Tech giant Microsoft yanked its promotion of NewsGuard, which claims to rate the trustworthiness of news websites but is known for targeting conservative outlets like The Daily Wire, months after telling Republican senator Ted Cruz that it had disavowed the site and would no longer recommend it. 
In February 2025, Microsoft publicly <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/2/sen-cruz-s-investigation-leads-microsoft-to-disavow-support-for-newsguard-s-biased-indoctrination-tool">distanced</a> itself from NewsGuard after Cruz demanded answers about why it was promoting the fact-checker on its website. NewsGuard has been criticized for its harsh ratings of conservative websites while seemingly giving legacy outlets a pass.
Microsoft, however, continued to recommend NewsGuard as a trusted “fact-checker” for students even after the firm was accused of colluding with advertisers to censor conservative viewpoints. Only in recent days has Microsoft scrubbed references to NewsGuard from its website, according to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250905060257/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/customize-cce3cff5-3bac-4711-a22e-fb28baa8b467#id0edd=fact_check">archived webpages</a> reviewed by The Daily Wire.
NewsGuard’s removal comes after a <a href="https://thefairelectionfund.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/MicrosoftReport.pdf">report</a> from the Fair Election Fund flagged that Microsoft was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250905060257/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/customize-cce3cff5-3bac-4711-a22e-fb28baa8b467#id0edd=fact_check">incorporating</a> the company into its Search Coach tool. Search Coach is used in Microsoft’s education products, including Teams for Education, which provides “context and guidance for students to ask effective questions and discover reliable sources.”
In Search Coach, Microsoft referred to NewsGuard as an “objective” and “reputable” organization. Microsoft said that NewsGuard “is embedded in Search Coach to share evaluations of sites&#8217; reliability, has created a list of trustworthy fact checking sites,” according to an archived webpage from September 5, 2025. 
<div id="attachment_999159" style="width: 1481px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-999159" class="wp-image-999159 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-10.02.25-AM.png" alt="" width="1471" height="782" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-10.02.25-AM.png 1471w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-10.02.25-AM-300x159.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-10.02.25-AM-1024x544.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-10.02.25-AM-768x408.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1471px) 100vw, 1471px" />Microsoft/ Sept. 5</div>
The new page has removed references to NewsGuard, though it still recommends left-wing fact-checking outlets like Snopes and PolitiFact. Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment by deadline on why the references to NewsGuard were removed. The Texas Public Policy Foundation and Libs of TikTok both <a href="https://dallasexpress.com/opinion/opinion-microsoft-lied-to-sen-cruz-about-newsguard-continued-censorship-push/">called</a> in late October for Microsoft to completely cut ties to NewsGuard. 
&#8220;We consistently review our business partnerships and did not renew our contract with NewsGuard,&#8221; a Microsoft spokesman told The Daily Wire after publication.
NewsGuard is still listed as a sidebar option on the page, but it leads to an error when clicked on. 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-999163" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-scaled.png" alt="" width="2560" height="1302" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-scaled.png 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-300x153.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-1024x521.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-768x391.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-1536x781.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-10-at-1.25.27-PM-2048x1041.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" /></div>
NewsGuard once <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/misinformation-monitor/february-2020/">described</a> The Daily Wire as “a site founded by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that distorts facts to advance a partisan agenda,&#8221; and has consistently rated this website as unreliable. 
One of the other sites it compared The Daily Wire to was Politico, an outlet with a rap sheet that includes pushing the discredited claims from intelligence officers that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. The article <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276">remains published without correction</a>. 
The relationship between Microsoft and NewsGuard first came under scrutiny back in December 2024 when Cruz sent a <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/6801E8CD-60A1-421D-86A2-8B9104AE27EB">letter</a> to the tech giant asking why it was promoting and funding NewsGuard’s Media Literacy tool. That tool was supposed to help students spot so-called “misinformation.” 
“Given growing concerns about NewsGuard’s ideological bias and its efforts to manipulate young minds, I ask for transparency regarding Microsoft’s involvement in and financing of this Orwellian censorship project,” Cruz wrote. “Your company’s financial support for NewsGuard is especially troubling given Microsoft’s purported commitment to protecting free expression online.”
After Cruz sent his letter, Microsoft told the Texas Republican that its relationship with NewsGuard was limited to one donation. It also asked NewsGuard to remove the following line from its website: &#8220;NewsGuard&#8217;s Media Literacy Programs are made possible thanks to generous support from Microsoft.”
In March 2025, it was <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/04/after-disavowing-newsguard-microsoft-still-promotes-the-censorship-group/">reported</a> that Microsoft advised students to “observe any NewsGuard ratings that come up from your search” before selecting search results when conducting research. At the time, Microsoft removed some of its references to NewsGuard in Search Coach, but not all. 
“Notice that some of the top links don’t have 100/100 scores. Select the NewsGuard rating. What did they lose points for? How might this impact whether the site is credible?&#8221; the <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/get-started-with-search-coach-1dd4334c-9a43-461d-9ddc-630c8f7e6714">Search Coach</a> website reads. &#8220;Why are the different components of a NewsGuard rating important?”
NewsGuard is <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jun/6/news-rating-agencies-federal-scrutiny-colluding-shut-conservative/">currently</a> wrapped up in an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is probing whether news rating agencies colluded with advertisers to target conservatives. 
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said last year that NewsGuard labels could lead to top-dollar consequences for companies. 
“If a website gets a poor rating on NewsGuard’s ‘nutrition label,’ it can choke off the advertising dollars that are the lifeblood for many websites, including platforms on which millions of Americans every day speak their minds,” he said in December 2024.
That same line of questioning is being <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/congress-to-probe-media-rating-firm-newsguard-for-possible-taxpayer-funded-censorship?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Congress+To+Probe+Media+Rating+Firm+NewsGuard+For+Possible+Taxpayer-Funded+Censorship">investigated</a> by the House Oversight Committee, as advertisers often used lists from NewsGuard to avoid doing business with companies that supposedly push “misinformation.&#8221; NewsGuard has received funding from the Department of Defense and the State Department, which gave it an award for its work in fighting alleged COVID misinformation.
Many entities still point to NewsGuard and recommend it as a trusted source. For example, the Kalamazoo Public Library in Michigan <a href="https://www.kpl.gov/category/patron-support/resources/voting-info/">promotes</a> NewsGuard as providing a “browser extension that provides an easy way to evaluate websites.” Hawaii’s public library system <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/press/hawaii-public-libraries-join-newsguard-in-news-literacy-partnership/">announced</a> a “media literacy” partnership with NewsGuard so that its patrons “see credibility ratings of news sources they encounter while using library computers.”
The Denver Public Library actually <a href="https://archive.ph/rlYMI">lists</a> local newspapers and TV outlets with reliable ratings from NewsGuard on its website. 
<div id="attachment_999167" style="width: 2534px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-999167" class="size-full wp-image-999167" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM.png" alt="" width="2524" height="1059" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM.png 2524w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM-300x126.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM-1024x430.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM-768x322.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM-1536x644.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.30.27-AM-2048x859.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2524px) 100vw, 2524px" />Denver Public Libraries.</div>
Back in 2018, the American Libraries Magazine <a href="https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2019/11/01/check-your-facts-tech-tools/">reported</a> that around 200 public libraries across the country had integrated NewsGuard into their computer systems. The magazine also reported that NewsGuard was supported by Microsoft. 
Grok, the AI tool platformed by X, will cite NewsGuard when asked whether The Daily Wire can be trusted. Meanwhile, NewsGuard has been critical of Grok and suggested it can be turned into a “misinformation superspreader.”
<div id="attachment_999169" style="width: 1774px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-999169" class="size-full wp-image-999169" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.43.13-AM.png" alt="" width="1764" height="657" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.43.13-AM.png 1764w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.43.13-AM-300x112.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.43.13-AM-1024x381.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.43.13-AM-768x286.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-11-at-11.43.13-AM-1536x572.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1764px) 100vw, 1764px" />Grok evaluation of Daily Wire.</div>
NewsGuard has also built a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers, a radical nationwide teachers&#8217; union that pushes leftist policies. The partnership was designed to &#8220;champion legitimate journalism and fact-based reporting&#8221; and help students discern &#8220;misinformation.&#8221;
This story was updated with comment from Microsoft.

