PragerU CEO Marissa Streit and and Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom and a former State Department official, recently discussed NewsGuard, a for-profit company that is running a mass blacklisting campaign working with corporations and advertisers to strangle conservative media
During a recent episode of Real Talk, Streit noted that parents are hearing about something known as “media literacy education.”
“It’s become something that’s a part of our schools, it’s in our curriculum,” Streit said, pointing out that NewsGuard is behind media literacy education.
Benz told Streit that “media literacy” refers to the left obtaining the ability “to control what news media your children can read or what’s successful on social media.”
“When you hear the phrase ‘media literacy,’ you attach to the word ‘literacy,’ and think, ‘Well, we have a literacy problem in this country,'” Benz said, noting that people can easily make the mistake in thinking that media literacy refers to teaching students how to read and be more literate.
“No, it’s the opposite of that,” Benz asserted. “The focus on the word ‘literacy’ is the idea that if you read the wrong media sources, you are media illiterate, and need to get your mind right by reading state-approved, government-approved media sources, and only then will you be deemed media literate.”
“It’s basically about purging any institution that’s got a low score on a NewsGuard rating,” he added, noting that NewsGuard has a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the biggest teachers unions.
“What this involves is preventing your children in K-12 schools and in universities from being able to cite to Prager University — or the Heritage Foundation,” Benz said.
As Breitbart News reported, PragerU slammed NewsGuard over its sly and “insidious” practices aimed at driving companies that disagree with the left “out of business” in a recently published video in which Streit explains how left-wing activists use the rating system as a means for censoring dissenting opinions. The nonprofit has also launched a petition to expose NewsGuard’s practices.
Have you heard of NewsGuard? They claim to counter "misinformation," but who funds them and what’s their agenda?
— PragerU (@prageru) July 8, 2024
And why are they targeting new media outlets?
Sign the petition to expose @NewsGuardRating:https://t.co/JOlFv4qaj8 #EndBigTechCensorship @streitmarissa
How it works is NewsGuard will send conservative media companies “a list of accusatory questions on some hot button issue,” and if the company responds, “they’ll ignore your answers and then pose new questions,” the PragerU CEO explained.
Streit added that if a company doesn’t respond, NewsGuard lists it as an unreliable source and warns PR firms, ad agencies, and major corporations to stay away — all in an effort to run conservative news companies “out of business.”
The PragerU CEO also pointed out that Big Tech has found a loophole in censoring speech online with the help of NewsGuard, noting that all Big Tech companies have to do is point at NewsGuard’s ratings to explain why they are silencing certain outlets and voices.
“In short, NewsGuard enables them to censor speech without leaving any fingerprints,” Streit said.
The government also uses NewsGuard as a tool for this endeavor, with the Defense Department paying the rating system over $700,000 to monitor “misinformation” online — an Orwellian way of saying “information that the Defense Department doesn’t like,” Streit added.
“If NewsGuard has red-flagged a source, all you need to know is that the left doesn’t want you to read it, watch it, or hear it,” Streit said.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
