Assignment 2

Building “Trust”: Are Libraries and NewsGuard on the Same Page?

Info 281- 16 Information Integrity

Professor Maret

Cristin McVey

May 12, 2020

San Jose State University

BUILDING “TRUST”: LIBRARIES AND NEWSGUARD

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine if a “trust indicator” tool, in this case

NewsGuard, could be integrated into library services and whether the use of this

browser extension offers librarians a solution to the “thorny” problem of information

integrity in the age of the Internet. Should libraries adopt these types of “credibility” and

“trust” technologies to better direct patrons to “reputable” websites? Exploring the

possibility of using new technologies and tools, like NewsGuard, is worth considering, to

see if such a tool could be implemented effectively at public libraries. In an information

“ecosystem” of fake news, misinformation and disinformation, libraries must adapt

service models and information literacy education accordingly. At the same time,

librarians must uphold intellectual freedom and oppose censorship. As new information

tools are developed, librarians must be equipped to wrestle with these important issues

on behalf of their patrons and the communities they serve.

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Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether NewsGuard could be integrated

into library services (such as an extension on public computers) and whether the use of

this extension offers librarians a solution to the “thorny” issue of information integrity in

the age of the Internet. Should libraries adopt these types of “credibility” and “trust”

technologies to better direct patrons to “reputable” websites? Do these extensions

increase the likelihood of patrons finding credible sources of information while searching

the Internet? Are these gains, if they do indeed exist, offset by infringements on

intellectual freedom or legitimizing a form of censorship that library professionals

typically defend (ALA, 2017)?

Like any new service, librarians strive to balance the protection of core values of

librarianship, including democracy, diversity, intellectual freedom and The Public Good,

(ALA, 2017; Berg & Jacobs, 2016) with the challenges that come with limiting the

spread of “inaccurate information, distortions of truth, and excessive limitations on

access to information” and raise public awareness about “the ways in which

disinformation and media manipulation are being used to mislead public opinion in all

spheres of life” (ALA, 2005). As information-seeking behaviors adapt to technological

innovations, librarians must adapt service models and information literacy education

accordingly and, at the same time, uphold intellectual freedom and oppose censorship

(Labaree & Scimeca, 2008). Exploring the possibility of using new technologies and

tools, like NewsGuard, is worth considering, to see if such a tool could be implemented

effectively at public libraries.

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Literature Review

For almost two decades, with the widespread availability of the Internet, librarians

have been searching for ways to assure the integrity and the accessibility of information

in a robust information ecosystem (Allen, et al., 2020). Most Americans view fake news

and misinformation as a major problem and a threat to democracy (Knight Foundation,

2018). Yet, nearly one-quarter of American adults (23%) admitted sharing a fake news

story in the past, knowingly or not (Barthel et al., 2016). So, while people believe

misinformation is a problem, many admit falling for the stories and possibly spreading

fake news as well. An informed electorate and functioning democracy depend upon

distinguishing between quality online information and misinformation (Epstein &

Robertson, 2015; Kavanaugh & Rich, 2018).

Previous Studies on Fact-Checking and Misinformation

Several researchers have attempted to determine if fact-checking and other

“credibility” tools reduce exposure to misinformation and fake news, but the results are

inconsistent (Walter, et al.,2019). Some research has shown that explicit warnings can

be used effectively (Ecker 2010; Clayton, et al., 2019) while other studies found that

people’s own political biases and motivated reasoning may supersede (Aresenault &

Castells, 2006; Motta, et. al, 2018; Walter et al., 2019). Some studies claim that

warnings and fact-checking can backfire and increase the spread of misinformation, or

at minimum, have no influence on belief in misinformation (Nyan & Reifler, 2010).

Additionally, research has also found that warnings may create new problems, such as

creating an “implied truth effect” for unlabeled information (Pennycook, 2020).

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Gallup Study: NewsGuard’s Online Rating Tool—User Experience

In exploring the fact-checking and credibility literature, I could find only one study

that specifically looked at the impact of NewsGuard on the spread of misinformation. In

a 2018 Gallup study, the majority (54%) replied that the red rating made them less likely

to read the website’s content as well as 63% said the red rating made then less likely to

share the article with friends and family. A minority (32%) said it made no difference.

