Lawsuit Charges Pentagon with Attack on Press
US & NewsGuard Sued by Consortium News
Joe Lauria / Consortium News
(November 1, 2023) — Consortium News has filed a lawsuit against NewsGuard and the US government, accusing them of defamation and working in tandem to censor the outlet’s foreign policy reporting on Ukraine and Palestine in violation of the First Amendment.
Background: Link to the complaint.
WASHINGTON (October 23, 2023) — The United States government and Internet “watchdog” NewsGuard Technologies, Inc. were sued today in federal court in Manhattan for First Amendment violations and defamation by news organization Consortium for Independent Journalism, a nonprofit that publishes Consortium News.
Consortium News‘s court filing charges the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, an element of the Intelligence Community, with contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from US official positions on foreign policy.
In the course of its contract with the Pentagon, NewsGuard is “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” as to Ukraine, Russia, and Syria, imposing a form of “censorship and repression of views” that differ or dissent from policies of the United States and its allies, the complaint says.
Watch the press conference announcing the lawsuit on Monday:
Read the entire complaint and the exhibits here.
“The First Amendment rights of all American media are threatened by this arrangement with the Defense Department to defame and abridge the speech of US media groups,” said Bruce Afran, Consortium News‘s attorney.
“When media groups are condemned by the government as ‘anti-US’ and are accused of publishing ‘false content’ because they disagree with US policies, the result is self-censorship and a destruction of the public debate intended by the First Amendment,” Afran said.
NewsGuard uses its software to tag targeted news sites, including all 20,000+ Consortium News articles an videos published since 1995, with warnings to “proceed with caution,” telling NewsGuard subscribers that Consortium News produces “disinformation,” “false content” and is an “anti-US” media organization, even though NewsGuard only took issue with a total of six CN articles and none of its videos.
NewsGuard’s labeling of Consortium News as publishing “false content” is challenged in detail in the substantial complaint.
The suit comes at a time when many in Congress and elsewhere have charged the US government with using private entities and internet platforms as proxies to suppress free speech in violation of the First Amendment.
The complaint seeks a permanent injunction declaring the joint program unconstitutional; barring the government and NewsGuard from continuing such practices and more than $13 million in damages for defamation and civil rights violations.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, The London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost: By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