MixCollage-11-Nov-2025-12-43-PM-2961

Microsoft Told Ted Cruz It Had Nothing To Do With NewsGuard. Then It Scrubbed Its Website.

Censorship

Microsoft

NewsGuard

Ted Cruz

The House Judiciary Committee is ramping up its investigation into the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which allegedly colluded with advertisers to keep business from conservative news outlets.
Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Thursday <a href="https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1819078756600099182">wrote</a> to more than 40 companies connected to GARM, instructing them to turn over relevant documents to the committee. Jordan also asked the companies—including behemoths like Pepsi, Adidas, and Shell—whether they agreed with GARM&#8217;s actions.
&#8220;The Committee has uncovered evidence of coordinated action by GARM and its member companies, including boycotts of disfavored social media platforms, podcasts, and news outlets,&#8221; Jordan writes.
Jordan&#8217;s letter is the latest step in the committee&#8217;s probe of GARM. Last month, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-here-ben-shapiro-testifies-to-congress-on-censorship-updated-live">testified</a> before the committee about GARM&#8217;s actions. Emails obtained by the committee <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ad-firm-replaces-ceo-after-congressional-face-off-with-ben-shapiro-on-censorship">showed</a> GARM and ad-buying executives expressing contempt for conservatives, admitting that they used rules about &#8220;conspiracy theories&#8221; and &#8220;misinformation&#8221; as a pretext to withhold revenue from conservative news sites, including The Daily Wire.
The committee&#8217;s investigation could clarify whether GARM and ad firms were manipulating or misrepresenting their customers, or if those customers were active participants in denying ads to conservative websites. If those companies—many of whom are direct competitors—coordinated their activities, they could run afoul of antitrust laws, Jordan said.
According to the committee, GARM has &#8220;deviated far from its original intent&#8221; or creating a &#8220;&#8216;more sustainable and responsible digital environment,'&#8221; and instead &#8220;has collectively used its immense market power to demonetize voices and viewpoints the group disagrees with—even intervening in situations that do not have a so-called &#8216;brand safety&#8217; concern.&#8221;
Jordan asked each company whether it agreed with GARM executive Robert Rakowitz&#8217;s complaint that an “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” and “taking US norms and applying them globally” was a hindrance to advertisers.
The letters also ask whether the companies &#8220;participate in any collective boycotts with GARM or its members that it believes is exempt from antitrust law, and whether they supported or were &#8220;aware of the coordinated actions taken by GARM toward news outlets and podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily Wire, Breitbart News, or Fox News, or other conservative media.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722626094661000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0xeRV2yZnGyN0DMA1KI89w">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — MATT WALSH&#8217;S EXPOSÉ ON DEI</a>
Emails reveal that Joe Barone, GroupM’s Managing Partner Brand Safety Americas, admitted the group had “Daily Wire on our Global High Risk exclusion list, categorized as Conspiracy Theories.”
In an email to Rakowitz, GroupM Executive Vice President of Global Brand Safety John Montgomery admitted that the group did not find that The Daily Wire published misinformation.
GroupM CEO Christian Juhl struggled to explain the emails when he testified before the committee alongside Shapiro. He was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ad-firm-replaces-ceo-after-congressional-face-off-with-ben-shapiro-on-censorship">replaced</a> as CEO soon after.
The companies receiving congressional letters as GARM members include:
Adidas Group 
Adidas North America 
American Express 
Bayer AG 
Bayer U.S. 
Beiersdorf AG 
Beiersdorf North America 
BP 
BP America 
Centene Corporation 
Chanel 
Chanel 
Colgate-Palmolive 
CVS Health 
Dell Technologies 
Electronic Arts 
Foreign: 
FrieslandCampina 
FrieslandCampina 
General Mills 
Goldman Sachs 
Haleon 
HP Incorporated 
Ikea U.S. 
Ingka Group 
Johnson &amp; Johnson 
Kellanova 
Kenvue Incorporated 
Kimberly-Clark Corporation 
L&#8217;Oréal 
L&#8217;Oréal USA 
Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy 
Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, North America 
Mastercard 
McDonald&#8217;s Corporation 
Merck &amp; Co. Incorporated 
Microsoft Corp 
Mondelēz International 
NIKE Incorporated 
PepsiCo 
Perfetti Van Melle 
Perfetti Van Melle 
Pernod Ricard 
Pernod Ricard North America 
Red Bull GmbH 
Red Bull North America Inc. 
Roblox 
Sanofi 
Sanofi 
Scotiabank 
Scotiabank U.S. 
Shell 
Shell USA 
Sony Corporation of America 
Sony Group 
Suntory Global Spirits 
Suntory Holdings 
Verizon 
Volvo Cars 
Volvo Cars USA

Ben Shapiro

House Committee Expands Probe Into Anti-Conservative Advertising Collusion

Antitrust

Jim Jordan

Social Media Censorship

Chairman Jordan. Ranking Member Nadler. Members of the Committee. Good morning.
We are in the midst of a trust crisis in the world of media. That is because so many in the legacy media simply lie in order to preserve Left-leaning narratives. To take just the most recent example, we were told by the legacy media that Joe Biden was just fine. For years. Anyone who questioned his health and mental fitness was trafficking in “cheap fakes.”
Then Joe Biden went out and engaged in a full-scale mental collapse on stage in front of hundreds of millions of people.
So we can see why Americans – at least Americans who aren’t Democrats – don’t trust the media.
The question, then, isn’t why the legacy media have lost Americans’ trust – the answer to that is obvious: they don’t deserve our trust. The question is why, despite that loss of trust, the legacy media continue to gain share in the advertising market.
The answer is simple: there is, in fact, an informal pressure system created by Democratic legislators, this White House, legacy media, advertisers, and pseudo-objective “brand safety” organizations. That system guarantees that advertising dollars flow only to Left-wing media brands.
Let me explain how this works.
When a conservative competitor to the legacy media arises, members of the legacy media and their political allies rush to paint such competitors as dangerous. The commentator Kara Swisher of The New York Times, for example, told the head of YouTube that my videos on Daily Wire were a &#8220;gateway drug&#8221; that would lead children, including her teenage son, to watch neo-Nazi content (never mind the fact that I am an Orthodox Jew). 
Elected Democrats pick up that same messaging. In 2017, Senator Dianne Feinstein told lawyers at Facebook, Google, and Twitter, “You created these platforms…and now they’re being misused. And you have to be the ones to do something about it – or we will.”
Social media companies react to such threats. They have responded by adopting the standards of third-party Left-wing “informational safety” groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. GARM purportedly sets “brand safety” standards – objective standards by which advertisers and platforms can supposedly determine just what sort of content ought to be deemed “safe” for advertising. In reality, GARM acts as a cartel. Its members account for 90% of ad spending in the United States–almost $1 trillion. In other words, if you’re not getting ad dollars from GARM members, it’s nearly impossible to run an ad-based business. And if you’re not following their preferred political narratives – the ones Kara Swisher and Dianne Feinstein would follow – you will not be deemed “brand safe.” Your business will be throttled.
We at The Daily Wire have experienced this first-hand. In 2017 after Feinstein made her threats to bring the weight of government down on social media platforms, Daily Wire YouTube channels saw a one thousand percent increase in content enforcements over a two-year period. Since 2021, after Democrat officials further turned up the heat on social media companies, my Facebook page has seen an over eighty percent drop in impressions.
Or take Joe Rogan. When Rogan said that he had taken ivermectin after getting covid, White House press secretary Jen Psaki pressured Spotify to take action, stating, “we want every platform to be doing more to be calling out mis- and dis-information, while also uplifting accurate information.” Spotify complied. Spotify, of course, works with GARM.
So, what “brand safety” standards does GARM apply? The standards begin with the inarguable, like preventing the distribution of child sexual abuse material. But GARM doesn’t draw the line at what is criminal, abusive, or dangerous. Their standards include restrictions on:
<ul>
<li>“Hate speech”</li>
<li>“Harassment”</li>
<li>“Misinformation” </li>
<li>Or, my favorite, “insensitive,” “irresponsible” and “harmful” treatment of “debated sensitive social issues.”</li>
</ul>
These criteria are highly subjective in theory. And they’re purely partisan in practice. For example, last year Daily Wire host Matt Walsh was fully demonetized on YouTube–a GARM member. Why? For “misgendering,” which to GARM, is to say that men are not women. Perfectly obvious facts now run afoul of GARM’s censorship standards.
Companies targeted by GARM like The Daily Wire, Breitbart, Fox News, and so many others reach hundreds of millions of people with opinions and beliefs long established as within the mainstream of American conservative thought. GARM and its members have no respect for the beliefs of those people. They want them marginalized and squashed.
It is time to stand up for the First Amendment in this Congress. 
Congress can do so in two ways. First, Congress must investigate the informal and perhaps formal arrangements between censorship cartels like GARM and executive branch agencies – the Daily Wire has already filed a federal lawsuit against the State Department for allegedly doing just this.
Second, Congress can itself stop engaging in violation of free speech principles.
Two weeks ago, writing in dissent in Murthy v. Missouri, Justice Alito condemned what he called “sophisticated” and “coercive” government campaigns against free speech.
Members of this committee have engaged in precisely such campaigns. When Congressman Schiff speaks about targeting social media companies that must be “pulled and dragged into this era of corporate responsibility” because they are too tolerant of “misinformation,” he knows what he is doing. He is participating in a sophisticated coercive campaign against free speech. When Congresswoman Jayapal blames social media for placing America at the “precipice of a democratic crisis,” and calls on them to target those they deem “hate groups,” she knows what she is doing. She is participating in a sophisticated coercive campaign against free speech. When Congressman Hank Johnson says “We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations,” he knows what he is doing, too.
We all know what these governmental actors – what some of you – are doing. You are using the tacit threat of government action to compel private companies to throttle viewpoints you don’t like.
The First Amendment was not designed to enable workarounds by elected officials. It was directed at Congress. At you. You abdicate your fundamental duty when you exert pressure on private companies to censor speech. And some in this room have been doing just that for years. We in the non-legacy media have been feeling the effects. In the name of the Constitution – and yes, in the name of democracy – it must stop.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2001-democrats-stick-with-dementia-addled-biden-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>