The effect for green ratings was less pronounced but respondents demonstrated a

greater likelihood to read and share content with a green label, but 44% said the green

rating made no difference. Additionally, the majority of respondents felt NewsGuard

made it easier to be more “well-informed” and more confident in their ability to identify

reliable news (my DKE alarm bells go off here). The study mentions the potential for

“unintended consequences” and its threat to freedom of expression, yet concludes that

NewsGuard “offers a solution to the trust deficit of online news by giving users the

option to activate a rating tool that distinguishes between news sources that adhere to

basic journalistic standards and those that do not.” In the study, the users only used the

browser extension for one week (which may not be enough time to fully evaluate its

potential) and these were self-evaluations (which have their own inherent problems, i.e.

confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, etc.). Still, the study must be included and gives

some weight to NewsGuard’s claims to be a tool to fight misinformation.

Methodology

On April 12, 2020 I signed up for NewsGuard, the self-titled “The Internet Trust

Tool,” which works as browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari (the one

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I used). The extension rates the websites on search engines and social media feeds. As

it would happen, NewsGuard waived its normal monthly subscription fee ($2.95) until

July 1, 2020 because of the COVID-19 crisis. For three weeks, I observed how the

extension worked in my “everyday” searching and conducted a few targeted web

searches on more controversial topics (see below). For this research project, I focused

on search engine queries using Google on my Mac desktop and some minor exploration

of the extension as it related to social media feeds (which I tend to view more on my

handheld devices not Mac desktop computer).

NewsGuard Ratings Process and Criteria

NewsGuard claims to offer “trust” ratings for over 4000 news and information

websites, analyzed and determined by experienced journalists (both of the founders are

journalists and publishers as well). When using the browser extension, there are four

possible “flags” on search queries: A green “checkmark” equates as “generally adheres

to basic standards of credibility and transparency,” with significant exceptions noted in a

pop-up window; a red “exclamation point” equates as “generally fails to meet basic

standards of credibility and transparency,” with more details in the pop-up window; a

yellow “smiley face” marks a humor or satire website, indicating that it is not a real news

website. These websites are not rated according to any further criteria; lastly, a gray

“information shield” indicates primarily “user-generated content that it does not vet,”

which may or may not be reliable and are not judged according to any “journalistic”

criteria. The determination of ratings seems largely based on the expertise and

judgement of trained journalists who analyze the websites. From what I can tell, none of

the ratings are based on algorithms or other non-human technologies (Lapowski, 2018).

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While Newsguard claims to be “transparent”, it does get a little murky in terms of the

evaluation process: how exactly does the journalist determine the credibility,

truthfulness, and quality of the information is not elaborated. In this case, one is trusting

the journalist/analyst to be able to evaluate the website (and not individual articles

contained on the website). This latter point will be addressed more in the Discussion

section of the paper.

The NewGuard ratings are based on nine criteria, with each rating contributing to

a points scale of 100. If a site receives at least 60 points, it receives a green checkmark

(so there is a wide range for a single rating). If not, it receives a red rating. Some criteria

are weighted more heavily than others, reflected roughly in this order: does not publish

false content, gathers information responsibly, corrects and clarifies errors,

differentiates between news and opinion, and avoids deceptive headlines. Additionally,

NewsGuard rewards points for disclosing ownership and financing, clearly labeling

advertising, revealing possible conflicts of interest, and including names and bios of

content creators. Furthermore, each website rated green or red is given a “Nutrition

Label” that elaborates on each of the nine criteria. Additionally, the NewsGuard analyst

may reach out to the website owner for comments, and the rating is reviewed by editors

before being posted. Additionally, the Nutrition Label also names the analyst and editor

who worked on the rating.

