A First Amendment lawsuit challenges FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson's vendetta against NewsGuard

"Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), thinks NewsGuard, a company that rates the transparency and credibility of online news sources, is biased against conservatives. There is not much evidence to support that claim. But even if it were true, NewsGuard argues in a First Amendment lawsuit it filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Ferguson would have no business using his regulatory authority to harass the company and discourage advertisers from relying on its ratings."

""Under the guise of a supposed antitrust investigation, the FTC has demanded all documents (memos, emails, texts, reporters' notes, subscriber lists, analyses, financial reports, and more) that NewsGuard has created or received since its founding in 2018," the complaint notes. The FTC also has directly attacked NewsGuard's revenue by conditioning the merger of two advertising agencies on the resulting company's agreement to refrain from subscribing to the rating service."

""NewsGuard's rating service is quintessential journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment," says Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which is representing the company. He adds that the Supreme Court, in the 2024 case Moody v. NetChoice, "unanimously affirmed that the government has no legitimate role in saying what counts as the right balance of private expression-to 'un-bias' what it thinks is biased.""

Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, believes NewsGuard is biased against conservatives, though evidence for that claim is limited. NewsGuard filed a First Amendment lawsuit asserting that the FTC has no business using regulatory authority to harass the company or deter advertisers from using its ratings. The FTC demanded extensive records created or received by NewsGuard since 2018 and conditioned an advertising-agency merger on avoiding subscription to the rating service. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression represents NewsGuard and contends NewsGuard's ratings are journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment, citing Moody v. NetChoice.

Read at Reason.com