According to an investigation by Gabriel Kaminsky in the Washington Examiner, the U.S. State Department since 2018 has made substantial grants to a London‐based outfit called Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which feeds a blacklist to advertisers to keep ads off websites like that of Reason magazine (at which I’m a contributing editor).
Other publications on the blacklist as purported disinformation purveyors include the New York Post and the Washington Examiner. The London‐based group describes its mission as “Disrupting the business model of disinformation.” You can download one of its relevant reports here.
The group has received upwards of $300,000 from two State Department‐backed entities, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Department’s own Global Engagement Center since 2018, according to the Examiner (a publication itself a target of the list).
Kaminsky writes that “GDI compiles a ‘dynamic exclusion list’ that it feeds to corporate entities.…The list.…has ‘had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,’ said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.”
GDI has also listed the “ten sites with the lowest level of disinformation risk.” On that list: National Public Radio, ProPublica, Buzzfeed News, and HuffPost.
Last month, citing GDI’s work, attorney Hans Bader noted that the “concept of hate speech has expanded among progressives to include commonplace conservative views about racial or sexual subjects.” The Examiner’s Conn Carroll notes an instance in which GDI branded as disinformation and “discrimination” an opinion column he wrote in which he had summarized the (socially conservative) findings and views of Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Microsoft, which owns a large advertising service, “has launched a review of its relationship with GDI and has suspended usage of the group’s services,” following the revelations, the Examiner reports.
I myself am fine with advertisers’ using lists to distance from content they find controversial or downbeat (no placements next to stories about car crashes or wars — or, if they see fit, no placement next to writings like mine). I’m equally fine with the rest of us using our speech to blast list‐compilers’ choices as dumb and biased.
What I do know is that government and its functionaries must not get involved in pressuring or “helping” advertisers on these matters. In practice that can mean stepping selectively on the oxygen hose of ad revenues that supplies an adversary press.
Note that the danger can come from more than one direction. At the Congressional hearings that are coming, companies must also be free from fear of official retaliation should they choose *not* to advertise. Either way, state action that promotes blacklisting needs to end — now.
Related: I just published an opinion piece with the syndicated InsideSources service on how proposals to curtail so‐called disinformation about elections “can curtail legitimate speech and give the government power it’s likely to misuse.” And as longtime Cato readers know, it’s nothing new for government officials in this country to use their clout against the business interests of opposition publications and broadcasters.
