OPINION:
Which is worse, the Pentagon’s adoption of extreme-left “woke” madness, or the fact that American taxpayers are forced to fund it?
While it may not be a secret, mainstream media coverage of this disturbing trend has so far been scant. But recently, trailblazing independent journalists have exposed how the Department of Homeland Security’s “anti-terrorism” (read: anti-unapproved viewpoints) program distributed millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to various far-left nonprofit organizations.
As we have come to expect, part of their twisted agenda conflated conservative and Christian organizations with neo-Nazis.
One of the recipients of taxpayer funds was caught bragging about his efforts to de-bank, deplatform and ostracize organizations he opposes ideologically. The Biden White House has so far distributed approximately $40 million to groups whose purpose is to demonize conservatives, Republicans, Christians and others.
After an outcry, the Senate Armed Services Committee recently added an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act banning the Pentagon from funding leftist organizations that rate and police news sites. The importance of this legislative effort cannot be overstated.
Unfortunately, this latest example isn’t even scratching the surface of Washington’s multidimensional campaign to stifle dissent, speech and debate with your hard-earned money.
In congressional testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger stated that the so-called Global Disinformation Index (a United Kingdom-based group that builds secret “exclusion lists” targeting conservative media) and another group called NewsGuard are perhaps the most notorious beneficiaries of this subsidized censorship campaign.
Both have written extensively on how government officials frequently demanded censorship of Twitter users who dared to dissent from official White House views on COVID.
Mr. Shellenberger explained that “both the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard are U.S. government-funded entities who are working to drive advertisers’ revenue away from disfavored publications and towards the ones they favor.”
Indeed — GDI claims “neutrality, independence and transparency” yet offers close to none. Having compiled a list of 2,000 right-leaning sites including the Daily Wire, Newsmax and the New York Post, it is overseen by Clare Melford, formerly of MTV, and Daniel Rogers of Human Rights Watch.
Urging advertisers to ignore and avoid all under the auspices of combatting disinformation, it has successfully siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hardworking Americans, including over $600,000 from State Department-linked agencies for this twisted, partisan purpose.
No better is NewsGuard, the other organization cited by Mr. Shellenberger. Founded by Steven Brill (infamous for declaring the Hunter Biden laptop a tool of Russian propaganda) and former Wall Street Journal reporter Gordon Crovitz, it manages a nine-tiered website rating system ranging from “High Credibility” to “Proceed With Caution.” Readers and advertising agencies assess the merits or demerits of interacting with given media outlets.
No one should be shocked to discover NewsGuard graces left-wing stalwarts such as The Guardian, The New Yorker and Politico with perfect scores. Meanwhile, it downgraded new sites that questioned whether COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab (many U.S. government agencies now agree that it did), whether Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian misinformation, or whether the COVID vaccine increased the number of cases of myocarditis.
Yet the Department of Defense didn’t think twice before awarding this company a $750 million contract.
Clearly, the true purpose behind GDI’s and NewsGuard’s campaigns is not to stop “misinformation,” but to stifle dissent. Their aim is to evaporate conservative advertising revenue using dubious allegations as the pretext. As explained by The Federalist, these “warning labels serve as figurative earplugs or blinders, with users never accessing webpages with red alerts.”
In other words, speech ultimately gets silenced because their disingenuous “warnings keep advertising dollars from outlets.”
The taxpayer dollars that GDI and NewsGuard received have already duped far too many readers and advertising agency flunkeys.
One subscriber to GDI’s exclusion lists, the Microsoft-owned ad firm Xandr, recently informed clients it would no longer advertise on platforms with content GDI considers “morally reprehensible” or “offensive.”
CEOs of other major corporations have also expressed disbelief after learning their businesses have instituted ad bans on the New York Post and other respected media outlets for no reason other than NewsGuard’s or GDI’s recommendation.
While the United States uses taxpayer funds to study hamsters on steroids, puppies on cocaine, drunken mice and more, this subsidized censorship campaign manages to win the prize for heinous government overreach.
That’s because it interferes with the free flow of information and ideas protected by the First Amendment — perhaps the most essential right the American people have — like the taxpayer dollars being funneled to GDI-NewsGuard.
Thankfully, several members of Congress, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and others, have noticed the damage it is causing and are working diligently to end GDI and NewsGuard’s taxpayer-funded gravy train.
Here’s hoping they succeed in short order. This unjustifiable boondoggle has gone on long enough.
• Brian Maloney is co-founder of the Media Equality Project.
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