Our Advisory Board

Members of the advisory board provide strategic advice to NewsGuard. They play no role in the determinations of ratings or the Nutrition Label write ups of websites unless otherwise noted.

  • Don Baer, former chairman of Burson, Cohn & Wolfe and former White House Communications Director (Clinton administration)
  • John Battelle, co-founding editor of Wired and founding chief executive of Industry Standard magazine
  • Silvia Bencivelli, author, radio-tv presenter, journalism professor at University of Rome, and contributor for La Repubblica, Le Science, and Focus. (Bencivelli provides editing and editorial guidance for NewsGuard’s Italian Nutrition Labels.)
  • Yves Clarisse, author and journalist who worked for 33 years for Reuters in various positions, most recently as editor-in-chief of the French language service of the news agency. (Clarisse provides editing and editorial guidance for Newsguard’s French Nutrition Labels.)
  • Arne Duncan, former Secretary of Education (Obama Administration), former chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, and managing partner at Emerson Collective
  • Alina Fichter, former member of Chief Editorial Team for ZEIT Online, former John S. Knight fellow of media innovation at Stanford, previously economics reporter for Süddeutsche Zeitung and tech editor for die ZEIT. (Until January 2020, Fichter provided editing and editorial guidance for NewsGuard’s German Nutrition Labels.)
  • Giampiero Gramaglia, Director of the School of Journalism in Urbino and Professor of Journalism at La Sapienza University in Rome, editor-in-chief of AffarInternazionali.it, former Editor-in-Chief of ANSA. (Gramaglia provides editing and editorial guidance for NewsGuard’s Italian Nutrition Labels.)
  • (Ret.) General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, former Director of the National Security Agency and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (George W. Bush administration)
  • Leo Hindery, Jr., Chairman & CEO of Trine Acquisition Corp; former CEO of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) and AT&T Broadband; former Chairman of the National Cable Television Association
  • Elise Jordan, political analyst, NBC, and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
  • Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information
  • Kate O’Sullivan, general manager for digital diplomacy of Microsoft, which includes the company’s Defending Democracy Program
  • Kavita Patel, former director of policy for the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement (Obama Administration), primary care physician at Mary’s Center, a community clinic in Washington, D.C., and Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution
  • Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark, former secretary general of NATO and founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation
  • Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security (George W. Bush administration)
  • Gianni Riotta, Italian journalist and educator, columnist La Stampa, teaches at Princeton University and Luiss Datalab. Former Editor of Il Sole 24 Ore and Rai TG1, he is a member of the Edmo Advisory Board and the Council on Foreign Relations
  • Richard Sambrook, director of the Center for Journalism at Cardiff University, former Director of Global News for the BBC. (Sambrook provides editing and editorial guidance for NewsGuard’s UK Nutrition Labels.)
  • Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy (Obama administration) and author, “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It”
  • Brigitte Trafford, corporate affairs advisor, previously headed in-house teams at Virgin Media, ITV, Dow Jones and Lloyds Banking Group
  • Ed Vaizey, former Member of British Parliament for the constituency of Wantage, former Minister of Culture and Digital
  • Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia