The Burchfield Penney Art Center auditorium buzzed with the kind of quiet anticipation that often precedes a meaningful conversation about the future of democracy. On the evening of October 22, Investigative Post brought together an audience of journalists, students, and concerned citizens for a public forum titled “The Plague of Online Disinformation: Problems & Solutions.” At the front of the room sat Steven Brill, the co-founder of NewsGuard, and his colleague Sofia Rubinson, a journalist and analyst for the organization. Moderating the evening was Jim Heaney, the editor and executive director of Investigative Post, whose questions guided the discussion through the murky waters of modern media consumption. The topic was urgent: how do ordinary people know what to believe when the internet is flooded with fabricated stories, algorithmically amplified rumors, and increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence? Brill and Rubinson were there to offer not just a diagnosis but also a practical answer. Their message was not one of doom, but of measurable, transparent solutions. As the audience settled into their seats, there was a sense that this was not going to be another abstract lecture about the importance of media literacy. Instead, it was a demonstration of a working system, one that has already rated tens of thousands of news websites and is now building artificial intelligence tools designed to steer people back toward credible information. For many in the room, the evening would change the way they thought about both journalism and technology.
NewsGuard itself is built on a surprisingly simple idea: that every news outlet should be evaluated using the same journalistic standards, and that the results of those evaluations should be public. Since its founding, the company has developed a rating system that measures credibility and transparency, examining such factors as whether a site clearly labels opinion, discloses ownership, corrects errors, and avoids publishing false content. As of the event, NewsGuard has rated around 36,000 news and information sites, assigning each one a score that helps readers understand whether they are looking at a legitimate news organization or a propaganda outlet. But the truly ambitious part of the project, and the part that captured the audience’s imagination, is NewsGuard AI. This new chatbot, released in June 2026, was trained using the 12,000 news sites that earned the highest ratings from NewsGuard’s team of journalists. Unlike ChatGPT and other large language models that draw on the entire internet—including blogs, conspiracy forums, and anonymous social media posts—NewsGuard AI only draws its answers from a curated library of sources that have already passed strict journalistic review. A live demonstration during the event showed how this works in practice. When asked a question about a current event, the chatbot did not generate a smooth, confident answer from nowhere. Instead, it produced a reply composed entirely of information found in reputable news stories, complete with direct links to the original articles. There was no warm personality, no attempt to guess what the user wanted to hear, no philosophical musings. Just facts, traceable to their origins. That alone seemed revolutionary in a digital landscape where chat applications frequently invent citations and present misinformation with the same polished tone as verified reporting.
One of the most striking takeaways from the evening came from Marcus Ramos, editor-in-chief of The Record, who admitted that he had long felt overwhelmed by the sheer difficulty of finding trustworthy news. He described the current media environment as a “cloak-and-dagger” world, where outlets hide their ownership, their political leanings, and their sources until readers have already clicked and formed their impressions. For a young person trying to stay informed, he said, that creates an absurd rabbit hole of verification, one that most people simply abandon out of exhaustion. This is where NewsGuard offers a lifeline. Rather than forcing the public to become private investigators who trace every byline back to its financial or ideological roots, NewsGuard does the work in advance and publishes the results in clear, accessible language. Marcus was especially interested in NewsGuard AI because it seems to solve a problem he has grappled with in his own reporting: the tendency of AI to reassure users rather than inform them. By refusing to form opinions, by avoiding the sycophantic tone common to most chatbots, and by providing source links for every claim, NewsGuard AI operates more like a sophisticated search engine than a conversational companion. In his view, that is exactly what the technology should be. We do not need artificial intelligence to tell us what to think, he argued. We need it to show us what is true, and then step aside so we can make up our own minds. The fact that NewsGuard plans to expand its system gives him hope that credible information will become more accessible, not less, as the tool matures.