My Opening Statement To The House Judiciary Committee

House Judiciary Committee

Legacy Media

Opinion

U.S. House of Representatives

The House Oversight Committee is probing whether a firm that purports to rate which news outlets are trustworthy is using federal funds to try to put conservative news outlets out of business.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said the committee he chairs has opened an investigation into NewsGuard, a for-profit business with multiple ties to the federal government that makes lists of which news outlets it deems trustworthy, then sells those lists to advertisers.
NewsGuard has received nearly a million dollars from the federal government, largely from the Department of Defense. The State Department also co-sponsored a “COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation” tech challenge that gave a prize to NewsGuard.
Advertisers often use the lists from NewsGuard to avoid doing business with companies that supposedly peddle in &#8220;misinformation,&#8221; under the implied threat that liberals will boycott their products if they do.
&#8220;This appears to be a very biased, very unfair service that&#8217;s getting federal funds. It could be another backdoor attempt at censoring conservative media outlets,&#8221; Comer told <a href="https://www.oann.com/video/oan-contribution/comer-to-investigate-newsguard-for-bias-and-censorship/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">One America News</a>. &#8220;What&#8217;s their criteria that just happen to give networks like MSNBC and CNN tremendous grades, and then networks like OAN, Newsmax and Fox very poor grades?&#8221;
&#8220;We want to know why they&#8217;re doing this, what the basis is for the criteria that they use to determine these grades. Because then they turn around and they offer their grades to advertisers, and this is a form of, I believe, trying to discourage advertisers from advertising on conservative networks,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;There&#8217;s a concerted effort by the federal government to censor conservative media outlets,&#8221; he added, saying the probe into NewsGuard would &#8220;determine whether there&#8217;s been any criminal laws broken.&#8221;
Gordon Crovitz, the company&#8217;s co-CEO, told The Daily Wire in an email that the investigation is based on a &#8220;misunderstanding.&#8221;
&#8220;We look forward to clarifying the misunderstanding by the committee about our work for the Defense Department,&#8221; Crovitz said. &#8220;Our work for the Pentagon has been solely related to hostile disinformation efforts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian government-linked operations targeting Americans and our allies. We also look forward to explaining that NewsGuard is the apolitical service rating news sources — the others are either digital platforms with their secret ratings or a left-wing partisan advocacy group. As a result, the Daily Caller outscores The Daily Beast, the Daily Wire outscores the Daily Kos, Fox News outscores MSNBC and The Wall Street Journal outscores the New York Times.&#8221;
Despite saying its mission is to provide &#8220;transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers,&#8221; the company previously refused to allow The Daily Wire to view the data it sells to advertisers, even for a fee.
NewsGuard said in a press release that it planned to “help” the State Department by flagging COVID “hoaxes.” One of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/newsguard-runs-cover-for-terrorists-in-fact-check-of-ben-shapiro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“hoaxes” flagged by NewsGuard</a> was that COVID might have come from a Chinese lab, a scenario now viewed by U.S. agencies to be likely.
Its mission — to have a small staff fact-check independently-reported stories on a wide variety of topics hours after their publication — inherently requires essentially enforcing conformity with authorities&#8217; previous statements, since it is not equipped to re-report every news story or match confidential sourcing.
NewsGuard also has a partnership with a teachers union aimed at getting its public tool onto school computers. That browser plugin annotates search pages to flag news stories which should be avoided.
The Daily Wire and the Federalist are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-slaps-down-biden-administrations-attempt-to-dismiss-daily-wire-censorship-lawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suing the State Department</a> for backing NewsGuard and other similar entities, alleging that it is promoting censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions.
The State Department responded by trying to have the federal lawsuit moved from Texas to the District of Columbia. But Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle denied the motion and recalled that &#8220;no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.&#8221;
The investigation represents mounting danger for the media censorship industry, which has sought captive markets via legislation and through advertising associations like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which forces advertisers to avoid outlets that promote &#8220;misinformation,&#8221; creating a demand for someone to make that determination.
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), is investigating GARM for potentially <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/misinformation-honcho-says-jim-jordan-is-assaulting-ad-industry-by-asking-for-documents-that-could-prove-partisan-bias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">violating anti-trust laws</a>. The controversy has led mainstream consumer brands, selling the likes of candies, to second-guess whether their advertising departments roped them into divisive conduct, with one insider squirming that the companies &#8220;want to avoid any kind of public qualm that has a partisan signature like the plague.”

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.

Congress To Probe Media Rating Firm NewsGuard For Possible Taxpayer-Funded Censorship

Congress

House Oversight Committee

James Comer

U.S.

