AI vs. truth: Inside the fight to keep propaganda out of the algorithm

A revealing conversation with NewsGuard’s Steven Brill on trust, truth, and the battle for clean data in the AI age.  The AI era is rewriting the rules of media — but what happens when disinformation sneaks into the algorithms shaping what we see and believe?

This week on The Media Copilot, I sat down with Steven Brill, a legend in the journalism world and co-founder of NewsGuard, the company working to restore trust in news. Steven’s media legacy includes launching Court TV, creating American Lawyer magazine, and authoring bestsellers on health care, education, and much more. But his latest focus? Making sense of AI’s impact on information integrity.

In this episode, we dive into:

• The bombshell NewsGuard report exposing a Russian propaganda campaign that infiltrated AI training data
  

• What this means for platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity
  

• How to fight misinformation inside the machine
  

• Whether NewsGuard itself can stay unbiased — and how it handles critics
  

• What’s next for NewsGuard in the AI era (including an exclusive announcement: NewsGuard’s TrueNews AI, a small language model that indexes only sites NewsGuard deems “not unreliable”)
  

If you care about the future of media, credibility, and the truth itself in a world shaped by AI, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

Listen now to hear from Steven Brill on the fight to keep our information ecosystem clean — and how we all have a role to play.

Coming up: Free Webinar – April 10

I'm also hosting a live webinar on Thursday, April 10 with David Buttle, founder of DJB Strategies. We'll be taking a deep dive into AI substitution risk — how AI-powered search engines are summarizing the news, killing clicks, and reshaping publisher economics.

We'll cover:

• What types of content are most at risk
  

• Why AI search is disrupting audience engagement
  

• Tactical strategies to protect and future-proof your content business
  

Visit mediacopilot.ai to register and secure your spot.

The Media Copilot is a podcast and newsletter that explores how generative AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

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This episode of The Media CoPilot was produced by Pete Pachal, Executive Producer Michele Musso, and with video/audio editing by the Musso Media team. Produced by .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}