Conservative media outlets struggling as their advertising dollars dry up may have a British-based “disinformation” group tied to leftwing megadonor George Soros in part to blame.
The Global Disinformation Index, a “risk ratings” outfit that has received State Department funding, secretly distributes “blacklists” of right-tilting news organizations to advertising companies, according to the Washington Examiner series “Disinformation Inc.”
Congressional Republicans called for answers Monday from the State Department. The Washington Times has reached out to the department for comment without getting a reply by Monday evening.
“It ought to scare everybody in this country, regardless of whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, that the government is that involved in censoring speech,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri Republican, in an email. “The unholy alliance between government and big tech must be dismantled.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik, New York Republican, said that the “State Department should not be funding woke organizations who seek to censor and demonetize conservative outlets.”
“House Republicans will assert our oversight over the State Department’s funding of these type of groups,” she told the Examiner.
The GDI, which has two U.S. non-profit affiliates, reportedly received more than $300,000 through two State Department-backed entities: the Global Engagement Center, which gave the index about $100,000, and the National Endowment for Democracy, which contributed more than $200,000.
The National Endowment for Democracy is listed on the GDI website as a funder, as is the Open Society Foundations, which Mr. Soros founded as the principal vehicle for donating to his favored causes.
National Endowment for Democracy spokesperson Leslie Aun said her organization gave two grants to GDI, but not to police U.S. political speech.
The grants were “very narrowly focused on an initiative to identify and combat the disinformation flowing from authoritarian regimes, particularly China,” she told The Washington Times.
She said the endowment “did not fund GDI’s work on U.S.-based media,” saying that her organization’s mandate does not include the United States.
“We did not, would not, cannot fund anything that focuses on the United States. That’s just outside our purview,” Ms. Aun told The Times.
The replacement of paper newspapers with pixels has been both a blessing and a curse for conservative voices, unleashing a flood of new outlets challenging liberal media establishment as well as a backlash in the form of “fact-checkers” and “misinformation” raters like GDI and NewsGuard.
At least one company has already taken action in response to the report. The Microsoft-owned advertising platform Xandr suspended its use of the Global Disinformation Index as it conducts an internal review.
“We try to take a principled approach to accuracy and fighting foreign propaganda,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Washington Times. “We’re working quickly to fix the issue and Xandr has stopped using GDI’s services while we are doing a larger review.”
Xandr reportedly blocked advertising dollars from reaching conservative websites, creating its own list of 39 media outlets labeled “false/misleading,” “reprehensible/offensive,” or “Hate Speech.”
The list reads like a who’s-who of right-tilting news and opinion websites, including Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Signal, Daily Wire, Drudge Report, Newsmax, RealClearPolitics, SeanHannity.com, Townhall.com, Washington Examiner, and the Washington Times.