Information-Seeking Behavior

“Everyday” Information-Seeking

For three weeks, I used the NewsGuard extension on my computer for all of my

information-seeking to see how often my own search queries rated according to the
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NewsGuard. This was informal and designed mainly to see how a “normal” user may

experience the browser extension and get a feel for the overall experience.

Targeted Information-Seeking on Controversial Topics

After reading the Motta, et al. (2018) article on anti-vaccine policy and the spread

of misinformation, I did targeted search queries around the anti-vaccination topic,

specifically (“Do vaccinations cause autism” and “harmful effects of vaccines”). For

political controversies, I queried “Gavin Newsom claims California is a nation” because I

saw some politically conservative friends posting on Facebook about this statement.

Lastly, I queried “April astrology outlook” to see how many news outlets with “green”

checkmarks also ran monthly astrology columns (which I put on under the category of

pseudoscience).

Results

“Everyday” Information-Seeking

Except for the targeted searches (see below), none of my personal internet

queries resulted in any websites flagged as “red,” or failing the NewsGuard standards of

credibility. On the flipside, many queries resulted in “green” labels, but far from all

queries. The vast majority of queries were unflagged/unlabeled (like the ALA website,

cooking recipes or children’s crafts) and a few came up with the “gray” icon, which was

considered “user-generated” content (versus journalistic) and unrated. Content from

Wikipedia, You Tube, and Reddit, for example, were always marked in this manner.

Occasionally, I would see content that would normally be unrated show up with a

“green” checkmark because it was on a “credible” website. For example, when

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searching for a recipe for “fettucine alfredo”, NewsGuard labeled was the one posted

for the The New York Times (and none of the others on the first page). In this case, a

person could interpret this as the “best” source and not realize it was only included

because of its publishing platform (not the content itself).

Targeted Information-Seeking on Controversial Topics

When I queried “do vaccinations cause autism” half of the results had the “green”

checkmark, one had a “gray” user-generated label and four had no label. In fact, none

of the first 15 pages had any “red” flags. For “harmful effects of vaccines” the results

were identical. In both cases, I could find no websites receiving the red label. Since I

could not find any anti-vaxx sentiment on any these searches, it is clear that Google is

already manipulating these queries (which raises some red flags of its own) (Epstein,

2019).

For political controversies, I queried “Gavin Newsom claims California is a nation-

state,” on the 93rd result I found a Dailykos.com article with a “red” label. Up until then,

60-70% of the headlines had a “green” label.

Lastly, I queried “Astrology report April 2020.” On the first page, I found the

weekly astrology column by Madame Clairvoyant in the online magazine The Cut with a

“green” check mark (which will be discussed further in the Discussion section).

Overall Experience

My experience using NewsGuard was initially positive, and in this sense, my

experience reflected the results of the Gallup study. Over time, however, because so

few websites were actually labeled, my enthusiasm waned. I found myself not really
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noticing the labels, although a “red” one would have gotten my attention (if one had

appeared). The most useful aspect in searching was for a work assignment in which I

needed to provide “credible” sources for a children’s activity worksheet. Previously, I

may have spent more time sifting through various webpages of content whereas with

NewsGuard I more quickly found websites affiliated with organizations, like NASA Kids

(versus personal blogs). Overall, I would be reluctant to recommend this website,

except as an entry point into a larger discussion (or teaching moment) on media and

information literacy.

Discussion

Usability and Functionality

The installation of the browser was easy and intuitive. Once it was on my

computer, it required minimal effort. As reported above, I did have some issues with the

Nutrition Label loading. It is also now a paid service ($2.95/month), and I am not sure I

would keep the extension if I had to pay for it.

Alignment with LIS Core Values

NewsGuard Library Partnership Model

Libraries can install for free browser extension on staff and public computers as a

partnership with NewsGuard. As part of this partnership, librarians and patrons provide

feedback about specific ratings and the usability and effectiveness of the service.

