Hi Kevin - good questions, and concerns. I covered NewsGuard's ratings system here: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/315516/brill-crovitz-launch-newsguard-to-rate-sources-f.html
You can also read more about the process of its ratings system here: https://www.newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/

Historically, spending starts slowing down once a political party decides on its candidates, regardless whether there are two or more candidates still on primary ballots. Even without the virus, candidate spending was projected to fall during the summer as well. Normally, almost 75% of a year's political media buying gets crammed into the last two months of the campaign after the Labor Day holiday, as people start to make decisions after the summer vacxation. 

Good. The public needs to see what depths the Democrats will stoop to win an election, even use a hundred-year crisis to blame the man on whose watch the external crisis hit. By the same logic, no hurricane made landfall in the Southeast during the Obama years, so it's to his credit.

This is a brilliant ad that works.  That's why Trump is so desperate to get it off the air.

He continues to make bad decisions that will cost more lives.  The public deserves to know that.  And he has to own his lies.

http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-is-making-bad-covid-19-decisions.html

Death by lack of imagination.  Hopefully this will help...
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/if-you-live-in-moment-you-dont.html

Listen to Guv Cuomo's daily briefing - stop watching Trump.  It's really that simple.
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/if-you-live-in-moment-you-dont.html

Yeah.  He still doesn't get it...
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/if-you-live-in-moment-you-dont.html

People make bad decsions when they are under stress...
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-is-making-bad-covid-19-decisions.html

Sorry.  Not true. As soon as Wuhan was locked down - 1/23 - Wall Street Journal, New York Times and CNN began intensive daily coverage. 

More Fox viewers died from the flu and more will die from COVID-19, because fake news is deadly.
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/if-you-live-in-moment-you-dont.html

Good.  The public needs to be made aware of Trump's poor decisions and how many people will die because of them.  http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-is-making-bad-covid-19-decisions.html

You're really not getting this.  Cases outside of NYC won't peak until late May.  
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/if-you-live-in-moment-you-dont.html

So sad.  Watching Fox News can literally kill you...
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/if-you-live-in-moment-you-dont.html

We are going to need a lot more "we" and a lot less "me," to get through this...
http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2020/03/american-individualism-has-become.html

Who is "NewsGuard" to be trusted as censor? What percentage of a site's content needs to be "misinformation" for the whole site to be condemned? What do you do with sites that have both news and opinions (such as most newspapers)?  What if material identified as "misinformation" is later found correct - how are corrections made known? And what about content deemed valid that later proves incorrect - is the site then banned? Censorship is very tricky indeed!

Less people will be infected because of all the media. True, it has been overdone by the sun because there is some $ gain and no one wants to be caught with their pants down. Or feel helpless. Then, we must remember, most people out there with so much other distraction have the memory of a flea. BTW, did you get your Corvid-19 shot this year ? ....And just because of the ignorance of the "FLU" flu, it doesn't mean we shoud extend it to this infection. Do you really want to know what would happen if it were ignored ? Meanwhile, please take care, stay well and stay home while biting down on patience. 

Great article

After spending 30 years in the ad agency world, no, I really hope Cannes basically is shut down. It is totally dinosauric to just say "this is creative and this isn't"

Finally, a rational opionion/thought on this pandemic.

Does your company and its clients know about your "skills" ?

George, unlike many other TV time buys sports sponsorships are not merely a  way to capture mostly male eyeballs. There are far cheaper ways to do this via other types on TV content. Rather, sports sponsorships are primarily an image enhancing ploy tied in with merchandising and star endorsements---- which sitcoms, dramas and talk or reality show buys can't provide. The same mostly male eyeballs are always readily available any time an advertiser wishes to reach them---without going the sports route.

Amazing how rump supporters call the real media "leftist" because the truth hurts their feeings.  If the truth favors the left they hate it and issue epitaphs i.e. leftist media.

I am so thoroughly amazed that even with an epidemic running rampant through the country these Trump supporters will buy any false narrative to protect their leader.

There can be no doubt that Trump is completely unsuited to the job as President. He is a dangerous con man.  To call that out is patriotic. 

I don't buy that calling this out will get him re-elected.  No.  

And calling out Trump supporters as idiots or rascists or both makes me feel a whole lot better.  If the current situation doesn't convince them NOTHING will.

True that, Tom. What the left seems incapable of understanding is that the more they highlight these types of things, the more it helps Trump. Paradoxically, the less it "hurts his re-election."

Here's what I've learned in nearly four years.

Trump is not crazy. As such, he doesn't want the ad pulled. He's pretending he wants it pulled because that reaction... 

1) fires up his base, and

2) fires up the left to make sure that not only will it never be pulled, but that the SuperPac will double, triple, even quadruple down.

Rubes like Friedman go along for the ride, helping to assure another four years of Trump (because both of those two reactions help Trump).

Honestly, one of the damnedest, inexplicable things I've ever seen, the way the leftist media plays right into Trumps wily political ways.

Remember the day before Election Day in 2016? The leftist media convinced themselves that Trump had zero chance, in part because they were so self-satisfied with the ongoing hatchet jobs they did on the buffoon. All those hatchet attacks actually elevated the guy, and got him elected.

The left, and the leftist media, have proven themselves incapable of understanding this basic paradoxical truth. Surely, the ten thousand cuts they delivered day after day, and week after week to the guy made him less electable in 2016, no? And the ten million cuts they've continued to abuse his swollen body with since then? Surely that means Joe Biden will win this year, yes?

Damnedest, most foolish and irresponsible blindness I've ever witnessed.

No news organizations took this threat seriously, everyone was too busy following the impeachment which was a big waste of time.  NYT, Washpo, CNN and MSNBC all ran stories suggesting that the threat was minimal at best...nice try tho.  The damn mayor of NY was telling people to go about your normal lives the same day NBA suspended their season and that the threat was still minimal. It's disgusting to keep throwing stones when we should be coming together.