10/14/2024
NewsGuard Announces Free, Public Access to Real-Time Debunks of 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Claims Ahead of Election Day
Readers Subscribing to NewsGuard’s Reality Check Newsletter Will Get Alerts Directly in their Email Inboxes
(Oct. 14, 2024 – New York) NewsGuard, which rates the reliability of news and information websites and tracks false claims spreading online in real time through its Misinformation Fingerprints product, announced today that it is providing free access to its data and debunks of provably false claims relating to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.
Starting today, for the three weeks leading up to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and for at least the three weeks following Election Day, NewsGuard is publishing real-time descriptions and debunks of key election misinformation narratives in its 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center.
NewsGuard is also sending them directly to readers through its Reality Check newsletter.
The misinformation data is typically available only to NewsGuard’s clients, such as AI companies, technology platforms, news aggregators, search engines, advertising agencies, and AdTech platforms that license its Misinformation Fingerprints to protect against misinformation and ensure high-quality news and information content in their products. NewsGuard is making the data free for the period surrounding Election Day as part of an effort to keep news consumers protected from misinformation during this election season.
The Election Monitoring Center, which includes false claims both by and about candidates from all parties, includes all 2024 U.S. Election-related Misinformation Fingerprints published during the designated time frame, updated daily.
NewsGuard’s broader Misinformation Fingerprints database includes over 2,800 false claims on a variety of important subjects – including elections, health, global conflicts, and more – and more than 35,000 instances of the narratives appearing online and on social platforms. This data enables clients – and now for election-related topics, the public – to track how and where claims originate and spread. Misinformation Fingerprints are produced by NewsGuard’s analysts using a combination of original reporting and data tracking tools (read more about our process here). Each Misinformation Fingerprint contains data about the false narrative, a detailed description and a debunk that is typically produced within 24 hours of when the claim begins to circulate.
Additionally, NewsGuard will provide misinformation quizzes on social platforms and in its Reality Check newsletter to help readers protect themselves against future false claims by sharpening information literacy skills and building an awareness of false narratives. Misinformation quizzes will also be distributed to schools and educators, upon request.
Interested readers and journalists can subscribe to receive updates from the 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center by subscribing to NewsGuard’s Reality Check newsletter.
About NewsGuard
Founded by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Since launching in 2018, its global staff of trained journalists and information specialists has collected, updated, and deployed more than seven million data points on more than 35,000 news and information sources, and cataloged and tracked all of the top false narratives spreading online.
NewsGuard’s analysts, powered by multiple AI tools, operate the trust industry’s largest and most accountable dataset on news. These data are deployed to fine-tune and provide guardrails for generative AI models, enable brands to advertise on quality news sites and avoid propaganda or hoax sites, provide media literacy guidance for individuals, and support democratic governments in countering hostile disinformation operations targeting their citizens.
Among other indicators of the scale of its operations is that NewsGuard’s apolitical and transparent criteria have been applied by its analysts to rate news sources accounting for 95% of online engagement with news across nine countries.