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether major advertisers ran afoul of antitrust laws by coordinating about which news outlets to blackball. 
The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), obtained documents from the World Federation of Advertisers that show how it implemented a strategy to prevent major advertisers from doing business with disfavored news outlets. The coordinated effort could have the effect of bankrupting news organizations that don’t get the stamp of approval.
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&#8220;The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative may be acting inconsistent with U.S. antitrust laws and congressional intent by coordinating GARM members’ efforts to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online,&#8221; Jordan wrote in March 27 <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2024-03-27%20JDJ%20to%20Crew%20Grimes%20-%20Diageo%20re%20GARM%20steer%20team.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> demanding further documents from advertisers.
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“Evidence the Committee has obtained suggests that GARM members, led by Steer Team members, are colluding to demonetize conservative platforms and voices. Further, this coordination does not always revolve around ‘brand safety’ and ‘harmful’ content as GARM publicly claims, but instead the desire to censor conservative and other views that GARM members disfavor,” Jordan added.
The letters indicate that documents obtained by the committee suggest that the group tried to blackball mainstream conservative news organizations, specifically asking for “communications referring or relating to conservative news outlets, including Fox News, Daily Wire, and Breitbart.”
The letters went to major corporations on GARM’s “steering committee” — Unilever, Procter &amp; Gamble, GroupM, Diageo, and Mars — saying the documents “directly connect” the companies with such efforts. The documents in the active investigation have not been released to the public.
The letters seek communications from the companies “relating to the categorization, demonetization, or elimination of online speech.”
They also ask for communications discussing “changes to X following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company,” when many advertisers left the platform in protest of the left-wing Jack Dorsey being replaced by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The probe suggests that the companies could be held individually responsible for the actions of the group they created, and that GARM may act in a cartel-like manner, even though many of its members are nominally competitors. 
WFA announced the GARM’s creation at the 2019 Cannes festival, a gathering of global elites, amidst complaints about “disinformation” and “fake news,” but later that year said it would become a flagship project of the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s “Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture.”
In an announcement that seemed like something from Darth Vader, the World Economic Forum stated, “<a href="https://www.weforum.org/impact/media-alliance-scales-up/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Global Alliance</a> is creating a safe media ecosystem.” 
“GARM focuses on viewer safety for consumers, reducing risks for advertisers, developing credibility for digital platforms and, more broadly, ensuring a sustainable online ecosystem,” it said. “Partners involved in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media through the Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport include companies such as LEGO Group, Procter &amp; Gamble, Unilever, NBC Universal &#8211; MSNBC, Dentsu Group, WPP (through GroupM), Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom Group, Facebook and Google.”
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-details-the-global-entities-working-to-demonetize-and-deplatform-conservative-voices">Ben Shapiro Details The Global Entities Working To ‘Demonetize And Deplatform’ Conservative Voices</a>
In 2022, GARM added “misinformation” to the types of online content that it views as unethical to run ads against.
It said companies should look to firms like NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index, and the Journalism Trust Initiative to decide which news outlets to do business with, writing that the groups “can help ensure that ad buyers and users looking for news can <a href="https://wfanet.org/knowledge/item/2022/03/07/Navigating-digital-media-safety-and-suitability-in-the-time-of-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">be in safe and suitable places</a>.”
GARM says it provides members with “Brand Safety.” For-profit firms like Newsguard have shown what that means in practice: Companies that might buy ads are given lists of what TV programs, channels, podcasts, or newspapers are either safe to advertise on or should be avoided. This is billed as avoiding risks to their reputation or boycotts—essentially saying that if a company wants to avoid boycotts from the Left or smear campaigns, they should not do business with certain media outlets.
In a <a href="https://wfanet.org/leadership/garm/garm-resource-directory-%28weblog-detail-page%29/2022/06/20/GARM-3-Years-of-Progress#:~:text=GARM's%20launch%20was%20propelled%20forward,had%20been%20no%20established%20protocols.">progress report</a> in 2022, GARM boasted of qualities that, viewed in another light, could show anti-competitive practices.
“GARM’s launch was propelled forward by uncommon collaboration, a unique way of working recognizing that all sectors of the advertising industry and companies benefit from partnering to create new brand safety standards and solutions that could be accepted industry-wide, where there had been no established protocols,” it said.
The challenge of meaningfully steering the entire media ecosystem was “big,” it said, yet GARM included 61 major companies that buy a large portion of the advertising in the world, as well as 35 separate industry associations that represent many more advertisers.
The WFA, along with the Global Disinformation Index, Newsguard, and other firms that would profit from “disinformation” crackdowns, <a href="https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/signatories-2022-strengthened-code-practice-disinformation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lobbied</a> the European Union for a “Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation” in 2022.
Companies that want to advertise are likely to defer judgement to such nominal “experts” about who is credible, leading to wide-scale, coordinated blacklists. But those purported experts have rated even the most measured and staid news outlets as risky if they are conservative, such as the New York Post and Reason Magazine.
Such news outlet raters often assign credibility ratings based on how closely news outlets hew to official government lines, dinging outlets for questioning, for example, whether COVID could have come from a lab — a theory discouraged by the government at the time, but now largely supported by the government.
Newsguard even worked directly with the U.S. government, leading The Daily Wire and the Federalist to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-and-the-federalist-sue-biden-state-department-over-censorship-effort" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sue the State Department</a> in a lawsuit that alleged &#8220;one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history.&#8221;

Mars Inc., the company behind M&Ms, is a key member of a group of advertisers seeking to withhold ads from disfavored news outlets.

Docs Show Corporate Giants Are ‘Colluding To Demonetize Conservative Platforms,’ Judiciary Committee Says

