Disinformation Inc: Government-backed organization sent $315,000 to group blacklisting conservative news
Gabe Kaminsky
This is part of a Washington Examiner investigative series on self-styled ‘disinformation’ tracking groups that are secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media outlets. Here is where you can read the series.
A nonprofit organization almost entirely funded by the State Department steered hundreds of thousands of dollars more to a “disinformation” monitor that is secretly blacklisting and taking steps to defund conservative media outlets, according to records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
The Washington Examiner reported on Thursday that the National Endowment for Democracy, which received $300 million in taxpayer dollars in 2021, granted $230,000 in 2020 to the Global Disinformation Index’s U.S. nonprofit group. In 2021, the NED granted $315,750 to this same entity, which has been dubbed “Disinformation Index, Inc,” according to records.
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DISINFORMATION INC: GOP SLAMS GOVERNMENT FOR FUNDING GROUP BLACKLISTING CONSERVATIVE NEWS
The grant, which has not been reported on until now, was earmarked for GDI to “work with local partners in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America to assess disinformation risks of local online media ecosystems, employing artificial intelligence as well as expert review.”
“The resulting risk ratings will be used to raise awareness among advertising companies and trade bodies of the risks that arise from funding disinformation,” the grant description said. “Partners will also use the data and reports to drive national policy debates on trust in media and disinformation, and to work constructively with media outlets to improve the quality and rigor of their content.”
The NED, which has a board including Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Joaquin Castro (D-TX) that “controls” grantmaking, has continued to come under fire for bankrolling GDI. On Monday, multiple Republican lawmakers, such as Stefanik and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), slammed the State Department for its ties to the disinformation group.
“Yes, it should absolutely be defunded, and I agree with my colleagues Jim Banks and Mike McCaul that this is just another chilling example of the government weaponizing resources against their political opponents,” Stefanik told the Washington Examiner. “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.”
GDI operates a “dynamic exclusion list” with conservative media outlets. The Washington Examiner confirmed that the outlet is on this list, and GDI has, separately, claimed the 10 “riskiest” news outlets are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News Network, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
However, GDI has ranked the 10 “least risky” as the Wall Street Journal, NPR, ProPublica, the Associated Press, Insider, the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, and HuffPost, according to a 27-page memo.
The exclusion list has been fed to major companies, including the Microsoft-owned Xandr, which have declined to place advertisements on conservative websites. Following the Washington Examiner publishing Xandr’s blacklist, Microsoft announced that is launching an internal review and, for now, not using GDI’s services.
The company does not currently flag conservative websites as “false/misleading,” among other negative classifications. It is unclear whether this means that conservative websites now have access to key ad dollars since their classifications do not say “approved.”
“Why is the State Department using your tax dollars to fund a ‘disinformation’ tracking group that is secretly trying to defund conservative media?” tweeted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Monday. “What happened to the First Amendment?”
https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1625199495016288281
The other State Department entity that has funded GDI is Disinfo Cloud, an unclassified and ex-platform through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
Congress and dozens of federal agencies used Disinfo Cloud between 2018 and 2021, and the GEC aimed to “counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations,” according to its website.
The GEC granted $100,000 in 2021 to GDI, according to the State Department, as part of the U.S-Paris Tech Challenge. That challenge sought “to advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” overseas, documents showed.
“Last year, under tremendous bipartisan pressure, I refused to reauthorize the Global Engagement Center because such a step seemed premature,” McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, previously told the Washington Examiner.
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“The most recent allegations, if verified, confirm the need for a strict accounting of all U.S. taxpayer funds going to the GEC,” he added.
The NED did not reply to a request for comment.