Consortium News’ Suit Against NewsGuard & the USG

A U.S. federal judge dismissed Consortium News’ action, calling CN “contrarian” and saying it resorted to a “Hail Mary pass.” CN then settled legal fees with NewsGuard.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in the Southern District of New York dismissed Consortium News’ case, ruling that CN had not established that NewsGuard made false statements about it and that Consortium News did not show a nexus between NewsGuard and the U.S. government on the First Amendment issue. CN then paid NewsGuard’s legal fees of $65,000.

Here is the story of the case.

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
CN at 30

NewsGuard, a New York-based private company that rates news organizations, contacted Consortium News on March 25, 2022, asking why CN had published “false content” about the conflict in Ukraine.

Before any questions had been asked, NewsGuard concluded in this initial communication that CN‘s reporting of a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and the influence of neo-Nazism in Ukraine was false. The NewsGuard reviewer wrote, “I’m hoping to talk with someone who could answer a few questions about [CN‘s] structure and editorial processes — including its ownership, its handling of corrections, and its publication of false content.”

When CN objected to being judged in the opening contact before it could respond to any queries, the NewsGuard reviewer wrote back, saying, “I apologize that the wording of my email insinuated that I had come to a predetermined conclusion on whether your website has published false content, when I have not — be sure that I am interested in your responses to my questions.”

NewsGuard then went on to say via email that CN published “false content” because what happened in Ukraine in 2014 was a “Revolution of Dignity,” not a coup, and that neo-Nazi groups did not play a significant role in Ukraine.

Consortium News is a 30-year old, independent publication focused primarily on international news, founded by former Associated Press investigative reporter Robert Parry in 1995. It is made up of former insiders in mainstream media and intelligence services that take a sharply critical view of U.S. foreign policy and the national security state.

NewsGuard’s advisory board consists of individuals with ties to the national security state: Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the C.I.A. and N.S.A.; Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO secretary general and Tom Ridge, former U.S. homeland security director.

CN‘s Response

Starting with reporting from its founder Robert Parry, the former AP investigative reporter, Consortium News established what it considers to be irrefutable evidence of a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and of the influential role of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. CN marshalled evidence mostly from mainstream sources to respond to NewsGuard’s allegation that CN repeatedly publishes false content on Ukraine.

Consortium News sent NewsGuard, and published, a 7,500-word response on the issue of the coup and the Neo-Nazis, relying on evidence from the mainstream media available to the general public and to NewsGuard.

Evidence of a Coup

Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected the president of Ukraine in 2010 for a five-year term, certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In Ukraine there are constitutional means to change an elected leader before his or her term is over: impeachment, vote of no confidence, resignation, failure to win re-election, calling early elections or death.

In its response to NewsGuard, Consortium News argued that none of these applied to Yanukovych’s overthrow on Feb. 21, 2014. Forcing a democratically-elected leader from office with violence (begun by the protestors three months earlier) rather than by the legal methods available is an unconstitutional means of removal – in other words, a coup d’état.

Coups can have popular support, but Yanukovych’s ouster was backed by a minority of Ukraine’s population — the side that lost the legitimate 2010 election to him. They were furious that he had decided to take a Russian economic assistance program rather than continue with a process to join the European Union. Their ultra-nationalist leader explained why a deal for early elections was rejected and the overthrow would proceed.

There is then an important distinction then between a coup and a revolution.

In CN‘s view, revolutions are responses to a lack of constitutional means for removing an undemocratic leader, such as a monarchy or dictatorship. A revolution also brings about a significant change in the political and/or social system of a country, such as from monarchy to democracy (like the American Revolution), which did not happen in Ukraine in 2014.

Despite it being called a popular “Revolution of Dignity,” the result was that a democratically-elected leader was changed violently and unconstitutionally. The Ukrainian political and social system remained the same.

A coup is a an overthrow — sometimes violent — that bypasses the existing legal means to remove a leader. A revolution is an often violent overthrow when there are no legal means to remove a leader. It also results in a change of the political and/or the social system.

