This is part of a Washington Examiner investigative series on self-styled “disinformation” tracking groups that are blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media outlets. Here is where you can read stories in the series.
As a direct result of multiple Washington Examiner reports, a State Department-backed nonprofit group is severing its financial relationship with a “disinformation” tracking organization that is secretly blacklisting and taking steps to shut down conservative media.
The National Endowment for Democracy, a group funded almost entirely through congressional appropriations, granted $545,750 between 2020 and 2021 to the Global Disinformation Index, which is feeding conservative website blacklists to advertising companies. Amid GOP lawmakers raising concerns, the National Endowment for Democracy is taking steps to distance itself from the purported “disinformation” monitor and will no longer be providing it future grant money, the nonprofit group told the Washington Examiner.
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“As set forth in our Articles of Incorporation and the NED Act, our mandate is to work around the world and not in the United States,” Leslie Aun, the group’s vice president of communications, told the Washington Examiner. “We have strict policies and practices in place so that NED and the work we fund remains internationally focused, ensuring the Endowment does not become involved in domestic politics.”
“Recently, we became aware that one of our grantees, the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), was engaged in an initiative, funded by a different donor, that focused on specific U.S. media outlets,” the statement continued. “We recognize the important work GDI has done with NED support in other countries to help preserve the integrity of the information space and counter authoritarian influence. However, given our commitment to avoid the perception that NED is engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly, we will no longer provide financial support to GDI.”
The major development comes after the group briefed the House Foreign Affairs Committee and one other committee on Thursday, seeking to clarify that its grants were not allotted for the Global Disinformation Index’s conservative blacklists, a congressional source told the Washington Examiner. The NED’s fresh actions will not affect 2020 and 2021 grants to the Global Disinformation Index, which have already been spent, according to another source close to the group.
“But there will be no more grants going forward,” said the second source.
There were roughly six NED representatives and three congressional committee representatives in attendance at the Thursday meeting, said the congressional source, who noted that committee representatives told the group that money is “fungible” regardless of the grants being sent for overseas activity.
The 2020 and 2021 grants to Global Disinformation Index were earmarked for the group to collaborate with foreign partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere to research disinformation and develop “risk ratings” for advertising companies, according to the NED. In 2021, the group received $300 million in taxpayer dollars, according to public records.
The Global Disinformation Index, as the Washington Examiner has continued to detail, compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” of the biggest “disinformation” peddlers among websites and feeds it to advertisers. It has said that the 10 “riskiest” 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.
In the Thursday briefing, the NED claimed that the Global Disinformation Index “didn’t do any of this bad stuff when they signed the grant,” according to the congressional source. The Global Disinformation Index was incorporated in April 2018, according to British financial records.
The State Department has increasingly come under fire from Republican lawmakers for its ties to the Global Disinformation Index. In 2021, the department’s affiliated Global Engagement Center granted $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index as part of the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, which sought “to advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” overseas, records show.
Park Advisers, an investment firm that fights “disinformation, terrorism, violent extremism, [and] hate speech,” was initially given the $100,000 and delivered it to the Global Disinformation Index, according to the State Department.
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“I’m going to focus my time on the weaponization subcommittee on these matters,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told the Washington Examiner on Thursday. “This direct assault on the First Amendment and the ways in which the exquisite powers of the government has been merged with the capabilities of technology to constrain rights that Americans have long held close and cherished.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), ranking member on the permanent subcommittee on investigations, said Wednesday that Congress needs “to further investigate this potential First Amendment violation.”
