The former publisher of the Wall Street Journal says Facebook and Google don't really want to be the ones solving their fake news problem - so he hopes to do it for them

Michael Seto/Business Insider

Gordon Crovitz

• The startup NewsGuard has raised $6 million to help combat the spread of fake news.
• The firm is confident that tech platforms like Facebook and Google will pay to license the tool since these companies don't want to be in the business of policing content.
• The ad giant Publicis, a lead investor, says it's crucial for the platforms to try everything; fake news is "a disease that is contaminating their image."

A new startup says it can help build a wall around fake news - and make Facebook and Google pay for it.

Former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and prominent media industry veteran/critic Steve Brill have raised $6 million to build NewsGuard, a new technology designed to grade news stories so that consumers understand what they are reading and sharing on social media.

And the two say they've been in discussions with the biggest news platforms in the world (i.e. Facebook and Google) are confident that the companies will pay to license the product.

Why? Neither Google nor Facebook really wants to be in the business of playing referee when it comes to news content, they say. Thus, they should welcome an outsider's help.

A nutrition label for social news

NewsGuard is still in development, but the idea is that - starting late this year - grades will start appearing next to articles and videos shared via platforms like Facebook, letting people know how trustworthy the source of news is.

The startup plans to vet and grade content from 7,500 media companies. Each publication will get a label: Green, Yellow, or Red.

The plan is to hire dozens of journalists to review each of these companies' sites, come up with the appropriate color designation, and produce a detailed description of these news organizations histories and practices- a "nutrition label," says Crovitz, who was an early investor in Business Insider.

When scrolling through social media feeds, people will be able to mouse over these color labels to get more information on which NewsGuard staffers conducted the evaluation, and they can directly comment and even contest the labels if they so choose.

This should over time help consumers figure out which publications are reliable, and which - like the now-defunct pseudo newspaper the Denver Guardian - may not be so trustworthy.

Not only should this better educate the public, Brill says, but it should help advertisers avoid being associated with fake news.

Facebook and Google don't want to be editors

Legitimate publishers who have the most to gain potentially from NewsGuard, won't have to cough up a dime. Instead, the plan is to license the tool to tech companies.

"We're asking the platforms to do it," Crovitz told Business Insider. "We're not charging publishers
They can tout it, or do nothing. We're focused on the people that created the problem in the first place."

Crovitz said despite recent efforts to clean up the news feed, Silicon Valley tech giants do not want to be see censoring or favoring any publication. "They don't like this role," he said. So he's confident that an outside third party will be welcomed, and expects that one of the big tech platforms will sign on as a paying customer in a couple of months.

Longtime media entrepreneur Steve Brill

"They've been groping for a solution," he said. "It's clear they don't want to be editors or judges of content."

At this point, neither Facebook, Google or Twitter have publicly committed to licensing NewsGuard - as the product is still being built and won't launch in the US until November.

To be sure, each of these tech platforms has taken several steps on its own to better label news sources, and filter out bad ones - in Facebook's case, with help from their own community.

But at the same time, Facebook's recent algorithm tweak - designed to lessen the amount of news content on the social network - seems to exemplify the company's ambivalence about the content business.

If the big tech platforms aren't sure about their roles in influencing the news business, are advertisers any clearer?

After all, big marketers seem to have punished YouTube more than Facebook or even Google's news or search platforms.

Brill contended that Facebook may be facing more ad pressure behind the scenes. Either way, given advertisers' increased caution regarding fake news, news publications are being punished across the board.

"That's a really dangerous thing," he said. "News publishers are having a hard time as it is."

'Just look at the US election'

Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes

Beyond ad budgets, Facebook and Google's global reputations are vulnerable if fake news persists, says Maurice Lévy, former CEO of the ad agency holding company Publicis Groupe, which is NewsGuard's lead investor.

"My conviction is that the platforms want a solution to fake news," said Lévy, who recently was named the president of Publicis' supervisory board. "It's a disease that is contaminating their image. They understand that their credibility is on the line. And what's also at stake is billions, with a capital 'b,' of advertisers' budgets. So it's in their interest."

"If you look at the US election, you have seen how much Facebook's image has been damaged." Assuming the product works, "I don't see why they wouldn't use it," he said. "Otherwise this means that they don't care."