Additionally, librarians and patrons can report “suspicious” websites they encounter that

have not been rated by NewsGuard. Within this partnership, there seems to be an

assumption that librarians will “spread the word” about NewsGuard and promote the
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service to other librarians and patrons. Also, libraries are expected to collaborate with

NewsGuard “to announce the partnership to local media.” So, while the service is “free”

of charge, there expectations of promoting a commercial service, which many librarians

should be uncomfortable with. Although NewsGuard claims that over 700 libraries in the

United States and Europe are using the NewsGuard extension, there is no complete list

posted of libraries currently using the service; there is only a few libraries, such as Los

Angeles Public Library and Hawaii Public Library, highlighted on the partnership page,

and I could not find anything on their websites that confirmed this commitment.

The NewsGuard website does feature one library (Toledo Lucas County Public

Library) using the service and an interview with “our featured librarian”. While the

interview highlighted its library partnership with Newsguard, it also mentioned the

negative feedback the library received upon installing the extension on public

computers. When asked about the patron response to the tool, Andy Lechlak, Digital

Strategist at Toledo Lucas County Public Library responds,

We had received phone calls, emails, and social media replies about NewsGuard

and how it was a form of censoring. We made sure people knew it was not

censoring and explained the Library is a connector of people to information, and

that we want to make sure that information is accurate and good in quality.

More concerning was upon receiving this feedback, the library did not turn to its

professional organizations, like ALA, for guidance but “reached out to NewsGuard

during this time on how other communities had responded. They had solid advice on

educating the community.” Was the advice, however, in alignment with the core values

of librarianship and protection of intellectual freedom? As I dug a little further into

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Lechlak’s background, I discovered that he did not have a MLIS degree (instead a B.S.

in computer engineering), so the library was entrusting the decision to an IT specialist

not a librarian. It was disappointing that NewsGuard failed to differentiate between a

digital strategist and librarian, and that a library system would leave important decisions

related to information integrity to someone without a degree in library science. Threats

to intellectual freedom are taken seriously by librarians.

Additionally, the revenue model is also problematic: NewsGuard licenses their

ratings to technology companies and the advertising industry (Lapowski, 2018), so there

may be an incentive to give “green” checkmarks to websites that generate lots of ad

revenue. This could partly explain the “green” checkmark granted to Fox News

(Atkinson, 2018; Benton, 2018), despite its failure to “gather and present information

responsibly and “handle the difference between news and opinion responsibly” in its

current NewsGuard rating.

Unintended Consequences

It is important to take seriously the possibility of information tools seeding new

problems or exacerbating old ones in the form of unintended consequences (Maret

2020). In the case of NewsGuard, more thought must go into thinking about not only the

websites that are rated and labeled, but the ones that receives no labeling, which is the

overwhelming majority by far on the Internet. In the design of the tool, there are many

websites that will not be rated at all because the content is not considered “journalistic”

in nature (i.e. the Library of Congress, the National Science Foundation, etc.). On a

typical search, I saw anywhere from 0 to 7 websites “flagged” on the first search page.

This means that within every search results the information-seeker must decide how to
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interpret the content not flagged. As a user, I found myself beginning to evaluate

unmarked resources as potentially less credible than the ones marked with a “green”

checkmark (even with all of my LIS knowledge!) rather than viewing this outcome as a

limitation of the browser itself. Other researchers (Pennycook, et al., 2020) have found

the opposite: “an implied truth effect” in which “tagging some false headlines with

warnings will have the unintended side effect of causing untagged headlines to be

viewed as more accurate.” Such an effect directly challenges the efficacy of NewsGuard

in combatting misinformation.

Another potential way in which NewsGuard may contribute to “an implied truth

effect” is that it only evaluates the credibility and trustworthiness of news websites, not

news articles. As a result, there is the possibility that some “non-news” articles found on

websites with “green” labels may be seen as more “credible” than if left unlabeled. For

example, the weekly astrology column by Madame Clairvoyant in the online magazine

The Cut received a “green” check mark next to its headline, and the online magazine

received a coveted 100% rating even though elements of the website may fall into the

“pseudoscience” category.