The U.S. State Department paid for censorship practitioners from Germany, which does not enjoy the same freedoms as Americans do from the First Amendment, to train teachers in the United States how to police so-called &#8220;disinformation,&#8221; records show.
The records unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act by the Media Research Center (MRC) found that the State Department paid for trainings that were created mostly by German “disinformation” activists, and that that program was organized by an advocacy group that promotes similar laws in the United States, while sharing top officials and finances with a for-profit anti-disinformation firm that could profit from such laws.
The <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/FINAL%20REPORT%2C%20Medialogues%20on%20Propaganda-3-5.pdf-1704380591904.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“Medialogues on Propaganda”</a> training sessions, funded by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, consisted of 11 online meetings from June 2021 to April 2022, with an audience of 700 schoolteachers. The intent was to train teachers to “inoculate” students against disinformation and train them in “media literacy,” a nebulous term that shifted between claiming that media sources that questioned the government or caused offense to liberals were not trustworthy, and that schoolchildren should create their own media parroting progressive activism.
The <a href="https://www.mrc.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MRC</a> investigation, shared exclusively with The Daily Wire, found that a group at the University of Rhode Island, an activist nonprofit, and a for-profit censorship firm all shared top officials and projects. The three entities propped each other up to give a veneer of credibility to behaviors that were otherwise partisan or profit-seeking, MRC said.
The anti-disinformation officials also allegedly violated their own purported tenets — misleading about their financial connections; promoting misinformation like the Trump-Russia hoax and censoring likely true information like the lab-leak theory; and opposing efforts to squash misinformation when it applied to leftist errors like the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/survivor-of-maos-china-cultural-revolution-debates-american-exceptionalism-with-1619-project-nyt-journalist">1619 Project</a>.
The State Department sessions were used by its activist organizers to promote products from their for-profit “partner,” Ad Fontes, as well as NewsGuard. The Daily Wire is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-and-the-federalist-sue-biden-state-department-over-censorship-effort" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suing the State Department</a> for promoting the latter tool, which has been used to economically punish domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions.
A Three-Headed “Media Literacy” Monster
The seminars were conducted by a team of three entities including Germany’s University of Würzburg’s Media Education &amp; Educational Technology Lab and the University of Rhode Island’s Media Education Lab, both government entities.
The Rhode Island Media Education Lab has for years served as a center of liberal censorship efforts. It held a seminar for teachers on “how to teach students about the limits of freedom of expression.” It tried to confront the “white supremacy” of “digital blackface,” or when white people use images featuring black people.
But there was also the third entity in charge of the project: the nonprofit Media Literacy Now (MLN), which as the <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/FINAL%20REPORT%2C%20Medialogues%20on%20Propaganda-20-28.pdf-1704380742768.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“fiscal sponsor”</a> played a central role. The Rhode Island Lab is arguably a front for the activist group with which it has frequently partnered, providing an academic veneer to a something that&#8217;s closer to partisanship, the Media Research Center report said.
MLN lobbies for mandatory training in schools to fight “misinformation” and “online radicalization,” boasting that it has helped <a href="https://medialiteracynow.org/impact/current-policy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">convince 18 states</a> to make laws on media literacy training. And while the Rhode Island Lab wrote an entire report on the importance of “media literacy” without ever defining it, MLN had spoken more clearly, calling it a “tool to create the society we all deserve: one that nurtures racial equity, social justice, and true democracy. Media literacy equals cultural change.”
That missive came below the tagline “Justice now. Equality now. Democracy now,” and a graphic of the MLN logo superimposed over a picture of a protest with signs such as <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Media%20Literacy%20Now%20community%20fighting%20for%20democ...-1-2.pdf-1704380791281.pdf">“ACAB,”</a> the antifa slogan standing for All Cops Are Bastards.
MLN promotes a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231218105356/https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">World Health Organization</a> statement that said that “An infodemic is an overabundance of information, both online and offline. It includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information” and must be addressed by “the UN system, with Member States and with each other, and to… prevent the spread of  mis- and disinformation.” Continuing with the virus metaphor, MLN said it intends to “inoculate” children against “misinformation.”
The founder of the Rhode Island Lab and advisory board member of MLN is University of Rhode Island communications professor Renee Hobbs, who attempted to push federal legislation creating <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2240/">$60 million</a> in subsidies for anti-disinformation work like hers — legislation whose momentum rested on the idea that Russians caused Trump to win in 2016, itself a conspiracy theory.
Hobbs hosted the State Department-funded seminars while she also chaired a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) group that argued that English teachers should “move beyond” teaching children to write, and instead “disrupt classroom hierarchies” and focus on “consumerism, and economic injustice.” (True to form, Hobbs&#8217; Rhode Island Lab showcased an image of a <a href="https://mediaeducationlab.com/index.php/events/teaching-capitol-siege" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lego</a> set to push teachers to talk with children about the &#8220;Capital Siege,&#8221; a misspelled reference to the January 6 protest at the Capitol. It does not appear that Lego actually made the set in the image.)
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews <a href="https://washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/01/national-council-english-teachers-change-position/">wrote</a> that the group in charge of training 35,000 English teachers had lost “its grip on reality&#8221; with its statement that &#8220;the time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education” in favor of turning children into “change agents.”
MLN immediately called for a reeducation camp for the Washington Post columnist. Hobbs called Mathews <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/01/national-council-english-teachers-change-position/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“smug” and “whiny.”</a> Emails obtained by MRC show that MLN&#8217;s president, Erin McNeill, wrote that by not approving of Hobbs’ activities, Mathews — one of the most experienced journalists at one of America’s largest newspapers — had shown himself to be “desperately in need of media literacy.”
McNeill also coached Hobbs to be more discreet, saying NCTE should “steer away” from saying that English should be replaced with “critical pedagogies” like Critical Race Theory because it makes it <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Re_%20In%20the%20news_%20National%20English-teaching%20grou...-1.pdf-1704381013264.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“evident”</a> that they “have an agenda beyond literacy.”
MLN advocated for Texas to mandate media literacy in schools, but when Texas lawmakers did just that but included the 1619 Project as an example of disinformation, it turned against the law. “Although it mandates media literacy within a teacher training program on civics education, it also takes some <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/It%27s%20never%20been%20more%20important%20to%20act%20for%20Media...-3.pdf-1704381060513.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">anti-free speech steps</a>,” said the group, whose mission is devoted to suppressing speech that, like the 1619 Project, is factually flawed.
When asked why the State Department would fund a propaganda seminar aimed at Americans, the State Department told The Daily Wire that with its <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/e76523fa-f221-13aa-a815-6d9081ee37de-R/latest?section=transactions-over-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$30,000 grant</a> to Media Literacy Now, “the U.S. Embassy in Germany supported the participation of German participants in the media literacy program you are inquiring about.”
