The House Judiciary Committee has published a damning interim report on the shadowy network of online censors that "rob consumers of choices and are likely illegal under the antitrust laws." according to the report titled "GARM's Harm: How the World's Biggest Brands Seek to Control Online Speech."
GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media} is an initiative of the World Federation Of Advertisers (WFA) which represents about 150 of the world's top companies such as ExxonMobil, GM, General Mills, McDonald’s, Visa, SC Johnson, and Walmart, as well as 60 ad associations worldwide.
“The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms,” said the Committee report, which is based on internal organizational reports.
“The information uncovered to date of WFA and GARM’s collusive conduct to demonetize disfavored content is alarming," claims the report.
The WFA represents about 90% of global advertising dollars spent, almost $1 trillion annually.
The new report establishes links between the WFA’s “responsible media” initiative and the taxpayer-funded Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a London-based group that in 2022 unveiled an ad blacklist of 10 news outlets whose opinion sections tilted conservative or libertarian, including The Post, RealClearPolitics and Reason magazine.
Documents acquired by Congress show that some GARM members thought the GDI’s blacklist was bogus — with one employee writing that it was “bewildering” that the group “somehow placed the NYPost as ‘at most risk’ paper in the USA for disinformation.”
But additional documents show that the GDI’s blacklist was nonetheless promoted to WFA members as a tool to gauge misinformation and demonize disfavored outlets.
“[W]e do advise that platforms, ad-tech, agencies, use independent fact-checkers to weed out mis-and-disinfo from supply chain and ad buys. GDI is one of many — NewsGuard, IFCN, etc,” Rob Rakowitz, WFA’s initiative lead for the GARM program, wrote in response to the employee who complained.
"One of many," yes. But GARM is five times bigger than any other "fact check" organization, and the largest companies and ad associations in the world embrace it.
What's more, the report showed that the targets of "misinformation" were always right or libertarian-leaning outlets. GARM openly encouraged members to boycott conservative sites.
The GDI received $100,000 from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and $545,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy. Both government entities now say they won't give any more to GDI — only after the group's bias was exposed.
Rakowitz is the censor-in-chief. And his method of denying conservative opinions from being disseminated is subjective in the extreme.
Internal communications suggest that rather than using an objective rubric to guide decisions, GARM members simply monitored disfavored outlets closely to be able to find justification to demonetize them.
One GARM member, John Montgomery, an executive at GroupM — the world’s top ad agency — wrote to Rakowitz in October 2021: “Before Breitbart crossed the line and started spouting blatant misinformation, we had long discussions about whether we should include them on our exclusion lists. As much as we hated their ideology and bulls—, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.”
Shouldn't online content be as freely disseminated as content from dead-tree outlets? What the hell is the Constitution for if it doesn't cover all speech?
It would be one thing if these were private organizations advocating for boycotts on their own. However, these groups received government money to create "blacklists" and may have violated antitrust laws.
The investigation by the committee is ongoing.
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