Little-known entities, influential corporations, and the U.S. government have for years been cooperating to target what people can read, watch, and listen to on a daily basis. Thankfully, the public is several steps closer to getting a more complete picture of how this covert ecosystem works. Its purpose, however, is quite overt: to steer advertising revenue away from right-leaning websites and publications.
In February, I broke the story on what we’ve come to call “Disinformation, Inc.” with a report revealing how the Washington Examiner and other right-leaning outlets are being blacklisted by a group called the Global Disinformation Index. Disinformation has become a catchall term for what in many cases isn’t disinformation at all but rather mere dissent. The inclusion of such out-of-fashion opinions at a journalistic publication is used to pressure companies to boycott that publication entirely.
12 REPUBLICANS PRESS STATE DEPARTMENT OVER GRANTS TO GLOBAL DISINFORMATION INDEX
That’s where GDI comes in, a British company with two affiliated American nonprofit groups called Disinformation Index Foundation and Disinformation Index Inc. Since 2018, GDI has anointed itself as the authority on all things “disinformation.” In 2020, the two U.S. entities pulled in roughly $914,000 combined in revenue, according to tax forms.
GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that advertising companies subscribe to so they can help “defund” disfavored speech. What my reporting found, however, is that GDI’s classification of “disinformation” is heavily partisan.
The organization has alleged that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post. All of these media outlets skew to the right. Some, such as the American Conservative and the Federalist, publish mostly commentary, meaning that by any traditional understanding of the term “disinformation,” these sites don’t traffic in it.
Meanwhile, GDI has claimed that the 10 “least risky” outlets are NPR, ProPublica, the Associated Press, Insider, the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, HuffPost, and the Wall Street Journal.
It’s worth noting that several of these outlets, particularly HuffPost and Buzzfeed News, promoted the Steele dossier, a discredited piece of opposition research that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign fed to the FBI in order to link former President Donald Trump to Russia. The outlets also published stories boosting the falsehood that a 2020 New York Post story based on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
GDI views “disinformation” through an “adversarial narrative conflict” lens, meaning content that is allegedly “against democratic institutions, scientific consensus or an at-risk group — and which carries a risk of harm,” according to its website. Those descriptors are at odds with what you’d typically assume to be “disinformation,” which is “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth,” according to Merriam-Webster.
That’s why GDI targets content that is not disinformation by definition. Such was the case when the group flagged an October 2022 Washington Examiner commentary piece titled “Why are liberal women so unhappy?” as “misogyny” disinformation in January 2022 and demanded Trivago, a German technology company, pull ads from it, according to a report. That article, authored by editor Conn Carroll, cited a 2022 social science research survey finding more than 30% of conservative men and women were “completely satisfied with their lives,” compared to 20% of liberal men and 15% of liberal women feeling the same way.
Groups like GDI are engaging not in battling “disinformation” but in viewpoint discrimination along clear partisan lines.
Moreover, GDI spent a large portion of 2020 pressuring brands to pull ads from conservative websites giving credence to the idea that COVID-19 could have emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. But this hypothesis has gained notable traction following the Wall Street Journal reporting in late February on the Energy Department’s recent conclusion based on classified intelligence that the coronavirus most likely did come from a lab. The FBI concluded in 2021 with “moderate confidence” that a leak was probable, according to sources familiar with classified information.
The same day that the Washington Examiner reported on GDI and its blacklisting efforts, we also published a story illustrating how the U.S. government has funded GDI. Shortly after, we published a separate investigation showing more government-linked grants.
The revelation that the U.S. government has provided financial support to a group taking steps to defund and shut down media outlets operating domestically outraged lawmakers and had watchdogs calling for investigations. It also prompted well-known constitutional lawyers such as Jonathan Turley and Jeffrey Clark to raise First Amendment concerns. And it led to the “Disinformation, Inc.” series being featured in a March 2 “Twitter Files” installment published by Matt Taibbi.
Here’s a brief synopsis of that funding. Roughly $545,000 flowed from the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group funded almost entirely through congressional appropriations, to GDI’s American nonprofit groups between 2020 and 2021, according to financial records. Separately, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center granted $100,000 to GDI in 2021, the agency confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
The NED’s grants were earmarked for GDI to develop “disinformation” risk ratings in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and elsewhere overseas, according to documents.
