South Carolina’s new state budget carries a clause that bars state agencies from spending state money on advertising agencies that rate the news — or that hire anyone who does.

It is called Proviso 117.211, “Media Reliability Monitoring,” and it sits in Part IB of the FY2026-27 general appropriations act, H.5126, ratified as R276 on Aug. 11 [South Carolina General Assembly, 2026].

Four things are worth knowing before the shorthand hardens. It names no company. It expires June 30, 2027. The standalone bill that would have made it permanent law never got out of committee. And for Horry County, the money it touches is the state advertising budget that sells Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand to Charlotte, Atlanta and Washington.

What the proviso actually says

Understanding Fake News Rating Sites and Their Impact

The implications of this new rule is crucial, especially for those engaging with Fake News Rating Sites, as they can influence public perception and media trust about conservative news outlets, like MyrtleBeachSC News.

The operative sentence is one line: “For the current fiscal year, a state agency may not use state funds to contract with an advertising agency or other contractor who acts as or uses the services of media reliability monitors” [South Carolina General Assembly, 2026].

The rest defines the term. A “media reliability monitor” is any contractor whose primary or principal function is to rate or rank news and information services for the factual accuracy of their content across any medium, or to provide ratings or “a subjective evaluation” of them regarding misinformation, bias, adherence to journalistic standards, or ethics. The term “includes, but is not limited to, organizations that engage in fact checking.”

Three things are carved out: audience size, viewership and demographic ratings, which protects the ordinary data behind any media buy; press and video clipping; and news aggregation for public relations. The everyday machinery of buying advertising is untouched. What the proviso reaches is the judgment of whether an outlet is accurate or biased.

**The word “ban” overstates what the General Assembly did.** The proviso opens “For the current fiscal year,” and the act suspends inconsistent provisions “for Fiscal Year 2026-27.” It governs July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, and lapses unless legislators write it into next year’s budget. Florida has enacted its version twice in consecutive budgets for exactly that reason [Daily Signal, 2026]. West Virginia passed a permanent statute instead, SB 531, the First Amendment Preservation Act [West Virginia Legislature, 2026]. South Carolina took the weaker path.

Nor does the proviso prohibit anyone from publishing ratings or impose a penalty on any rating firm, and it does not reach counties, cities, chambers of commerce or private advertisers. It conditions how the state spends its own money.

The permanent bill and the one-year clause

South Carolina also has a permanent version pending. S.1094, also titled the First Amendment Preservation Act, was introduced April 1 by Sens. Billy Garrett, Tom Corbin, Carlisle Kennedy and Josh Kimbrell — no Horry County senator among the sponsors — and referred to Senate Finance the same day. It has two recorded actions in its entire life, both on April 1, and has passed neither chamber [South Carolina General Assembly, 2026].

The Senate Finance Committee reported out its version of the budget on April 14, and that version contained Proviso 117.211. The budget the House passed in March did not: the phrases “Media Reliability” and “rate or rank” appear nowhere in it. The proviso survived the Senate floor unchanged, and the conference committee’s final actions list records “117.211 Senate Media Reliability Monitoring” — conferees adopted the Senate language intact.

The two texts are similar but not identical, and nothing in the public file — no committee record, amendment sponsor or floor statement — explains how the budget language came to be drafted or by whom.

The differences matter. S.1094 would create a permanent code section, define a broader term, “media reliability and bias monitor,” expressly cover programmatic advertising, and require written certification from every bidder. Proviso 117.211 does none of that, and without a certification mechanism, how the state verifies compliance is unspecified.

One question about the proviso’s status remains open. Gov. Henry McMaster acted on the budget Aug. 17, issuing 14 line-item vetoes [SC Daily Gazette, 2026]. Published accounts of those vetoes do not mention 117.211, but the governor’s veto message is a scanned document that cannot be searched electronically, and the General Assembly has not yet voted on the vetoes. Until the veto list is confirmed line by line and legislators act, the proviso’s final standing is not settled.

The Horry County money

The state’s tourism advertising runs through the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism — a state agency buying advertising with state funds through an outside firm, which places it squarely within the category the proviso covers.

