An Insidious Fed-Led Effort to Abridge Free Speech and a Free Press by Proxy
Taxpayer dollars should not back entities who would silence Americans by destroying our media businesses
Today I testified before the House Small Business Committee for a hearing titled “Under the Microscope: Examining the Censorship-Industrial Complex and its Impact on American Small Businesses.”
Herein I share my opening statement as prepared for delivery.
You can also watch the hearing in its entirety below — my remarks begin at 36:58:
A brief digression before I share my remarks in text form: Naturally, at the hearing’s outset, the Supreme Court delivered its opinion in a case of some relevance to the proceeding, Murthy v. Missouri.
As predicted, the Court struck a crippling blow against the First Amendment — one only softened by the fact that SCOTUS refused to rule on the merits, punting by denying the plaintiffs standing. I will likely have more to say on the case in the coming days, but for my quick take, check out this X thread.
The ruling, as I noted in real-time during my testimony, only underscores a position I have been emphasizing for some time: Courts cannot be relied upon to defend our rights. Those rights will erode absent robust legislative action.
Chairman Williams, Ranking Member Velázquez, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Free speech and a free press are bedrock features of our republic.
The Censorship-Industrial Complex, therefore, imperils our republic.
Disturbingly, the U.S. government has played an indelible role in fostering this censorship regime -- one that has purged unauthorized opinions and inconvenient facts en masse.
Today’s hearing highlights one insidious instance of it: Federal funding, direct and indirect, via the State Department’s Global Engagement Center -- of entities, in NewsGuard and GDI, that threaten the viability of media companies that dare to dissent from establishment orthodoxy.
The relationships this Committee is probing, and the stonewalling it has faced, should concern all Americans.
GEC’s stated mission is to counter “foreign…propaganda and disinformation efforts...”
NewsGuard says it aims to “systematically defund sources of harmful misinformation” – foreign and domestic.
It does so by rating and reviewing thousands of outlets for “reliability” and creating “exclusion lists” – blacklists – for brands to provide ad agencies and ad-tech partners for use in determining where not to place ads.
GDI likewise says it seeks to “reduce disinformation” by “remov[ing] the financial incentive” it says lurks behind it: Ad revenue.
It too arms ad-tech companies with a “dynamic exclusion list” reportedly containing 2,000 “risky” publications, including American ones.
Perversely then, a foreign-facing agency has supported entities that exist to put disfavored domestic outlets out of business.
Those NewsGuard and GDI have targeted suggest they have been smeared and stigmatized for taking positions on matters from COVID-19 to the War in Ukraine contrary to those of the political establishment, consequently incurring financial and reputational damage.
NewsGuard’s alleged viewpoint discrimination can be seen in the significantly higher scores on average that it has lavished on left-leaning sources over right-leaning ones; and in the Kafkaesque correspondences dissident sources left and right have had with its raters when challenging seemingly unmerited scores.
GDI’s blacklist isn’t public. But its 2022 report on “disinformation risk” among U.S. sources betrays a similar bias.
There, it lists among its ten least risky publications nine liberal-to-progressive corporate media outlets…and the Wall Street Journal.
Its ten riskiest publications include nine conservative or libertarian outlets…and RealClearPolitics.
Many maligned by NewsGuard and GDI report plummeting ad revenues – which GDI’s executives have gloated about.
Some say they’ve lost traffic.
Our experience at RealClearPolitics and RealClearInvestigations may be more troubling.
RCP’s bread-and-butter is curating compelling analysis – from sources left and right, corporate and independent – on key issues of the day, so readers can weigh both sides.
We score a 62 on NewsGuard’s 100-point scale – based on the subjective assessments of NewsGuard’s journalists, who analyze a sample of other journalists’ work to render judgment on whole outlets.
Amazingly, NewsGuard dings us in part for our “undisclosed” conservative bent.
The implication is that it either dismisses the feature of viewpoint diversity that we promote, or worse, sees viewpoint diversity as a bug.
RCP, mind you, ranks below NPR, the Washington Post, and Politico – all of which garner perfect NewsGuard scores despite their biases and bungles.
These scores influence not only advertisers, but up to half a billion readers through NewsGuard’s partnerships.
They appear next to sites in search results on browsers equipped with NewsGuard’s extension.
A low rating is a digital scarlet letter.
RealClearInvestigations curates deep-dives from sundry sources and publishes our own from journalists with diverse perspectives – some antithetical to my own.
NewsGuard has branded us biased too, albeit while giving us an 80.
The rater would seem to see bias in our pursuit of stories and angles competitors miss or ignore.
It took RCI to task for unmasking the whistleblower behind the first impeachment of President Trump – in the face of political pressure our silent peers folded under.
As for GDI, beyond landing on its “risky” list, RCP may be on its secret blacklist too.
RealClear has thrived despite these entities.
But the Censorship-Industrial Complex has made a highly competitive business harder and placed us at a competitive disadvantage.
Our ad revenue has declined materially, forcing us to devote substantially more time and resources to fundraising.
We’ve seen a meaningful drop in certain search rankings.
And we’ve taken a reputational hit.
Even if the risk-raters were unobjectionable, the fundamental issue would remain: Through funding and supporting such entities, government has abridged our freedom of speech and of the press by proxy.
Taxpayer dollars should not back those who would silence Americans by destroying our media businesses.
Thank you.