CN provided NewsGuard and the public a detailed account of what transpired in the Maidan in February 2014, including the violent role played by extreme right-wing and neo-fascist groups to take over government buildings and attack the police. That forced Yanukovych to flee – even though he had agreed to an early election. The day after he was already ousted, the Rada then voted a meaningless impeachment with Yanukovych’s majority party boycotting the vote.

[Read the full CN response: Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev]

US Backs Overthrow

Consortium News also provided substantial evidence of U.S. involvement in the unconstitutional events that ousted Yanukovych.

Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland revealed in a speech in December 2013 that since 1991 the U.S. had spent $5 billion to help bring about Ukraine and U.S. “aspirations” (since 1947) to turn Ukraine towards the West and away from Russia. Part of that $5 billion was funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to an organization that the Financial Times said played a “big role in getting the protest up and running.”

Writing in Consortium News six days after Yanukovych’s ouster, Parry reported that over just the previous year (2013), the NED, which funds NGOs in countries the U.S. targets for regime change, had bankrolled 65 projects in Ukraine totaling more than $20 million. Parry called it “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

The NED, on Feb. 25, 2022 — the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine — deleted all projects in Ukraine it funded, which are archived here. The NED meddled in Ukrainian politics in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. The Washington Post wrote in 1991 that what the C.I.A. once did in secret — destabilizing and overthrowing regimes — the NED was now doing openly.

The U.S. has worked with genuine opposition movements within a country, sometimes popular uprisings, to finance, train and direct them. The U.S. has a long history of overthrowing foreign governments, the most infamous examples being Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973.

The U.S. had been involved covertly in Ukraine since 1947 to subvert Soviet rule, and the American aim to take control of the country from Russia was made plain by former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wrote in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives:

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”

Thus U.S. “primacy,” or world dominance, which still drives Washington, is not possible without control of Eurasia, as Brzezinski argued, and that’s not possible without control of Ukraine by pushing Russia out.

In September 2013, three months before the Maidan uprising began, long-time NED head Carl Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” in a Washington Post op-ed piece, and warned that “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

In 2016 Gershman said the NED had been involved in Ukraine since the 1980s and he praised the “overthrow of Yanukovych.”

Despite the anti-government violence that was begun before Nuland’s speech in December 2013 by about 30 percent of the protestors who were hard-right, U.S. Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy, as well as Nuland, visited the Maidan to back the protesters and stood on stage with the leader of the Social National (neo-Nazi) party, later called the Svoboda Party.

‘Midwife This Thing’

The most blatant example of U.S. involvement in the coup comes in the leaked audio-taped conversation of a telephone call between Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

On the leaked tape, Nuland and Pyatt say “we’ve got to do something to make” the change in government “stick together” and to “midwife this thing.” They speak of Vice President Joe Biden’s role and of setting up meetings with Ukrainian politicians to make it happen. Nuland says the new prime minister should be Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and indeed he became prime minister after the ouster of Yanukovych. Later, Natalie Jaresko, an American former State Dept. official was given Ukrainian citizenship on the same day she was appointed finance minister in the new Ukrainian government. 

At the time, the BBC wrote of the leak: “The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that ‘ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future’. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals.”

Lafayette Park

By way of illustration, imagine an encampment of protesters, some violent, from the party that lost a certified election, in Lafayette Park, opposite the White House. They are demanding the ouster of the elected U.S. president.

Two senior Russian lawmakers then show up in the park. They appear with protest leaders from the Proud Boys and other right-wing groups and address the crowd, encouraging them, telling them Russia is with them.

Then the Russian deputy foreign minister in charge of North American affairs appears in Lafayette Park handing out food to the encamped demonstrators.

Later the minister is caught on an open telephone line discussing with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. the composition of the new American government once the president is overthrown. This minister had also made a speech two months earlier saying Russia spent $5 billion to bring democracy to the United States.

The elected American president is then overthrown violently and flees the country. The U.S. government that Russia preferred is installed. A former Russian foreign ministry official was given U.S. citizenship on the same day she was appointed U.S. treasury secretary in the new government. 

If this actually happened in Washington, do you think anyone in the U.S. would say Russia had something to do with overthrowing the U.S. government? Or would they say the president was ousted by a “popular revolution?”