Being covered by a rule is not the same as breaching one. The proviso creates a compliance question for state advertising contracts going forward. It is not a finding about anyone’s past conduct, and there is no evidence that SCPRT or any firm working for it has ever contracted with NewsGuard, Ad Fontes Media, the Global Disinformation Index or any other rating service.

With that established: SCPRT’s agency of record is 9Rooftops, reappointed in October 2024 and holder of the account since 2013, which places the buys for the Discover South Carolina campaign [MarketingReport, 2024]. Nothing in the public record indicates the firm has used a media rating service, and no one has alleged that it has.

The FY2026-27 act appropriates $43,601,875 for SCPRT tourism sales and marketing, including advertising at $17,514,793, destination-specific advertising at $18,275,000, and regional promotions at $4,900,000 [South Carolina General Assembly, 2026]. Myrtle Beach is one of five primary destinations in that program, alongside Charleston, Hilton Head, Columbia and Greenville.

The boundary matters locally. The proviso does not reach Myrtle Beach’s local accommodations tax revenue or the 1% Tourism Development Fee that funds the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce’s promotional work. That is local revenue under local contracts.

Whether the restriction follows state grant dollars down to local destination marketing organizations is unresolved. A grant is the state awarding money to a recipient that then hires its own agency. The proviso’s text does not address grants, and we located no published guidance interpreting it.

NewsGuard, and what NewsGuard says

NewsGuard Technologies was founded in 2018 by L. Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal publisher, and Steven Brill, founder of The American Lawyer and Court TV, with a seed round of roughly $6 million led by the advertising holding company Publicis Groupe. The company says its ratings cover more than 35,000 online sources and that it sells them to platforms, AI companies and advertising agencies — the last being the relationship 117.211 addresses.

The sharpest public accusation against the company comes from a party with a direct stake in the fight. Newsmax is rated 20 out of 100 by NewsGuard, is a member of the Independent Media Council — the coalition of conservative and independent outlets campaigning for provisions like South Carolina’s — and is identified in NewsGuard’s federal lawsuit as having urged the Federal Trade Commission campaign against it. Newsmax spokesman Bill Daddi told The Associated Press that “NewsGuard was started by Steve Brill to target conservative media and get ad agencies to deny them advertising revenue as a means of censorship” [Associated Press, 2026].

NewsGuard rejects the bias characterization. Brill and Crovitz wrote in February that the company’s ratings “remain nonpartisan and based on disclosed journalistic criteria,” and noted that conservative outlets including Fox News and the Washington Examiner score higher than comparable liberal outlets [NewsGuard, 2026]. The company states on its site that “our entire business is producing — not blocking — speech.” Those statements answer whether the ratings are biased; they do not directly address the separate allegation about why the company was founded.

NewsGuard has not commented publicly on South Carolina’s proviso, which was ratified a week ago. We have asked the company for comment and will update this story with its response.

The evidence on bias, with both sample sizes

The case for measures like this rests substantially on studies by the Media Research Center, itself an Independent Media Council member. Its January 2023 analysis, published on NewsBusters, found left and lean-left outlets averaging 91 out of 100 against 66 for right and lean-right outlets — a 25-point gap. It classified outlets using the AllSides bias chart and sampled 31 left-leaning and 25 right-leaning sources, 56 in all [Media Research Center, 2023].

A peer-reviewed study points the other way. Researchers at the Complexity Science Hub, publishing in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media in January 2025, analyzed NewsGuard ratings for more than 11,000 news sources across nine countries and found no evidence of discrimination against conservative outlets. Lead author Jula Lühring said it “seems unlikely that NewsGuard has an inherent bias against conservative sources,” attributing lower scores for smaller hyper-partisan U.S. outlets to weaker editorial and transparency practices [Complexity Science Hub, 2025].

Fifty-six outlets against 11,000 sources is a real difference in scope.

No court has ruled on South Carolina’s, Florida’s or West Virginia’s provision. NewsGuard’s federal suit against the Federal Trade Commission is a different fight. The FTC withdrew its investigative demand on April 17; five days later a district judge denied NewsGuard’s bid for an injunction without prejudice and without reaching the merits, and the case is on appeal to the D.C. Circuit. The FTC’s consent order condition on the Omnicom-IPG merger remains in force. Neither side has won.