But that doesn’t change who the target audience was. German “experts” were lecturing to an audience of mostly Americans, with the intent that they would carry the lessons back to their school districts. The conference organizers also didn’t recognize any such distinction in their <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Full+FINAL+REPORT%2C+Medialogues+on+Propaganda.pdf-1704381599402.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">final report</a>. They wrote, “Thanks to a grant from the Public Affairs Section of the Berlin Embassy, we invited German, American, and global educators to gather online,” though “our total number of German participants was smaller than we had hoped.”
Ad Fontes
The third head of the three-headed monster of interconnected “disinformation” groups is the for-profit media monitor, Ad Fontes. The company assigns purported <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-ratings-firm-trying-to-influence-what-news-sites-you-visit-heavily-favors-left-leaning-outlets-over-conservative-journalism">“bias” ratings to news sources</a>, rating conservative media as twice as unreliable as liberal sources. Then it charges tech firms for the list, and the firms use it to steer viewers away from supposedly unreliable content.
MLN acknowledges that it has a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231225164609/https://medialiteracynow.org/about/partners/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“strategic affiliation”</a> with Ad Fontes: the media monitor directs a <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/ISD000001MRC%20-%20ISD000354MRC-part-2.pdf-1704381072149.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">portion of its income to MLN</a>, which in turn advocates for laws that would steer millions of dollars to the for-profit firm and its peers. The president of MLN’s board, Jen Furlong, is the director of communications for Ad Fontes.
Ad Fontes CEO Vanessa Otero is also on the advisory board of MLN. Otero was a speaker at the State Department seminars and used them as a platform for a sales pitch for her firm. She also said media literacy training should be “required for everyone from a very young age.”
MRC interviewed Furlong and Otero, who denied that Al Fontes had ties to the government. Furlong said on her podcast, “Ad Fontes Media has <a href="https://www.communicationtwentyfourseven.com/podcast/episode/7cc24a54/no-i-am-not-a-super-secret-analyst-spy-set-to-crush-conservative-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">zero ties</a> to the federal government!”
MRC concluded that “these statements are verifiably false.&#8221;
&#8220;Furlong is president of Media Literacy Now’s board of directors, and Media Literacy Now organized the State Department-funded seminar,&#8221; the group found. &#8220;Otero — in her official capacity as Ad Fontes CEO — was the featured speaker at said State Department-funded seminar, hosted by the State Department-funded Rhode Island Lab. Otero was celebrated by the seminar host Hobbs, who serves with Otero on Media Literacy Now’s board. Otero then proceeded to give a lengthy sales pitch for Ad Fontes products, all while concealing any of these facts from the audience.”
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<td align="left" height="23">Entity</td>
<td align="left">URI (Academic)</td>
<td align="left">MLN (Advocacy)</td>
<td align="left">Ad Fontes (Profit)</td>
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<td align="left" height="23">Jennifer Furlong</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="left">Board president</td>
<td align="left">Director of Communications</td>
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<td align="left" height="23">Erin Otero</td>
<td align="left"></td>
<td align="left">Advisory Board</td>
<td align="left">CEO</td>
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<td align="left" height="23">Renee Hobbs</td>
<td align="left">CEO</td>
<td align="left">Advisory Board</td>
<td align="left"></td>
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<td align="left" height="23">State Department conferences</td>
<td align="left">Project Partner</td>
<td align="left">Project Partner</td>
<td align="left">Product promoted at</td>
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Germany
The seminars pushed a “Data Detox Kit,” which instructs teachers to install NewsGuard, a similar product to Ad Fontes. NewsGuard is a for-profit firm that rates news outlets — red-flagging conservative news outlets while rubber-stamping liberal ones — and then sells the lists to advertisers with the threat that they could face boycotts if they place advertisements on a disreputable media outlet.
Aside from the MLN speakers, most of the State Department speakers were European. The speaker who pushed the “Data Detox Kit” was Daisy Kidd, a self-proclaimed activist whose group, Tactical Tech, is partnered with George Soros-funded, left-wing groups as well as the Goeth Institute, which MRC calls “a propaganda wing of the German government.”
The so-called kit trains kids to reject misinformation by using left-leaning factcheckers like Snopes and PolitiFact—which have repeatedly “debunked” factual articles that were critical of liberals — but tells them <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230610165827/https://datadetoxkit.org/en/misinformation/fakenews/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not to use</a> the term “fake news,” a colloquialism popularized by Trump.
Kidd also used the sessions to promote a United Nations-funded curriculum called “The Glass Room,” a game designed to train kids what to believe&#8211;including that it is “false or misleading” that “China was responsible for releasing the coronavirus.”
Another speaker at the State Department seminars worked for a European group called MEET Tolerance. It lamented that on the internet, “it is not just progressive voices which are being spread,” but also “ideologies which are based on hatred.” That group promotes a book called, “The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe.”
The disinformation experts seem to believe that while media that does not serve their aims inherently lacks credibility — like the Washington Post article — media produced by young children would be credible. MEET teaches how to turn children into “media producers” who advocate “intercultural values and social justice.”
Part of the curriculum was developed by socialist German politician Konstantin von Notz, who helps oversee Germany’s intelligence agencies and has given away balloons and stickers to recruit children to create the impression of support for an international censorship law to block “haters” and “right wing extremism,” MRC said.
The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
In Germany, tech platforms are punished with steep fines for not censoring users’ content, and those who opposed the censorship measures were placed under government surveillance. Those efforts have been “horrifyingly effective” in Germany, and the U.S. State Department is now importing Europe’s most Orwellian techniques directly from the source, MRC said.
American teachers were, in turn, paid to transform what they learned at the State Department sessions into lesson plans for children. For example, April Leach, a Florida schoolteacher, attended the sessions and used what she heard to create a “social emotional learning” lesson plan that promoted Ad Fontes. A left-wing foundation paid her <a href="https://cdn.mrc.org/static/pdfuploads/Full+FINAL+REPORT%2C+Medialogues+on+Propaganda.pdf-1704381599402.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$8,000</a> through an “SEL in Action Award,” according to the MRC report.
Another attendee, a Washington State educator named Lauren McClanahan, illustrated the circular nature of the disinformation ecosystem. She attended the State Department seminar, and then created a curriculum that relied on NCTE’s call to pursue social justice instead of reading and writing to justify having students create “public service announcements (PSAs) about a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357491535_Seeking_Justice_in_Your_Own_Backyard_Creating_PSAs_for_Social_Change" target="_blank" rel="noopener">social justice topic</a>.”
The videos featured children pleading with people to donate to leftist groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, whose subsidiary is a Rhode Island Lab “partner,” MRC found. McClanahan was named an &#8220;affiliated faculty&#8221; of the Lab.
The documents obtained under FOIA by the Media Research Center show how Hobbs, the Lab&#8217;s founder, often blurs the line between “media literary” and <a href="https://www.washingtoninformer.com/u-s-residents-brace-for-violence-particularly-if-trump-loses/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">progressive politics</a> that has nothing to do with disinformation. Her groups’ final report on the training sessions boasts that she used the State Department seminar to bring “media literary” to Austin, Texas’s police academy. That included making sure videos didn&#8217;t promote stereotypes and warning them not to raise an American flag for slain police officers because it might be offensive, MRC said.
Furlong and Hobbs did not return requests for comment.
MRC said that parents should ask their school board if Ad Fontes or NewsGuard are used in their schools, state legislatures must ban them from receiving funding, and attorneys general should investigate whether “activist” groups pushing “disinformation” laws are receiving kickbacks from censorship firms who would stand to profit off of such laws.
Got a tip worth investigating? Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. <a href="https://tips.dailywire.com/">Submit your tip today</a>.