It’s worth noting that the NED is not a typical 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. It was founded in 1983 after being authorized by Congress. The NED aims “to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working on democratic goals in more than 100 countries,” according to its website.
In the last several years, critics have continued to allege that the group is essentially a government grantmaking body masquerading as an independent entity. For one, the NED pocketed more than $300 million from the State Department in 2021 and handed out a record $259 million in grants that year, according to financial statements reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The NED is even subject to the Freedom of Information Act, an anomaly for an entity classified as a nonprofit organization by the IRS and provided a taxpayer identification number. The NED’s Board of Directors also includes government officials, such as Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Former Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun is on the board.
That the NED is subject to FOIA resulted in Protect the Public’s Trust, a watchdog group directed by former Trump Education Department official Michael Chamberlain, demanding records on GDI grant funding, the Washington Examiner reported in late February.
Protect the Public’s Trust was hardly the only entity that took aim at the NED over the grants. So did House Republicans, particularly on the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Accountability committees. On Feb. 20, the Washington Examiner reported that the NED was announcing that it would no longer provide future grants to GDI “to avoid the perception that NED is engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly,” since the NED’s Articles of Incorporation and the NED Act, a federal statute, hold that its mandate “is to work around the world and not in the United States,” Leslie Aun, the NED’s vice president of communications, said in a statement at the time.
The announcement came days after Republican staffers on the two aforementioned congressional committees were briefed by the NED on its GDI grants. The nonprofit group sought to distance itself from GDI, claiming it “didn’t do any of this bad stuff when they signed the grant,” a congressional source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner on Feb. 20.
But while the NED has made a commitment to no longer funding GDI, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center has not. It has merely said the obvious — that no future work is planned, with its prior grant concluding.
The Global Engagement Center is an interagency organization, meaning a group involved with several government agencies, that is housed under the State Department. It aims 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.
In 2021, GEC announced that GDI and two other groups would split a $250,000 award as part of the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, which was a program aiming “to advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” overseas, according to records. It remains unclear how much GDI pocketed. But the State Department told the Washington Examiner that the group was given $100,000 to track disinformation in Europe and East Asia.
Like the NED, GEC briefed the House Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees. It occurred on March 1 and was said to be “classified,” a designation that congressional sources found odd. In that briefing, GEC claimed that GDI was not engaged in the domestic blacklisting of media outlets when the grant was decided, according to a senior congressional official. However, there remains uncertainty among Congress when it comes to this claim, considering that GDI was publishing research on U.S. media outlets in 2020 — one year before GEC’s grant to GDI as part of the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the Oversight Committee, demanded documents and communications from the State Department on Feb. 23 in connection to GDI grants, the Washington Examiner reported. The March 1 briefing was a direct result of his request in that letter. He also set a March 9 deadline for records, which was missed, although the Oversight Committee said it is still working with the department on obtaining the documents.
Several lawmakers have since written to the State Department or called for investigations since “Disinformation, Inc.” was rolled out. These include House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ken Buck (R-CO), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Andrew Clyde (R-GA), plus Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Free speech advocates view the NED’s announcement that it will no longer fund GDI as a win. They also look fondly upon Microsoft’s Xandr, a major ad company, suspending its relationship with GDI and launching an investigation after blacklisting a whole swath of conservative news outlets. Thanks to whistleblowers in the ad space who reached out after the first two stories in the series were published, the Washington Examiner was able to uncover Microsoft’s blacklisting run.
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GDI is still active, and ad companies continue to use its resources to shape media. Oracle partnered with it in August 2021 and has not responded to the Washington Examiner’s emails since mid-February asking if it will follow Microsoft’s lead. Microsoft has yet to provide more information about its investigation than that it’s happening — not who is conducting it, how long it will be, whether Microsoft has been in communication with GDI, or whether it will commit to no longer blacklisting conservative websites.
“I just checked in with the team and learned the review is still ongoing,” Microsoft spokeswoman Kate Frischmann emailed on March 17. “I know you’re eager to learn more, so I’ll keep you posted when I have an update. Thank you for your continued patience.”
Gabe Kaminsky is an investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner. Follow him on Twitter: @gekaminsky.