What to watch before June 30

The immediate question is administrative, not constitutional. With no certification requirement in the text, SCPRT and the state Division of Procurement Services must decide what compliance looks like across a $43.6 million marketing program — and whether the condition follows grant money into local tourism marketing. Both are open.

The larger one comes in the spring. If legislators want this to be law rather than a budget footnote, they will have to move S.1094 out of Senate Finance or write 117.211 into the FY2027-28 budget. Absent one of those, the clause Horry County residents are reading about this month expires on its own next June.

Further Reading

Fake News Rating Sites – [FY2026-27 Ratified Appropriations Act, Part IB (Proviso 117.211)](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/appropriations2026/tap1b.pdf) — South Carolina General Assembly

Fake News Rating Sites – [FY2026-27 Ratified Appropriations Act, Part IA (SCPRT appropriations)](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/appropriations2026/tap1a.pdf) — South Carolina General Assembly

– [S.1094 bill page and history](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/bills/1094.htm) — South Carolina General Assembly

Fake News Rating Sites – [Final Conference Actions on Provisos, FY2026-27](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/CommitteeInfo/Ways&MeansBudgetDocuments/FY2026-27/FINAL%20CONF%20ACTIONS.pdf) — House Ways and Means Committee

Fake News Rating Sites – [Governor McMaster announces line-item vetoes, FY2026-27 budget](https://governor.sc.gov/news/2026-08/governor-henry-mcmaster-announces-line-item-vetoes-fy-2026-2027-state-budget) — Office of the Governor

Fake News Rating Sites – [McMaster strikes Scout Motors site audit in final budget vetoes](https://scdailygazette.com/2026/08/17/sc-governor-vetoes-delay-on-paying-agency-overruns-at-scout-motors-site/) — SC Daily Gazette

Fake News Rating Sites – [SCPRT annual tourism advertising program](https://www.scprt.com/tourism/annual-tourism-advertising-program) — S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism

Fake News Rating Sites – [Destination-Specific Tourism Marketing Grant](https://www.scprt.com/tourism/grants/destination-specific-tourism-marketing-grant) — S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism

Fake News Rating Sites – [SCPRT reappoints 9Rooftops as agency of record](https://marketingreport.one/news/south-carolina-department-of-tourism-reappoints-9rooftops-as-marketing-and-advertising-agency-of-record.html) — MarketingReport

Fake News Rating Sites – [NewsGuard and Free Speech](https://www.newsguardtech.com/newsguard-and-free-speech/) — NewsGuard Technologies

Fake News Rating Sites – [Why We’ve Just Sued the Government](https://www.newsguardtech.com/press/why-weve-just-sued-the-government/) — Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard

Fake News Rating Sites – [NewsGuard study finds no bias against conservative news outlets](https://csh.ac.at/news/newsguard-study-finds-no-bias-against-conservative-news-outlets/) — Complexity Science Hub

Fake News Rating Sites – [Study: NewsGuard ratings system still heavily biased](https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2023/01/06/study-newsguard-ratings-system-still-heavily-biased) — Media Research Center / NewsBusters

– [A media rating company says administration is threatening its livelihood](https://tvnewscheck.com/journalism/article/a-media-rating-company-says-administration-is-threatening-its-livelihood/) — Associated Press

Fake News Rating Sites – [Florida blocks state agencies from third-party news censors](https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/florida-blocks-state-agencies-third-party-news-censors-misinformation/) — Children’s Health Defense

Fake News Rating Sites – [Florida targets media blacklists for a second year](https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/07/07/florida-media-blacklists-newsguard/) — The Daily Signal

Fake News Rating Sites – [West Virginia SB 531, First Amendment Preservation Act](http://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=sb531+intr.htm&yr=2026&sesstype=RS&i=531) — West Virginia Legislature

Fake News Rating Sites – [NewsGuard Technologies Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission](https://www.fire.org/cases/newsguard-technologies-inc-v-federal-trade-commission-et-al) — Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Fake News Rating Sites – [Independent Media Council members](https://imcamerica.com/members/) — Independent Media Council