But this is precisely what happened in Ukraine in 2014. The roles of the Russian legislators were played in real life by McCain and Murphy. The deputy foreign minister was played by Nuland, the Russian ambassador by Pyatt and the new finance minister by Jaresko.

Evidence of Neo-Nazi Influence

CN‘s response to NewsGuard traced the U.S. intelligence relationship with leading Ukrainian fascists from 1947 to 2014. A 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives tells the story of the C.I.A. in 1948 recruiting Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian fascist OUN-B, which took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.

The C.I.A. set Lebed up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government study says:

“CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. … Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe. Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’”

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991. “Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.”

The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved. “Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University,” the U.S. National Archives study says.

The successor organization to the OUN-B in the United States did not die with him, however. It had been renamed the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), according to the International Business Times (IBT).

“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported. “Following the demise of Yanukovych’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.

That is a direct link between Maidan and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.

In 1991, the first year of Ukraine’s independence, the neo-fascist Social National Party, later Svoboda Party, was formed, tracing its provenance directly to Bandera. It had a street named after Bandera in Lviv, and tried to name the city’s airport after him. (Svoboda won 10 percent of the Rada’s seats in 2012 before the coup and before McCain and Nuland appeared with Svoboda’s leader the following year.)

In 2010, pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko declared Bandera a Hero of Ukraine, a status reversed by Yanukovych before he being overthrown.

More than 50 monuments, busts and museums commemorating Bandera have been erected in Ukraine, two-thirds of which have been built since 2005, the year the pro-American Yuschenko was elected. A Swiss academic study says:

“On January 13, 2011, the L’vivs’ka Oblast’ Council, meeting at an extraordinary session next to the Bandera monument in L’viv, reacted to the abrogation [skasuvannya] of Viktor Yushchenko’s order about naming Stepan Bandera a ‘Hero of Ukraine’ by affirming that ‘for millions of Ukrainians Bandera was and remains a Ukrainian Hero notwithstanding pitiable and worthless decisions of the courts’ and declaring its intention to rename ‘Stepan Bandera Street’ as ‘Hero of Ukraine Stepan Bandera Street.’”

Torchlit parades behind Bandera’s portrait are common in Ukrainian cities, particularly tomorrow, on his birthday, Jan. 1.

As The New York Times reported, the neo-Nazi group, Right Sector, had the key role in the violent ouster of Yanukovych. The role of neo-fascist groups in the uprising and its influence on Ukrainian society was well reported by mainstream media outlets at the time.

The BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN all reported on Right Sector, C14 and other extremists’ role in the overthrow of Yanukovych. The BBC ran this report a week after his ouster:

After the coup a number of ministers in the new government came from neo-fascist parties. NBC News reported in March 2014: “Svoboda, which means ‘Freedom,’ was given almost a quarter of the Cabinet positions in the interim government formed after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February.”

Svoboda’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, whom McCain and Nuland stood on stage with, once called for the liberation of Ukraine from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” The International Business Times reported:

“In 2005 Tyahnybok signed an open letter to then Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko urging him to ban all Jewish organisations, including the Anti-Defamation League, which he claimed carried out ‘criminal activities [of] organised Jewry’, ultimately aimed at the genocide of the Ukrainian people.”

Before McCain and Nuland embraced Tyahnybok and his social national party, it was condemned by the European Parliament, which said in 2012:

“[Parliament] recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine’s legislature] not to associate with, endorse, or form coalitions with this party.”

Such mainstream reports on Banderism stopped as the neo-fascist role in Ukraine was suppressed in Western media once Russian President Vladimir Putin made “de-nazification” a goal of the invasion. 

In October 2019, U.S. House Democrats had demanded that the Azov Battalion, and openly neo-Nazi group, should be prosecuted as “international terrorists” and the House decided in defense appropriation bills beginning in 2015 that “none of the funds made available by this act may be used to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.”

But by June 2024, the Biden administration said it would lift the ban and permit U.S. weapons and training for the Azov Brigade, following a review by the State Department. 

Not all Western governments began denying that neo-Nazism was still a problem in Ukraine. In April 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky infuriated two former Greek prime ministers and other officials by inviting a member of the Azov Regiment to address the Greek Parliament. Alexis Tsipras, a former premier and leader of the main opposition party, SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance, blasted the appearance of the Azov fighters before parliament.

“Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is a given. But nazis cannot be allowed to speak in parliament,” Tsipras said on social media. “The speech was a provocation.” He said Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis “bears full responsibility. … He talked about a historic day but it is a historical shame.”

Former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras called the Azov video being played in parliament a “big mistake.” Former Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Kotzias said: “The Greek government irresponsibly undermined the struggle of the Ukrainian people, by giving the floor to a Nazi. The responsibilities are heavy. The government should publish a detailed report of preparation and contacts for the event.”

Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis’ MeRA25 party said  Zelenky’s appearance turned into a “Nazi fiesta.”

[Read the full CN response On the Evidence of Neo-Nazi Influence in Ukraine]

News Guard’s Review of CN

Though it had access to the multiple mainstream sources CN relied on, NewsGuard, in its first review of Consortium News on August 11, 2022, bypassed CN‘s detailed response and declared that CN had published “false content” on the issue of the coup and neo-Nazi influence.

A paid subscriber to NewsGuard, or a user in libraries or schools where the service is available for free, has access to the review. By putting one’s cursor over the red flag that was placed next to Consortium News’ urls on internet and social media searches, the subscriber saw a pop-up notice which said:

“Proceed with caution: This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards.”

It described CN as a:

“A website that covers international politics from a left-wing, anti-U.S. perspective that has published false claims about the Ukraine-Russia war and other international conflicts.”

The rating label then stated that Consortium News repeatedly publishes “false content,” does not gather and present information responsibly, and does not regularly correct or clarify errors.

NewsGuard said: “The site’s commentary is frequently critical of the foreign policy of the U.S. and other Western countries, often describing them as ‘imperialistic.’”

To judge the entire publication, rather than individual articles, NewsGuard reviewed six articles out of an archive of about 25,000 on 264 subjects. Its rating is stamped on every online article going back to 1995, including around 700 livestreams and uploaded videos, none of which NewsGuard mentioned in the review.

The archive of Consortium News is vast, because it was founded 30 years ago in 1995. From a mathematical perspective, the probability of an article’s rating being accurate, based on a sample size of six out of 25,000, with hundreds of sub-categories, is unsurprisingly low.

A reliable survey should have a confidence level of 95 percent with a plus or minus error rate of 5 percent. Looking at six articles out of 25,000 yields a potential error rate for any randomly selected article in the CN archive of plus or minus 40 percent.

NewsGuard challenged only a few words in those six articles to tell readers: “Proceed with caution: This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards.”

‘Genocide’ in Donbass

For instance, NewsGuard cited one article that CN republished from the Los Alamos Study Group, in which NewsGuard objected to a single word, “genocide,” in the following sentence: “The Ukrainian government has overtly genocidal policies toward Russian minorities.” It cited a second article by John Pilger that says, “Vladimir Putin refers to the ‘genocide’ in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine.”

NewsGuard said neither the International Criminal Court, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, nor the OSCE had found evidence of genocide in Donbass. In a response to NewsGuard, CN said it took no position on whether Ukraine had committed genocide but that “Genocide in the context of Donbass is an arguable point, and therefore CN published these commentaries.”

(CN has a disclaimer below both articles, which says: “The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.”)

Earlier this month, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, voted 11-4 to reject Ukraine’s bid to dismiss Russia’s counterclaims in a case Ukraine brought against Russia on the charge of genocide. It effectively means the World Court is allowing Russia’s charge of genocide to be adjudicated.

‘Not a Coup’

NewsGuard pointed out a second republished article in which it objects to the single phrase “organized a coup” in “Washington organized a coup against a democratically elected government because we disliked its political complexion.”

NewsGuard then recounts the protesters violence in Kiev’s Independence Square against Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an association and free-trade agreement with the E.U. After Yanukovych agreed to early elections, NewsGuard says,

“… angry protesters demanded Yanukovych’s immediate resignation, and hundreds of police officers guarding government buildings abandoned their posts.Yanukovych fled the same day the agreement was signed, and protesters took control of several government buildings the next day. The Ukrainian parliament then voted 328-0 to remove Yanukovych from office and scheduled early presidential elections the following May, the BBC reported.

