09/22/2022
NewsGuard Makes TV News Reliability Ratings Available To All Agencies And Advertisers
Launched exclusively with IPG Mediabrands, ratings and ‘Nutrition Labels’ based on journalistic practices for 139 news shows and networks across broadcast, cable and streaming to be available in January for all ad agencies and brands for planning and direct buys
(New York — September 22, 2022) NewsGuard, the service that uses trained journalists to rate the reliability and trustworthiness of news and information sources today announced that its updated ratings for television news shows and networks, previously licensed on an exclusive basis by Mediabrands for the Spring 2022 upfronts, will be made available for licensing by all advertising agencies and clients for campaigns starting in 2023.
The ratings are based on how NewsGuard’s trained journalists assess the adherence of each program or network to the key standards of television journalist practice: 1) Does not repeatedly convey false news, 2) Reports on important topics responsibly, 3) Presents multiple viewpoints and 4) News organization associated with this program adheres strongly to journalistic. Each network or program gets a score of one to ten based on how it meets these standards.
Using the NewsGuard ratings, agencies and brands can decide to:
- Target only trustworthy shows by filtering based on overall score or risk level—for example, only buying ads on shows that score a 7 and above or receive a “lowest risk” rating.
- Avoid advertising on shows that regularly convey false information by using NewsGuard’s “Does Not Repeatedly Convey False Content” criteria filter.
- Avoid advertising on heavily biased or politically slanted news shows by using NewsGuard’s “Presents Multiple Perspectives” criteria filter.
To illustrate the process, NewsGuard is making a rating and associated Nutrition Label available publicly for one show: NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which rates a 10 out of 10. (The Nutrition Label can be found here.)
“Not every show meets all of these criteria and scores a ten out of ten,” explained NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill. “In fact, the scores range from zero to ten. But the sample score and Nutrition Label that we are providing for ‘Meet the Press,’ the nation’s longest running network television program, demonstrates our criteria and how we apply them.”
The ratings for all 139 programs and networks will be made available to ad industry licensees. The full Nutrition Label for each individual show or network has been made available to the producer of each show or network, all of whom were asked to comment on any negative assessment for any of the criteria before the rating and Nutrition Label was published.
“It’s helpful for our clients to have a third party like NewsGuard that’s impartial and allows us to invest in and support quality journalism,” said Allie Kallish, EVP, Managing Director, Strategic Investment & Accountability at MAGNA, the global media investment and intelligence arm of Mediabrands. “We are pleased to have partnered with NewsGuard to create this indispensable scoring system and to give our clients assurances that their media dollars are being allocated to news programs that live up to the highest standard.”
“We’ve heard from marketers the question they dread hearing from CEOs: ‘Do you watch all the TV news programming where our ads appear?’ Marketers can now answer, ‘NewsGuard does,’” said NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz.
“In a world where there is such a variance in the trustworthiness of TV news, we are happy to bring consistent and transparent standards and assessments to the news programs watched by all Americans to help marketers decide where their ads should appear,” Brill added.
About NewsGuard
Launched in March 2018 by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides credibility ratings and detailed “Nutrition Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. NewsGuard rates all the news and information websites that account for 95% of online engagement across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France, and Italy. In August 2022, NewsGuard also launched in Austria. NewsGuard products include NewsGuard, BrandGuard, which helps marketers concerned about their brand safety, and the Misinformation Fingerprints catalog of top hoaxes.
NewsGuard rates each site based on nine apolitical criteria of journalistic practice, including whether a site repeatedly publishes false content, whether it regularly corrects or clarifies errors, and whether it avoids deceptive headlines. It awards weighted points for each criterion and sums them up; a score of less than 60 earns a “Red” rating, while 60 and above earns a “Green” rating, which indicates it is generally reliable.
NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels can be licensed by internet service providers, browsers, news aggregators, education companies, and social media and search platforms in order to make NewsGuard’s information about news websites available to their users.
Consumers can access these ratings by purchasing a subscription to NewsGuard, which costs $4.95/month, €4.95/month or £4.95/month, and includes access to NewsGuard’s browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and its mobile app for iOS and Android. The extension is available for free on Microsoft’s Edge browser through a license agreement with Microsoft. Hundreds of public libraries globally receive free access to use NewsGuard’s browser extension on their public-access computers to give their patrons more context for the news they encounter online. For more information, including to download the browser extension and review the ratings process, visit newsguardtech.com.
About Mediabrands
IPG Mediabrands is the media and marketing solutions division of Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG). Mediabrands manages approximately $40 billion in marketing investment globally on behalf of its clients and provides strategic services and solutions across its award-winning, full-service agency networks UM and Initiative and through its innovative marketing specialist companies Reprise, MAGNA, Orion, Rapport, Healix, Mediabrands Content Studio and the IPG Media Lab. Mediabrands clients include many of the world’s most recognizable and iconic brands from a broad portfolio of industry sectors. The company employs more than 13,000 marketing experts in more than 130 countries representing the full diversity of humanity. For more information, please visit our website: https://www.ipgmediabrands.com/ and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.
NewsGuard Contact
- media@newsguardtech.com