Another example would be a query “Covid-19 manufactured in a Chinese Lab”

presents a Fox News article with a “green” checkmark. In Fox News’ case, the overall

rating is 69.5 (under 60 results in a “red” rating), barely passes the “credibility” test

(Atkinson, 2018; Benton, 2018), and individual articles may still contain misinformation,

disinformation and conspiracy theories. So, websites on the lower end of the

NewsGuard rating scale (the spectrum is very wide) may “free ride” on the more

“credible” websites (those receiving 100 points). Likewise, NewsGuard does not clearly

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differentiate between fake news and misinformation and highly partisan content (i.e. Fox

News) which comes with its own problems (Atkinson, 2018; Benton, 2018). As

Pennycook, et al. (2020) highlights:

Although such fake news is a particularly egregious form of misinformation, it is

far from the only form. For example, consider hyperpartisan content (in which

events that did really occur are presented in a highly biased and

misleading way) or conspiracy theories (which often string together a series of true

events in a nonsensical way to reach an incorrect conclusion). Our results suggest

that putting warnings on blatantly false content may make other kinds of (potentially

more insidious) misinformation seem more accurate.

Lastly, one unexpected result of installing the NewsGuard extension is that it

made me more aware of the potential bias in the search results themselves. Strangely, I

noticed that the “red” flagged content would disappear on a second search a week later.

It made me wonder if NewsGuard ratings and my activity were fed back into the Google

algorithm and changing the search results on subsequent visits based on articles I had

clicked on? For librarians, such manipulation of information should make librarians

pause as it may violate “the ethical responsibilities of the profession in this changing

information environment” (ALA, 2017). Epstein (2019) states that search engine

manipulation effect (SEME) “leaves people thinking they have made up their own

minds, which is very much an illusion. It also leaves no paper trail for authorities to

trace.” The potential interactions between NewsGuard and SEME should not surprise

me because “indicators made by the Trust Project are already being used by Facebook

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and Google News, not yet to rank the news but to label or otherwise sort it” (Molla,

2019). While using the tool, I became more and more concerned that these “trust

indicators” and fact-checking tools gave too much power to the organizations designing

the tools. It made me realize that these tools can easily be incorporated into other

information and search tools, and the result could be a further “homogenization of news”

(Nechustal & Lewis, 2019)—where you make it harder for fake news and disinformation

to spread but, at the same time, shrink the field of websites that appear on the first page

(and second, third and beyond).

Lastly, librarians must ask themselves if curbing fake news and misinformation is

best tackled at the level of flagging websites and social media posts when research has

shown that the television news as a major purveyor of misinformation and fake news

only comprises 0.15% of American’s daily media consumption. (Allen, et al., 2020). A

browser extension, like NewsGuard may make more sense for young people who are

more likely to rely heavily on Facebook for their political news (Gottfried & Bartel, 2015)

and share misinformation online (Leeder, 2019), but there needs to be further study to

see if applications, like NewsGuard, really work. For libraries that choose to offer the

NewsGuard tool on public of staff computers, it only “solves” a small proportion of the

fake news and misinformation problem and even this tool must be balanced with the

core values of librarianship itself. Librarians may be better off employing information

literacy models that teach patrons how to critically evaluate news sources (Leeder &

Shah, 2016), which may be more empowering and socially productive. This will not be

an easy task, and librarians will need to educate themselves as well. In this case,

looking for a “perfect” solution to the problem of fake news and misinformation may be

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the enemy of the good (Sullivan, 2018), settling for imperfect tools, like NewsGuard, too

quickly could easily erode the public trust that makes libraries such special places in

modern society.

Conclusion

Since the 2016 elections, a movement to create “credibility” initiatives has taken

off as tools for limiting the spread of fake news and misinformation. NewsGuard must be

seen as part of an array of similar types of “tools” and platforms that have emerged in

the last few years, which attempt to use rankings and labels to properly source and vet

news in the hopes of finding an “easy” solution to a complex and shifting social problem.

While I see the allure that the NewsGuard browser extension offers libraries in that it is

relatively easy and simple to use and inexpensive to implement, the promise is not

fulfilled. At most, NewsGuard could be used as an entry point into a larger conversation

around information literacy and not the end of the discussion.

References

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