and New Zealand.

By Veena McCoole and Virginia Padovese | Published on July 17, 2023

Since NewsGuard’s launch in Australia and New Zealand in March 2023, marked by a breakfast event at the Microsoft Experience Centre in North Sydney, our team has been busy meeting with stakeholders across the technology and advertising sectors, connecting with existing clients who operate in the ANZ market, spreading the news of our launch and our message to local publications, partnering with leading academic institutions and researchers on important misinformation research, and rolling out our browser extension to public libraries at no cost, thanks to our partnership with Microsoft. 

Here’s a summary of the highlights of our first few months in Australia and New Zealand:

• NewsGuard has rated the news and information sites that account for 92% of engagement with the news in Australia and New Zealand. View three example labels from the region here.
• On September 5, 2023, NewsGuard will offer a workshop to the Community Media Training Organisation and the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia with the aim of helping local journalists and broadcasters determine the reliability of the news and information sources they rely on. “NewsGuard’s services help community radio stations to build trust within their local communities, ensuring that their news and sources are consistently credible. Local, reliable, and independent news builds stronger community radio stations and stronger community radio stations build stronger communities”, said Declan Kelly, Head of Development at the CBAA.” The Community Media Training Organisation is working with NewsGuard to assist community journalists and broadcasters to build their skills in identifying reliable news and information, so they can continue to broadcast credible and reliable information in times of crisis and on local issues,” said Giordana Caputo, Chief Executive Officer of the CMTO.

• NewsGuard has partnered with academic researchers studying misinformation at Deakin University and Monash University, who have licensed our Reliability Ratings and Misinformation Fingerprints respectively.
• NewsGuard has partnered with Australian public libraries, offering its browser extension as a media literacy tool to the libraries’ staff and patrons. Among the partners is Bayside City Council and Yarra Plenty Regional Library. Yarra Plenty provides library services across three local government areas in Melbourne (Banyule, Nillumbik, and Whittlesea) through nine branches, three Click & Collect Hubs, and a Mobile library. “We’re implementing NewsGuard on all our public computers and Wi-Fi sessions because it provides our users with important details that lets them draw their own conclusions about the information they find online. The transparent criteria and scoring means that our users can easily understand the system and it is a great addition to the work our libraries do in increasing the information literacy skills of our users,” said Jane Cowell, CEO at Yarra Plenty Regional Library.
• In June 2023, we partnered with the Melbourne Press Club to sponsor the 2024 Quill Award for Student Journalist of the Year. The Club will provide access to NewsGuard’s browser extension to its approximately 500 members, and will share all our reports on their newsletter, website and social media pages. “At a time when misinformation and disinformation are rife, it’s essential that every journalist has access to a range of guides that help them navigate an almost endless supply of complex, contradictory and challenging online material. The Melbourne Press Club is delighted to collaborate with NewsGuard to provide Australian journalists with a tool that … assists them identifying reliable source material,” said Nick Richardson, CEO of Melbourne Press Club.

NewsGuard Briefing for Australia/New Zealand Journalists

Finally, NewsGuard invites all journalists covering mis/disinformation beats and current affairs in Australia and New Zealand to join a webinar on Thursday, August 17, at 10:30 a.m. AEDT. Our co-CEOs, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, will lead the conversation, highlighting how our reporting on more than 30,000 sources is available to reporters, how our reporting may be an aid in your own work, and trends in misinformation and disinformation that might give you some story ideas. 

Reporters who RSVP and attend will receive a free voucher to the NewsGuard browser extension, which enables easy access to our individual scores, ratings and Nutrition Labels for thousands of news and information websites. Reporters will also be able to ask NewsGuard’s managers and staff about some of the work we’ve done, such as reporting on ChatGPT, tracking unreliable AI-generated news’ websites, publishing analysis on misinformation and disinformation trends.

To RSVP to the event, click here.

To learn more about working with NewsGuard in Australia/New Zealand, contact partnerships@newsguardtech.com.