MRCTV readers and viewers likely know the fascistic, government-subsidized manner in which censorship-pusher NewsGuard has repeatedly targeted right-leaning websites.
If it has frustrated you, you are not alone.
In fact, Donald Trump's pick to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and currently the senior Republican Commissioner on the board, just announced his disapproval of NewsGuard’s federally-subsidized censoriousness, his worry about NewsGuard’s ties to major social media and tech corporations, and his call for the end of numerous connections between federal politics, and social media curators.
RELATED: House Committee Uncovers Federal Political Role in Taxpayer-Funded Censorship
Citing MRC research, Congressional Testimony from journalist Michael Shellenberger, and work by journalist Lee Fang, to name a few of his numerous references, Brendan Carr on X November 15 wrote an open letter to the heads of Google/Alphabet, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Apple, noting widespread censorship of speech that the central government did not like, and noting “your companies played significant roles in this improper conduct.”
And, as Breitbart’s Sean Moran reports:
“Carr states that the tech Masters of the Universe, in conjunction with ‘the orwellian-named NewsGuard,’ fact checking groups, and ad agencies, have enforced ‘one-sided narratives.’”
That’s clear. And the “side” NewsGuard enforces isn’t really the issue. The issue is that they receive federally-grabbed tax money to push not only their censorship routine, but also to portray that censorship complex as, somehow, “unbiased” and “factual.”
As NewsBusters' Joseph Vaquez reports:
Moreover, Carr excoriated the CEOs for participating in “a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called ‘fact checking’ organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself” to suppress viewpoints, harm websites’ profitability and delist them by smearing them as “high risk” to advertisers.
Carr’s reference to advertising is related to GARM, which organized a marketing blackout against X/Twitter for daring to embrace free speech. It was only shut down after a lawsuit instigated by Elon Musk.
Indeed, last year, MRCTV and the MRC’s NewsBusters offered key background facts about GARM (the Global Alliance for Responsible Media), which was formed by a voluntary association of international advertisers called the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and which called “online ratings firm” NewsGuard a “partner” in checking the “acceptability” of content released by journalists and sites such as MRCTV.
Thus, the GARM members as a block, would use NewsGuard in their decision to boycott said “unacceptable” sites.
And the censorship cabal tied to NewsGuard is far bigger than GARM. It includes the corporations cited by Carr, and federal funds first allocated in 2017 to engage in government-subsidized censorship.
As MRCTV reported in September, the lynchpin of federal funding for this massive, multi-tentacled menace to free speech was the Portman-Murphy Countering Foreign Propaganda Act, a bill which levered the growing government canard of ‘Russian interference’ while promoting the false notion of Russian antagonism against the U.S.
When passed in December of that year as part of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA – a yearly blimp of ‘must-pass’ spending that levers American people’s support for the military as a mask to pass all kinds of poison) allocated $150 MILLION dollars for two years to be sent to any media outlet or media-related outlet that operatives of the federal government claimed ‘countered’ what they arbitrarily called ‘foreign propaganda.’
In 2018, MRCTV warned that conservative and libertarian media were being ‘shadow-banned’ and silenced by pro-government forces on certain social media, and our posts were being unduly portrayed as ‘misinformation’ by leftist cutouts such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.
By 2021, we were attempting to alert Americans that, after a brief pause during the Trump Administration, legislators in Congress had reauthorized the Portman-Murphy graft, and that, in addition to countless unknown media wings that might have been receiving ‘compensation’ for singing the Siren socialist songs numerous DC politicians wanted to hear, the feds had created something called the ‘Global Engagement Center.’
That collectivist censorship creature was – IS -- abbreviated ‘GEC.’ MRCTV soon acknowledged investigative journalist Matt Taibbi's reports that the GEC had ties to the Pentagon and DARPA on the government side, and to propagandistic ‘fact-check’ groups such as the falsely-purported ‘independent’ NewsGuard, and the ‘Virality Project’ and ‘Election Integrity Project’ at Stanford University.
Breitbart’s Moran writes about Carr’s citation of another key facet of this battle, a federal communications diktat about which we at MRCTV often have reported:
“Carr noted that ‘for now’ he is trying to obtain information from big tech to inform their work to promote free speech. He emphasized that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives big tech platforms legal immunity from hosting content and removing content they find objectionable, is only given when big tech operates in ‘good faith.’”
Carr and many of us who have been involved in this fight against federally subsidized and federally pressured social media censorship know quite well that virtually any clear-minded person can see that the NewsGuard and social media attacks on our speech are not “curation in good faith.”
Writes Breitbart’s Moran:
“The FCC commissioner also demanded information about the big tech platform’s work with the ‘Orwellian named Newsguard,’ the establishment pro-censorship group establishing a news blacklist against conservatives. Breitbart News has reported extensively on NewsGuard and its critics, including constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley.
Carr explained:
‘But Newsguard’s own track record raises question about whether relying on the organization’s products would constitute “good faith” actions within the meaning of Section 230. For one, reports indicate that Newsguard has consistently rated official propaganda from the Communist Party of China as more credible than American publications. For another, Newsguard aggressively fact checked and penalized websites that reported on the COVID-19 lab leak theory. For still another, the Small Business Committee and multiple Media Research Center studies detail numerous instancese (sic) where Newsguard apparently does not apply its own rating system in an even-handed manner. The list goes on.’
Carr added that Newsguard’s credibility is undercut because its advisory board retains at least one person that signed the now ‘infamous’ October 2020 letter from intelligence community officials that flamed the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation — a letter that itself fueled a wave of censorship.”
In closing his X post and open letter, the FCC Commissioner called for answers.
“Emphasizing the importance of NewsGuard to the censorship cartel, Carr demanded the CEOs to answer four questions about how their companies work with the news blacklisters:
To help inform FCC action, please provide me with the following:
1. A list of every one of your products or services (if any, including advertising) that use or rely on any NewsGuard product, service, or ranking.
2. A list of every one of your products or services (if any) that enables any of your users or customers to use or rely on any NewsGuard product, service, or ranking.
3. If you offer an advertising service, provide details on the use of any media monitor or fact checking service, including NewsGuard, that you may utilize.
4. If you use third party advertising or marketing agencies to enable advertising within or with your products, please identify the advertising or marketing agencies you work or partner with.
The FCC commissioner demanded a response from the tech CEOs by December 10.”
This is a powerful reminder of what the feds have pitted against us, but it is just the start.
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