The U-RI’s Media Education Lab trained teachers how to discuss what it called the “Capital Seige.” Its founder advocated for English teachers to turn from topics like spelling to social justice. / University of Rhode Island Media Education Lab

State Department Paid Germans To Bring Censorship And Propaganda To U.S. Schools

Academia

Rhode Island

State Department

The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and the state of Texas joined on Tuesday in a <a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/12/DailyWire-v-State-final.pdf">lawsuit against the U.S. State Department</a>, alleging that the government agency funded censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions.
The State Department is tasked with foreign relations and has no authority over domestic affairs, yet it took a government office designed for countering foreign terrorist propaganda, the Global Engagement Center (GEC), and unleashed it against Americans engaged in what it claimed was &#8220;disinformation,&#8221; according to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas on Tuesday night by the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
It was &#8220;one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history,&#8221; said the suit, which also names Secretary of State Antony Blinken and five other officials as defendants.
The lawsuit asks a judge to declare the State Department&#8217;s attempt to interfere with domestic speech illegal and to permanently bar it from developing, promoting, or encouraging others to use technology to de-amplify, shadow ban, or restrict &#8220;the lawful speech of the American press and Americans.&#8221;
GEC was founded in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications and tasked with countering the propaganda of foreign terrorists like Al Qaeda. In 2016, it was renamed, but kept the same counterterrorism mission. Congress has made clear that &#8220;none of the funds authorized&#8221; for the entity &#8220;shall be used for purposes other than countering foreign propaganda.&#8221;
Nonetheless, GEC turned its focus on Americans, the complaint alleges, using taxpayer funds to finance the development and promotion of censorship organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which regularly target conservative media outlets such as The Daily Wire and The Federalist with the stated goal of limiting ad revenue.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance&#8217;s Mark Chenoweth, who is representing the outlets, said &#8220;the federal government cannot do indirectly what the First Amendment forbids it from doing directly.&#8221;
GDI&#8217;s main product is a &#8220;Dynamic Exclusion List&#8221; of media outlets that it says present a &#8220;high risk for disinformation.&#8221; It licenses the list to advertisers, who adopt it as a convenient way to avoid boycotts from the Left. That playbook was deployed last month against Elon Musk, when blue-chip advertisers were persuaded to stop advertising on the platform because the Left-wing Media Matters group claimed that big companies’ ads occasionally appeared near objectionable content.
GDI says it aims to destroy &#8220;the incentive to create [disinformation] for the purpose of garnering advertising revenues.&#8221;
GDI keeps its main blacklist secret, but publicly published its top 10 &#8220;riskiest” outlets, which was essentially a list of America&#8217;s most prominent and mainstream conservative media publications, including both The Daily Wire and The Federalist, as well as the New York Post, and Reason Magazine.
GDI &#8220;was funded and promoted by State Department Defendants,&#8221; the lawsuit states. &#8220;State Department Defendants&#8217; active intervention in the news media market to make disfavored media unprofitable thus had devastating consequences to Media Plaintiffs.&#8221;
Also funded by the State Department is for-profit company called <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/newsguard-runs-cover-for-terrorists-in-fact-check-of-ben-shapiro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NewsGuard</a>, which said it aimed to &#8220;cut off revenues to fake news sites&#8221; by coming up with a whitelist that purported to name every legitimate news site. NewsGuard ranks The Federalist as &#8220;unreliable&#8221; and The Daily Wire as &#8220;credible with significant exceptions.&#8221;
GEC funded GDI in 2021 through its U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, in which GDI was awarded $100,000. The <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/disinformation-inc-state-department-silent-on-if-it-will-ties-global-disinformation-index" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington Examiner</a> reported that the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy  apparently funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars more to GDI. The National Endowment for Democracy later acknowledged its &#8220;mandate is to work around the world and not in the United States,&#8221; and thus would no longer fund GDI.
The State Department also co-sponsored a &#8220;COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation&#8221; tech challenge that gave a prize to NewsGuard. NewsGuard said in a press release that it planned to &#8220;help&#8221; the State Department by flagging COVID &#8220;hoaxes.&#8221;
One of the “hoaxes” flagged by NewsGuard was that COVID might have come from a Chinese lab, a scenario now viewed by U.S. agencies to be likely. NewsGuard gave its secret data to scientists from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/atomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Los Alamos</a>, the lab that created the atomic bomb, who used it to target skeptics of then-conventional COVID wisdom.
The lawsuit says that the government used tools developed to be used against foreign nations against political opponents at home.
&#8220;State Department disinformation tools were developed&#8230; as tools of warfare&#8230; in the context of national security&#8221; and &#8220;foreign relations,&#8221; then &#8220;misdirected to be used at home against domestic political opponents,&#8221; it said.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he is &#8220;proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government.&#8221;
&#8220;The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American,&#8221; Paxton said. &#8220;This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.”
The lawsuit argues that Paxton&#8217;s ability to enforce Texas&#8217; anti-censorship laws were infringed by the State Department&#8217;s funding of censorship tools.
“The Biden administration is illegally funding organizations with the stated goal of financially crippling media outlets whose coverage does not walk in lockstep with the government’s ideological agenda,&#8221; The Daily Wire said in a statement on the lawsuit. &#8220;We sued the Biden administration before over its unconstitutional vaccine mandate, and we won. This time, we’re suing for our rights, all news organizations’ rights, and the constitutional guarantee of a free press that all Americans deserve.&#8221;

white house 10/7

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