Grace Cole, managing editor of The Record, offered a more emotional response to the presentation. She admitted that she walked into the auditorium with a sense of dread about the world her generation is inheriting, a world where disinformation campaigns can swing elections, undermine vaccines, and turn ordinary people against one another. But the NewsGuard event gave her something she did not expect: hope. She praised the organization for setting a standard not only for journalists but for technology companies and democratic movements everywhere. In an age when many news outlets chase clicks with sensational headlines, NewsGuard’s insistence on credibility and transparency feels almost radical. Grace was also moved by the economic model behind NewsGuard AI. The chatbot’s profits are shared with the news organizations whose reporting powers its answers, which means that every time someone uses the tool to learn about the world, a portion of the money goes back to the journalists who actually did the reporting. That, she said, is a virtuous cycle in an industry that has spent the last two decades watching its revenue dissolve. Matthew Barton, senior editor of The Record, was equally enthusiastic. He described himself as someone who loves nothing more than a good conversation about journalism, and this event delivered on that front. What impressed him, he said, was the sheer scale of NewsGuard’s work. In a world where we are told that everything has already been invented, it was surprising to encounter a tool that genuinely seems to be the first of its kind. He liked the idea that NewsGuard AI has been built around human-centered news gathering, meaning that the information it distributes begins with a real journalist who interviewed real sources and did real fact-checking. The profit split with news organizations, the direct links to original source material, and the overall commitment to rewarding honest work struck him as exactly what the internet should be doing but rarely does.
Lucas Lyon, a staff writer for The Record, came into the event knowing absolutely nothing about NewsGuard. He had never heard of its rating system, had no idea it had created an AI chatbot, and was prepared to be skeptical. Instead, he found himself fascinated. Lucas pointed out that reliable journalism feels increasingly difficult to find, especially when absurd and deceptive stories seem to generate the most clicks. In that kind of environment, a company that values reliability above everything else feels refreshing, almost like a countercultural gesture. He admitted that whether any AI tool should exist is still an open question, and that no chatbot, however carefully designed, is perfect. But if AI is going to exist, he argued, it should work the way NewsGuard AI works: telling no lies, inventing no stories, and sticking to facts drawn from sources deemed trustworthy by professional journalists. The waters are still muddy when it comes to artificial intelligence, Lucas acknowledged, but he left the event believing that NewsGuard is a step in the right direction, and that only time will tell whether it can live up to its promise. Owen Weiner, another staff writer, came away with a different kind of appreciation for the evening. He was struck by the broader warnings about online trackers that gather data on every click, every scroll, every moment of hesitation, and how that data can be used to manipulate us. The live demo of NewsGuard AI, he said, made him more cautious about his own internet habits and more aware of how deeply codependent journalism and technology have become. He also shared some practical details from the event, including the fact that NewsGuard’s team consists of 45 employees who operate the AI through 31 separate instructions. That human oversight, he noted, is what separates the tool from the wild, unregulated experiments that we have seen elsewhere in the tech industry.
In the end, the evening at the Burchfield Penney Art Center was about more than just a new product or a company’s publicity event. It was a reminder that journalism, at its core, is an act of service to the public, and that the internet, for all its wonders, has made it dangerously easy to confuse noise with knowledge. The members of The Record who attended left the auditorium with a shared sense of hope and a renewed commitment to their own craft. They had been reminded that trustworthy reporting is not a luxury but a necessity, and that there are people working hard to build systems that protect it. They also learned something about their own responsibilities as readers and citizens. We are all navigating a digital ocean where bad actors, algorithms, and unverified claims exist side by side with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. Tools like NewsGuard help us find the reliable anchors, but they do not replace our need to think critically, to read carefully, and to seek out multiple perspectives. The discussion ended with a Q-and-A session, during which Brill and Rubinson answered questions about their team, their funding, and their plans for the future. The message was clear: the fight against online disinformation is far from over, but it is not unwinnable. With more investment in human-centered journalism, more transparency about how news is gathered and funded, and more tools that put the truth before the algorithm, we may yet learn to navigate the digital age without losing our grip on reality. For the young journalists in the room, and for everyone who cares about the future of an informed society, that was the most hopeful thought of all.