Microsoft promised in February it would disavow the censorship tool NewsGuard, yet NewsGuard is still listed in Microsoft’s Search Coach tool for children.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) struck a significant victory for free speech when his investigation led the software giant to disavow support for NewsGuard’s “biased indoctrination tool.”
Cruz said in a statement in early February:
Big Tech is finally beginning to recognize the censorship of conservative viewpoints will no longer be tolerated by the American people. I am happy to see that the leadership at Microsoft has renounced their support of NewGuard’s so-called Media Literacy tool in response to my letter. NewsGuard’s biased rating system stifles intellectual diversity, hinders critical thinking among young students, and undermines our nation’s core values of free expression.
Cruz had sent a letter last December requesting information about Microsoft’s financial support for NewsGuard’s “Media Literacy” program and work to censor conservative viewpoints.
In response to Cruz’s letter, Microsoft said that it only donated once to the censorship tool and asked NewsGuard to remove the claim, “NewsGuard’s Media Literacy Programs are made possible thanks to generous support from Microsoft.” NewsGuard has since removed mention of the company from its website.
Although Cruz had made progress in making Microsoft distance itself from NewsGuard, Mike Benz, a former State Department official and founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, on Sunday noted that they still recommend NewsGuard.
Benz asked rhetorically, “One month ago, Microsoft promised @SenTedCruz it would disavow NewsGuard, the for-profit censorship software firm that singlehandedly decimated or bankrupted 100s of conservative news sites. Yet since the disavowal, Microsoft is still recommending NewsGuard. Why?”
Benz continued, “NewsGuard is still listed as embedded in Microsoft’s Search Coach, which goes after hearts & minds of impressionable young school children, where NewsGuard’s Microsoft-integrated product blocks children off from conservative news sites. This can’t be in our schools.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
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