Tech giant Microsoft yanked its promotion of NewsGuard, which claims to rate the trustworthiness of news websites but is known for targeting conservative outlets like The Daily Wire, months after telling Republican senator Ted Cruz that it had disavowed the site and would no longer recommend it.
In February 2025, Microsoft publicly distanced itself from NewsGuard after Cruz demanded answers about why it was promoting the fact-checker on its website. NewsGuard has been criticized for its harsh ratings of conservative websites while seemingly giving legacy outlets a pass.
Microsoft, however, continued to recommend NewsGuard as a trusted “fact-checker” for students even after the firm was accused of colluding with advertisers to censor conservative viewpoints. Only in recent days has Microsoft scrubbed references to NewsGuard from its website, according to archived webpages reviewed by The Daily Wire.
NewsGuard’s removal comes after a report from the Fair Election Fund flagged that Microsoft was incorporating the company into its Search Coach tool. Search Coach is used in Microsoft’s education products, including Teams for Education, which provides “context and guidance for students to ask effective questions and discover reliable sources.”
In Search Coach, Microsoft referred to NewsGuard as an “objective” and “reputable” organization. Microsoft said that NewsGuard “is embedded in Search Coach to share evaluations of sites’ reliability, has created a list of trustworthy fact checking sites,” according to an archived webpage from September 5, 2025.
Microsoft/ Sept. 5
The new page has removed references to NewsGuard, though it still recommends left-wing fact-checking outlets like Snopes and PolitiFact. Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment on why the references to NewsGuard were removed. The Texas Public Policy Foundation and Libs of TikTok both called in late October for Microsoft to completely cut ties to NewsGuard.
NewsGuard is still listed as a sidebar option on the page, but it leads to an error when clicked on.
NewsGuard once described The Daily Wire as “a site founded by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that distorts facts to advance a partisan agenda,” and has consistently rated this website as unreliable.
One of the other sites it compared The Daily Wire to was Politico, an outlet with a rap sheet that includes pushing the discredited claims from intelligence officers that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. The article remains published without correction.
The relationship between Microsoft and NewsGuard first came under scrutiny back in December 2024 when Cruz sent a letter to the tech giant asking why it was promoting and funding NewsGuard’s Media Literacy tool. That tool was supposed to help students spot so-called “misinformation.”
“Given growing concerns about NewsGuard’s ideological bias and its efforts to manipulate young minds, I ask for transparency regarding Microsoft’s involvement in and financing of this Orwellian censorship project,” Cruz wrote. “Your company’s financial support for NewsGuard is especially troubling given Microsoft’s purported commitment to protecting free expression online.”
After Cruz sent his letter, Microsoft told the Texas Republican that its relationship with NewsGuard was limited to one donation. It also asked NewsGuard to remove the following line from its website: “NewsGuard’s Media Literacy Programs are made possible thanks to generous support from Microsoft.”
In March 2025, it was reported that Microsoft advised students to “observe any NewsGuard ratings that come up from your search” before selecting search results when conducting research. At the time, Microsoft removed some of its references to NewsGuard in Search Coach, but not all.
“Notice that some of the top links don’t have 100/100 scores. Select the NewsGuard rating. What did they lose points for? How might this impact whether the site is credible?” the Search Coach website reads. “Why are the different components of a NewsGuard rating important?”
NewsGuard is currently wrapped up in an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is probing whether news rating agencies colluded with advertisers to target conservatives.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said last year that NewsGuard labels could lead to top-dollar consequences for companies.
“If a website gets a poor rating on NewsGuard’s ‘nutrition label,’ it can choke off the advertising dollars that are the lifeblood for many websites, including platforms on which millions of Americans every day speak their minds,” he said in December 2024.
That same line of questioning is being investigated by the House Oversight Committee, as advertisers often used lists from NewsGuard to avoid doing business with companies that supposedly push “misinformation.” NewsGuard has received funding from the Department of Defense and the State Department, which gave it an award for its work in fighting alleged COVID misinformation.
Many entities still point to NewsGuard and recommend it as a trusted source. For example, the Kalamazoo Public Library in Michigan promotes NewsGuard as providing a “browser extension that provides an easy way to evaluate websites.” Hawaii’s public library system announced a “media literacy” partnership with NewsGuard so that its patrons “see credibility ratings of news sources they encounter while using library computers.”
The Denver Public Library actually lists local newspapers and TV outlets with reliable ratings from NewsGuard on its website.
Denver Public Libraries.
Back in 2018, the American Libraries Magazine reported that around 200 public libraries across the country had integrated NewsGuard into their computer systems. The magazine also reported that NewsGuard was supported by Microsoft.
Grok, the AI tool platformed by X, will cite NewsGuard when asked whether The Daily Wire can be trusted. Meanwhile, NewsGuard has been critical of Grok and suggested it can be turned into a “misinformation superspreader.”
Grok evaluation of Daily Wire.
NewsGuard has also built a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers, a radical nationwide teachers’ union that pushes leftist policies. The partnership was designed to “champion legitimate journalism and fact-based reporting” and help students discern “misinformation.”
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