This column is intended to warn struggling conservative/christian news outlets about the inherent dangers of offers for help from duplicitous Internet advertising operatives, such as InfoLinks.
An InfoLinks offer of advertising help came at struggling CFP, out-of-the-blue in mid-November.
Canada Free Press IT guy Brian Thompson responded to InfoLinks by informing them that we had been ordered by Google, to take our front page offline, and have been harassed by them ever since daily over the past three years.
Google, InfoLink, NewsGuard
As powerful Google owns 90% of all Internet advertising, prospects of getting any kind of advertising are doomed to fail from the proverbial get-go.
When told that we could not work with them if they put Google ads on the CFP site, InfoLinks said not to worry because they could still satisfy our demands.
One week later, all InfoLinks ads disappeared from CFP.
We wrote asking them why.
The following was their Thanksgiving Weekend response, some five days later:
“Thank you for contacting us.“We want you to know that we take publisher concerns and comments seriously, so we elevated your request and concerns to our compliance team to further consider and review.“The reason that the site was not approved is not related to Google in any way. Canadafreepress.com has been flagged by GDI and NewsGuard.“Unfortunately, we've decided that the site (canadafreepress.com) falls outside the scope of our content guidelines for our marketplace due to the previous reasons stated. Essentially we see a significant decline in advertiser demand for political content and being added to the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) or NewsGuard ratings list can also put your site outside our content guidelines and cause substantial loss of advertisers revenue and reputation.“To correct this situation on the site we think it would be helpful for you to consider communicating with GDI and Newsguard to evaluate the site content with increased rankings favorable to advertisers. We welcome a revaluation in the future.“Best regards, Infolinks Support Team"
Google is an invasive species and should be treated as such
Well aware that CFP never contacted InfoLinks, they contacted us, we responded:
“We are conservative, our readers are conservative and you pay attention to radical left wing ideologues bent on cancelling us?”
InfoLink’s pals at NewsGuard suppress conservative and independent news outlets across the ‘Net, just as social media giant Google does.
Google is an invasive species and should be treated as such.
Through their gmail platform, they will attempt to hijack all your password logins.
Through search results they promote or suppress—they only drive their own narrative.
They will deliberately choke off page views from search results. Page reviews drive revenue.
Through their Adsense “Community Standards” they will censor your website and choke off your advertising revenue.
Not just from Adsense, but because of their nature of advertising and third party advertising on other ad company platforms, they deny that company from advertising with a web publisher.
Google spreads like a cancer and infect the entire Internet.
Thanks to Google, looking for negative reports on NewsGuard, you have to scroll through pages of puff pieces supporting NewsGuard.
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How NewsGuard Became the Establishment Guard Against Independent Media
‘How NewsGuard Became the Establishment Guard Against Independent Media’:(Epoch Times, Oct. 16, 2023)
“As difficult as it is to run an independent media outlet, there’s a company making it substantially harder.“Its name is NewsGuard. The company claims to rate online content, including from media outlets, for trustworthiness, but a closer look shows it does much more than that—its business model produces censorious pressure on news organizations. An investigation by The Epoch Times has revealed troubling questions regarding the quality of and the agenda behind NewsGuard's offerings.“Founded in 2018, NewsGuard dispatches its “analysts” to prepare reviews of online content creators and to issue ratings “to help readers have more context for the news they read online.” The ratings display as small badges with scores next to search results.“That, however, represents only a small part of the picture. The bigger picture shows that NewsGuard's most potent function stems from its relationships with advertising agencies, which have steered their clients to cut off advertising dollars for content creators disfavored by the company's "analyst" reviews. As it so happens, corporate, establishment-friendly media tend to receive high scores while independent media skeptical of the establishment tend to receive low scores, even if they adhere to high journalistic standards.“The Epoch Times emailed NewsGuard questions regarding its products, activities, personnel, and funding, but received no response.
Subjective Criteria
“NewsGuard presents itself as objective and nonpartisan. Its ratings, the company says, measure media quality on nine criteria, including transparency of authorship and ownership and adherence to standard editorial practice, such as issuing corrections and labeling opinion pieces. In practice, however, most of the score boils down to whether the media present content that is truthful according to NewsGuard’s opinion. (Epoch Times)“The first criterion specifically looks at whether the target repeatedly publishes false claims. Another examines whether it publishes news "responsibly." But failing the first one means failing the second one, NewsGuard explains on its website. Yet another criterion is whether the target uses accurate headlines.“Again, if the headline says something NewsGuard considers to be untrue, that counts as a failure. Another criterion looks for a policy of regularly correcting errors—or what NewsGuard considers to be errors. Together, these four criteria add up to more than 60 points of the 100-point score.“Even if NewsGuard can’t find anything to dispute, it can still dock points if the target doesn’t sufficiently represent opinions the company would like to see.Such content providers “egregiously cherry pick facts or stories to advance opinions,” it argues.” (Read The Epoch Times Report in full)
A Beacon Of Light In A Sea Of Censorship
Meanwhile, Infolinks, if you are not “related to Google in any way”, what you do sounds very much like the same tactics the social media giant uses to suppress conservative and independent news sites.
CFP’s message to Google remains the same: You can suppress us, you can keep us from advertising revenues of any kind and bury deep the Canada Free Press message in your skewed search results.
But you can NEVER keep us from publishing online, no matter how rich and powerful you are.
CFP remains ‘A Beacon Of Light In A Sea Of Censorship’ and there is nothing Google can do about it.
Message to InfoLinks: Everyone has something to sell, Everyone is looking for something to buy.
Conservative and Independent sites being shamefully hit on by InfoLinks should do the same thing to them that CFP does to gag-obsessed Google: IGNORE THEM!
Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