These events — which contradict claims that the so-called ‘Maidan revolution’ was in fact a Western-backed ‘coup’ – were extensively covered by international media organizations with correspondents in Ukraine …”

“The Maidan Revolution had all the markings of a popular uprising, not a coup,” NewsGuard said.

As Consortium News showed, citing The Guardian and other mainstream sources, the protestors had been taking over government buildings for days before Yankukoych’s ouster, not the next day, as NewsGuard contends.

Consortium News also made clear the meaningless of an impeachment vote the day after the president was violently forced from office. An impeachment vote would not have succeeded before that because Yanukovych’s party had a majority in the Rada. So the protestors used violence to skirt legal means of removing the leader, which, as CN explained, constituted a coup.

NewsGuard took exception to the word “organize” and “orchestrate” to describe the U.S. involvement in the unconstitutional change of government. Consortium News said the U.S. “organized” the coup in only one article, which NewsGuard singled out. Every other time it is referred to as a “U.S.-backed coup” or an “unconstitutional change of government.

CN used the phrase “orchestrate” in relation to U.S. involvement in two articles, one by John Pilger an the other republished from Common Dreams.

Interestingly, the Common Dreams article was republished in Consortium News word for word. It is the exact same article. However, next to its url online NewsGuard gives a 100 percent grade and next to the exact piece on Consortium News it shows a grade of 35 percent.

Regarding U.S. involvement in the overthrow of Yanukovich, NewsGuard says:

“In fact, while it is true that the U.S. supported Ukraine’s political revolution, also known as Maidan, in 2014, there is no evidence that the U.S. orchestrated the revolution. Between 1992 and 2013, the U.S. government gave approximately $5 billion to support democracy-building programs in Ukraine.

The U.S. aid to Ukraine in 2013, the year the protests started, went to a wide variety of activities,including nuclear nonproliferation efforts, a program to reduce unwanted pregnancies by encouraging the use of contraception, and an initiative toimprove standardized testing.”

This statement does not cite the role of the National Endowment for Democracy played in the protests, as laid out in Consortium News‘s response.

Most importantly, on the question of U.S. involvement, NewsGuard comp omits any mention of the Nuland-Pyatt leaked audio tape, the visits to Maidan by McCain, Murphy and Nuland, the U.S. training of protesters or of the long-term U.S. interests in Ukraine as laid out by Brzezinski.

‘No’ Neo-Nazi Influence in Ukraine

NewsGuard took issue with two CN articles, one by Pilger and one by CN columnist Patrick Lawrence, in which the phrase “infested” with neo-Nazis describes the post-coup Ukraine government.

NewsGuard bluntly stated: “There is no evidence that Nazism has substantial influence in Ukraine,” NewsGuard stated flatly.

“Radical far-right groups do exist in Ukraine and, according to a 2018 Freedom House report, they represent a ‘threat to the democratic development of Ukraine,’” NewsGuard said. “The report stated that ‘street activities,’ which mostly involve the disruption of protests and antisemitic andhomophobic vandalism by far-right groups, including C-14, are having a ‘serious impacton everyday life and societal development in Ukraine.’ However, the report also stated that far-right extremists have poor political representation in Ukraine and no plausible path to power.”

CN pointed out in its response to NewsGuard on this point: This argument of focusing on elections results ignores its extra-parliamentary influence and has been dismissed by a number of mainstream sources, not least of which is the Atlantic Council, probably the think tank most critical of Russia. In a 2019 article, a writer for the Atlantic Council said:

“To be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in Ukraine’s polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of ‘red herring.’ It’s not extremists’ electoral prospects that should concern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity. Whether this is due to a continuing sense of indebtedness to some of these groups for fighting the Russians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real problem and we do no service to Ukraine by sweeping it under the rug.” [Emphasis added.]

“Fear that they might turn on the state itself,” acknowledges the powerful leverage these groups have over the government. The Atlantic Council piece then underscores how influential these groups are:

“It sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but it’s not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote ‘national patriotic education projects’ in the country.

