
After raising $6 million, the start-up NewsGuard, co-founded by Steve Brill, has signed Microsoft as its first major client. The main goal: to combat the spread of false stories on the internet.
Media entrepreneur Steven Brill thinks there’s something missing from all the efforts to separate fake news from the real kind: Some smart and discerning humans. Faced with the waves of mis- and disinformation lapping up on social media, Brill is proposing to apply some reader-beware labels to Internet news sources. His idea: ratings, as determined by teams of independent journalists, that would enable readers to understand where their news — or “news” — is coming from.