Guess what entities House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has unveiled as key players in a major advertising boycott of right-leaning outlets?
On March 26, Jordan demanded documents from several high-profile companies participating in a disturbing initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers, a global advertising association. At the time, Jordan asked five major companies about their prominent role as a “steer team” in the WFA’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative.
In an April 2 article, Daily Wire reporter Luke Rosiak wrote that the GARM initiative served to push advertisers away from “disfavored” publications. He also described the initiative as a “coordinated” attempt that could bankrupt any targeted organizations. Disturbingly, the GARM initiative has held up biased organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index as examples of good organizations for identifying misinformation.
As reported by the Daily Wire, this massive coalition has tipped its hand on how to judge which news outlets deserve advertising and which deserve to be starved of revenue. Rosiak also wrote that GARM wished to police so-called “misinformation.”
To put it lightly, MRC Free Speech Vice President Dan Schneider doesn’t trust GARM to do that. “The left will stop at nothing to upend our elections and our democracy. They don’t want people to get their news from reliable right-of-center news outlets,” Schneider said. “This is why they’re now colluding with advertisers and advertising firms to choke off funding. This is not only illegal it's also undemocratic and it must stop.”
Who decides what is considered misinformation? Those who believe men can become women? Rosiak notes that questioning the publicly stated origins of COVID was considered misinformation. GARM held up the work of NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index and the Journalism Trust Initiative as useful guides for determining whether a news outlet was safe to advertise with.
Putting the future revenue of news outlets on the right in the hands of a biased firm like NewsGuard is a death sentence. The Media Research Center has repeatedly demonstrated through studies that NewsGuard routinely gives more favorable ratings to left-wing publications than the firm gives to those on the right.
In Dec. 2023, an MRC study showed a 26-point disparity between NewsGuard's average “credibility” rating for publications on the left and the right. To be specific, NewsGuard gave publications on the “left” and publications that “lean left” an eye-popping average of 91/100, while consigning publications on the “right” and publications that “lean right” to a D grade (65/100).
NewsGuard’s obvious bias is not a recent phenomenon, as two prior MRC studies showed disparities of 25 and 27 points in favor of publications on the left.
According to Rosiak, Jordan doesn’t plan on letting them get away with it. The Daily Wire reporter wrote, “The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether major advertisers ran afoul of antitrust laws by coordinating about which news outlets to blackball.”
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