Likewise the Russian critical Bellingcat wrote about the dangerous influence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. In its review of Consortium News, NewsGuard did not take note of the Bellingcat or Atlantic Council piece nor of the mainstream reporting that CN relied on in its defense.

Illustrating the extra-parliamentary influence of neo-Nazism, the mainstream The Kyiv Post reported on a demonstration of the power the military, including the Azov Regiment, had over Zelensky, who had come to power promising to end the civil war with Donbass. About seven months into his term he traveled to the front line in Donbass to tell Ukrainian troops, where Azov is well-represented, to lay down their arms. Instead Zelensky was sent away. 

[See CN‘s full response: On the Neo-Nazi Influence in Ukraine]

Syrian Chemical Weapons

NewsGuard also objected to CN‘s republication of a column by the Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone in which she wrote:

“The OPCW [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] is now subject to the dictates of the U.S. government, as evidenced by the organisation’s coverup of a 2018 false flag incident in Syria which resulted in airstrikes by the U.S., UK and France during Bolton’s tenure as a senior Trump advisor.”

NewsGuard relied on accounts by the unofficial civil defense group White Helmets which said that the Syrian government had bombed the city of Douma in April 2018 with chlorine gas, killing more than 40 civilians.

Johnstone based her column on the reporting of journalist Aaron Mate who revealed through leaked documents and whistleblower accounts that the original team of OPCW inspectors found no convincing evidence of a chemical attack in Douma; that critical evidence was changed or omitted in a March 2019 OPCW report, including German experts who ruled out chlorine gas; that a whistleblower concluded bombs supposedly dropped from the air by Syria where manually placed at the bomb site; and that external pressure, most likely from the United States, was applied on the OPCW to alter its conclusions.

None of this evidence was mentioned by NewsGuard in its review of CN.

The Complaint

Consortium News filed its initial complaint in August 2023 and its second amended complaint in October 2023 against NewsGuard and the United States government in federal court in the Southern District of New York, where NewsGuard is based.

The suit, later dismissed by Judge Failla, alleged that NewsGuard and the Pentagon contracted to abridge the free speech of media organizations that dissented from U.S. foreign and defense policy and that NewsGuard defamed Consortium News in its review.

[Read Consortium News‘ full complaint against NewsGuard and the U.S. government: The Second Amended Complaint]

The Defendants Respond

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a motion to dismiss Consortium News‘ suit, arguing that the $749,387 contract the Pentagon signed with NewsGuard to identify Russian propaganda and “myths spread by websites and news organizations” did not violate the First Amendment because it was protected government speech and not coercion or censorship.

The government argued that because the contract had expired CN had no standing, while CN argued that the effects of the contract continue in NewsGuard’s ongoing labelling of its articles. The government also argued that sovereign immunity bars damages.

[Read the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss.]

NewsGuard also moved to dismiss the case, arguing that there was no state action involved, that NewsGuard is a private company and its contract with the Pentagon was unrelated to its ratings; that there was no coercion or punishment under the First Amendment

(CN had argued that working with the Pentagon, NewsGuard told CN if it didn’t make the corrections it demanded it would receive a negative rating); that the contract had expired, and that there was no defamation because what it wrote about CN was protected opinion and was substantially true and lacked malice.

“Even if this Court finds the statements in question to be factual statements that are not substantially true, Consortium News still must plausibly allege that NewsGuard published the allegedly defamatory statements with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard as to whether they were false or not,” NewsGuard wrote.

In its response to NewsGuard written before NewsGuard rated Consortium News, CN endeavored to prove – relying on evidence published in widely accessible mass media as seen above – that there was a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, that neo-Nazism was influential in the country and that therefore NewsGuard had reason to know that accusing CN of repeatedly publishing false content about this matter was itself false.

[Read NewsGuard’s motion to dismiss]

Updated NewsGuard Review

In mid-March 2025, NewsGuard downgraded its rating of Consortium News from 47.5 percent to 35 percent. Its new warning now reads:

“Proceed with Maximum Caution: This website is unreliable because itseverely violates basic journalistic standards.”

The downgrade puts Consortium News in the same NewsGuard category as Tass and Xinhua, the Russian and Chinese national news agencies.

