As media organizations go, NewsGuard cuts a low public profile as it follows its mission of issuing credibility ratings about news outlets. The Trump administration knows about it, though, and the company has joined a lengthening list of journalism organizations to face the White House’s wrath.

A dispute between President Donald Trump’s regulators and the news monitoring service has spilled into court, with NewsGuard Technologies suing the Federal Trade Commission and its chairman, Andrew Ferguson, to shut down an investigation. The FTC accuses the company of trying to suppress conservative speech. NewsGuard says it is being forced to kneel before vindictive power.

Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Republican administration has fought The Associated Press in court over the outlet’s claim it is being punished for not adopting his preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico; settled with CBS News’ corporate parent in a dispute over “60 Minutes” editing; sued The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on Trump and Jeffrey Epstein; and is in a legal fight with The New York Times over Pentagon reporting restrictions.

NewsGuard’s lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, accuses Trump’s FTC of “brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce but rather to censor speech simply because it disagreed with NewsGuard’s judgments about the reliability of news sources.”

The FTC calls NewsGuard’s accusations “untethered from both law and fact.”

Like the Federal Communications Commission under Brendan Carr, Ferguson’s FTC is a normally sleepy federal agency that has sprung to life to address issues of importance to Trump and his supporters, particularly involving the media. The FCC has launched investigations of media companies and this weekend Carr, responding to a Trump complaint about negative coverage of the Iran war, warned broadcasters “running hoaxes and news distortions” to correct course or see their licenses threatened.

Ferguson has made no secret about where he takes his cues. He said in an interview in July that “I am a law enforcer, and I will follow the law. But the policy priorities are set by the man the people chose to run this government.”

While NewsGuard may not be a big name, money is at stake for news outlets friendly to the president. The company began in 2018, started by Court TV founder Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, a former Journal publisher. NewsGuard uses journalists to examine thousands of news outlets and websites, giving them ratings based on the credibility and reliability of their journalism.

A monthly subscription costs $4.95. Much of its business comes from companies that advise advertisers where to hawk their products, showing them which news sites may be toxic to their brands, and artificial intelligence companies looking to see where they would be more likely to find information they could trust.

NewsGuard made an enemy of the Trump-friendly television network Newsmax, giving its website a 20 on a scale where 100 is the best score. NewsGuard says “this website is unreliable because it severely violates basic journalism standards.” Newsmax has since repeatedly urged Republican lawmakers or regulators to do what they can to silence NewsGuard, the company said in its lawsuit.

“NewsGuard was started by Steve Brill to target conservative media and get ad agencies to deny them advertising revenue as a means of censorship,” Newsmax spokesman Bill Daddi said. “Brill is a Democratic Party activist and donor over many decades with a long history of advocating for liberal causes. He is not a respected journalist and in no way should be running a ratings service used by major ad agencies.”

Brill said his only political activity was working for Republican John Lindsay, New York City’s mayor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while a college and law school student. “I have been a journalist ever since,” Brill said. Federal records show Brill donated to more than a dozen political campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, primarily Democrats but including some Republicans.

NewsGuard says its ratings are based on clearly defined criteria, such as whether or not an outlet publishes false or misleading material, whether it distorts arguments and uses multiple sources, whether it distinguishes between news and opinion and regularly corrects errors. To counter charges that it unfairly boosted liberals, the company noted times where Fox News scored higher in its ratings than the former MSNBC.