A right-wing news network lobbied Florida lawmakers to defund fact-checkers, records show

Records show lobbyists for Newsmax quietly worked with Republican lawmakers in Florida on an effort to choke off funding for firms that rate news outlets based on accuracy and ethics.

Photo credit: DXR

This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter and podcast devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the work of others — about Florida politics, with an emphasis on the ways that big businesses and other special interests influence public policy in the state. Seeking Rents is produced by veteran investigative journalist Jason Garcia, and it is free to all. But please consider a voluntary paid subscription, if you can afford one, to help support our work. And check out our video channel, too.

Newsmax — the right-wing cable news network that grew in popularity by promoting false election-fraud claims after the 2020 presidential election — secretly lobbied Republican leaders in Florida to choke off funding for fact-checking organizations and media-monitoring firms that rate news outlets based on their accuracy and ethics.

Records obtained by Seeking Rents show that lobbyists for Newsmax worked with GOP leaders in the Florida House of Representatives on a new state law that forbids state agencies from contracting with any businesses that work with “media reliability and bias monitors.”

The measure is meant to squeeze companies like NewsGuard Technologies, a seven-year-old startup co-founded by a former Wall Street Journal publisher that evaluates news outlets based on their accuracy and adherence to journalistic standards. NewsGuard’s credibility ratings are used by clients such as search engines, AI developers, news aggregators, and brand-sensitive businesses wary of having their advertisements appear on disreputable sites.

Newsmax — which has in recent months agreed to pay more than $100 million to settle defamation suits stemming from false claims it aired about the 2020 election — currently scores just 20 out of 100 on NewsGuard’s scale.

The legislation Newsmax lobbied for passed as part of legislation known as the “budget-implementing bill.”

Based in Boca Raton and run by a friend of President Donald Trump, Newsmax has grown rapidly in recent years to become one of the country’s top cable news networks. The company says it reaches more than 40 million Americans each month and generates more than $100 million a year in advertising revenue.

But Newsmax executives complain that poor accuracy ratings from companies like NewsGuard deter some advertisers from buying on its platforms.

So the company hired a team of lobbyists in Tallahassee who, records show, worked with Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature to go after NewsGuard and its ilk.

The effort to target NewsGuard began as House Bill 1449, a standalone bill forbidding state agencies from contracting with any business that uses the services of another firm to rate news outlets based on “the factual accuracy of their content” or their record on “misinformation, bias, adherence to journalistic standards or ethics.”

House Bill 1449 failed to pass. But House leaders slipped language from the bill into a separate piece of legislation at the last minute. The provision was buried on page 143 of a 154-page budget bill that wasn’t released to the public until the final Friday evening of session.

The origins of the legislation were, at the time, something of a mystery. Though state House rules require lobbyists to disclose each specific bill and issue they are lobbying on, no one filed disclosures for House Bill 1449 or anything like it.

But through a public records request, Seeking Rents obtained a copy of an internal bill-tracking spreadsheet maintained by Rep. John Snyder, a Republican from Stuart who sponsored House Bill 1449. That spreadsheet revealed that Snyder had worked on the legislation with a lobbyist from GrayRobinson, a law firm whose clients include Newsmax.

After Seeking Rents inquired about a missing lobbyist disclosure, two lobbyists at the firm — one of whom is a former speaker of the state House himself — disclosed that they lobbied during the session on Newsmax’s behalf on the budget bill to which the language from House Bill 1449 had been added.

House Bill 5003 was the House version of the budget-implementing bill, which passed as Senate Bill 2502.

Newsmax, which records show has paid GrayRobinson approximately $30,000 in legislative lobbying fees so far this year, declined to answer specific questions about its efforts in Tallahassee.

The network said it was pleased with the result, though.

“While Newsmax does not comment on our lobby activities, we’re glad the legislature passed a law to protect against censorship,” a Newsmax spokesperson said in an emailed statement, echoing a long-running Newsmax claim that NewsGuard is biased against conservative media.

But while Newsmax fares poorly when evaluated for accuracy and ethics, plenty of other conservative publications that are more journalistically rigorous do just fine under NewsGuard’s ratings. The National Review and Washington Examiner, for instance, both score 92.5. The Daily Caller, a news site co-founded by the far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, rates an 82.

Meanwhile, Fox News (69.5) fares better under NewsGuard’s metrics than MSNBC (49.5).

Appointees in the Trump administration and some Republican members of Congress have also targeted NewsGuard and its potential clients — often earning airtime and praise on Newsmax while they do.

But the new Florida law appears to be a first-of-its kind attack at the state level. NewsGuard hasn’t yet seen any similar legislation in other states, said Gordon Crovitz, the former Wall Street Journal publisher who co-founded NewsGuard with Steven Brill, a fellow journalist who previously launched American Lawyer magazine and Court TV.

Crovitz said NewsGuard can’t comment on any impact from the new law because it doesn’t know whether there’s been any effect on potential business. But he said it was ironic to be accused of censorship by Newsmax when “we’re First Amendment absolutists.”

“As a lifelong conservative, I also find it ironic that a news outlet would secretly lobby state legislators to violate our First Amendment rights instead of just doing its job of reporting in a trustworthy manner," Crovitz said.

Newsmax, for its part, has celebrated the new law on air.

Shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the legislation, the network ran a segment hailing Florida leaders for the “groundbreaking move.” An anchor heaped praise on DeSantis, House Speaker Danny Perez (R-Miami), and Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula). A guest called the new law “a huge deal.”

They never mentioned that Newsmax lobbied for it.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the National Review.