What changed was a new assessment that CN was no longer disinguishing properly between news and opinion. On this point, its previous assessment of 28 years of CN journalism was reversed for two reasons.

One, NewsGuard mistook fund pitches for commentaries, which weren’t marked as such. And two, NewsGuard treated CN‘s statement of fact that Israel is committing genocide as opinion and thought CN should too. But human rights organizations, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, a U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry, and 86 percent of genocide scholars have concluded that Israel is committing genocide.

NewsGuard also reviewed several more CN articles to increase by a few the number reviewed from just six of 21,000 articles.

The Judgement

Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed with prejudice Consortium News‘ suit on March 26, 2025, alleging First Amendment violations, as well as defamation by NewsGuard.

Regarding the NewsGuard-Pentagon contract, she wrote:

“Plaintiff alleges that NewsGuard’s labeling of Consortium News ‘is performed as a part of [the Misinformation Fingerprints] contract.’ (SAC ¶ 20). On its website, NewsGuard describes the ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ program as a ‘catalogue[ ]’ of ‘false narratives’ by ‘Russia’s propaganda outlets’ that Russia has used to ‘create[ ] pretexts or justifications for war’ in Ukraine. (Id. ¶ 144 (quoting id., Ex. Q)). According to NewsGuard, this ‘Misinformation Fingerprints’ program focuses on, among others, ‘three key narratives leading Russia’s Ukraine propaganda effort,’ namely that (i) ‘[t]he West staged a coup to overthrow the Ukrainian government,’ (ii) ‘Ukrainian politics and society is dominated by Nazi ideology and (iii) ‘[e]thnic Russians in [the] Donbas [region of Ukraine] have been subjected to genocide.’”

These are the exact four points that NewsGuard judged Consortium News on negatively. The judge wrote:

“NewsGuard claims that Plaintiff published false content regarding a 2014 “coup” organized by the U.S. in Ukraine; the prevalence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine; and a genocide committed against ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s Donbas region — which, as it happens, are three of the key narrative “myths” that are the subject of the Misinformation Fingerprints program.”

She summarized CN‘s case thusly:

“Broadly speaking, NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints contract with the Government forms the basis of Plaintiff’s claim that both Defendants coerced Plaintiff in violation of its First Amendment rights. …(Count I)). By contrast, NewsGuard’s statements that Plaintiff publishes false content and does not adhere to journalistic standards form the basis of Plaintiff’s defamation claim against NewsGuard alone. (Count II)).”

The judge described Consortium News as offering “a left-wing take on the news with an independent — and somewhat contrarian — streak.” She said that CN engaged in “the legal equivalent of a Hail Mary pass” when it pointed out to the court a presidential executive order barring government employees from working with private companies to suppress Americans’ free speech.

Judge Failla dismissed the First Amendment issue by ruling that Consortium News did not have standing because it could not establish the nexus between the government and NewsGuard which would make NewsGuard a “state actor.”

She dismissed the defamation case because she ruled that NewsGuard’s ratings were “protected opinion,” which she likened to restaurant reviews. She also ruled that CN failed to demonstrate that NewsGuard had acted with malice, in other words that NewsGuard knew that it was false to accuse CN of repeatedly publishing false content but did so anyway to suppress criticism of U.S. policy in Ukraine.

[Read the judgement in full]

On the day of Failla’s judgement a pinned tweet on Consortium News‘ X page about its lawsuit disappeared without notification.  The tweet had been seen 35 million times before it was removed.

The Settlement

Citing New York State’s SLAPP law, which allows legal fees to be claimed if a case is dismissed for substantive rather than procedural reasons, NewsGuard offered a settlement price of more than $100,000 to pay for its legal fees if CN also agreed not to appeal.

If CN appealed and lost, NewsGuard said, it would seek as much as $400,000 from Consortium News. A settlement was reached of $65,000 in payment to NewsGuard, with no appeal from Consortium News.

Consortium News regrets that it was never given the chance at discovery and the opportunity to argue the substantive merits of its case in court, which would have effectively put U.S. foreign policy and mainstream media coverage of Ukraine on trial.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

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