House Republicans succeeded in getting provisions in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to limit the flow of millions of defense dollars from going to NewsGuard, a tech company that seeks to throttle conservative news outlets by labeling them “disinformation” and starving them of advertising revenue.
House Republicans inserted into the NDAA, which authorizes Pentagon spending and policies yearly, language that would ban the Department of Defense from using NewsGuard or any firm that works with NewsGuard for military recruitment advertising purposes.
The language requires that before the DOD can hire a firm for that advertising, that firm must certify to Congress that it does not make determinations on what news sources to place advertisements with based on “personal or institutional political preferences or biases, or determinations of misinformation.”
Since the Pentagon spends several hundred million dollars a year on military recruiting advertisements, none of that money would go to NewsGuard or companies working with NewsGuard or similar entities.
The provision, §1555 of the NDAA, states (emphasis added):
Prior to the 25 Secretary of Defense entering into any contract or other agreement (or extending, renewing, or otherwise modifying an existing contract or other agreement) with an entity for the purpose of that entity placing military recruitment advertisements on behalf of the Department of Defense, the Secretary shall require, as a condition of such contract or agreement, that the entity certify to the Secretary that the entity does not place advertisements in news sources based on personal or institutional political preferences or biases, or determinations of misinformation.
“If they lie on the certifications, we’re going to nail them to a wall,” a Republican aide told Breitbart News.
In addition to the certification requirement for firms, if the DOD for whatever reason enters a contract with NewsGuard or a firm working with NewsGuard or similar entities anyway for military recruitment purposes, it requires the defense secretary to notify the House and Senate Armed Services Committee as well as congressional leadership. The notification provision states:
(b) NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENT.— (1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretaries of the military departments, shall submit a notification to the congressional defense committees and congressional leadership each time the Department of Defense enters into a contract related to the placement of recruitment advertising with an entity specified in paragraph (2) and if such entities are used how they are used.
The provisions specify “entities” as “NewsGuard Technologies, Inc., the “Global Disinformation Index” or “Disinformation Index LTD,” and “any similar entity.”
When Breitbart News asked the Republican aide if the DOD could enter into contracts with entities who use NewsGuard for other purposes, the aide responded, “So, we’ve got some other stuff cooking on that. We’re also working on the oversight front. But really what we’re trying to tackle this year is that deliberate flow of taxpayer dollars away from conservative media outlets. That is what this is primarily designed to target.”
“I think there’s plenty of room for us to build on here in the future, but this is an excellent way to begin inserting it into the contracting process DOD-wide for this activity,” the aide said, adding:
We’re going to continue to conduct oversight on this and our members are now super interested in it. So we’re going to keep working. I would like to give you a more fulsome answer to that question later. But we’re looking now at the whole spectrum of it. This disinformation, misinformation, ‘objective’ stuff has been a Democrat priority for years now that we’ve been working on and it has changed names and flavors so many times that once you pin down one, they just end up in another spot. So that is the consistent theme we’ve seen…we’re going to be chasing this for a long time.
The Republican aide said he was only aware of one DOD contract with NewsGuard, which was in 2021 when the Air Force Research Laboratory awarded a $749,387 contract to NewsGuard for its “Misinformation Fingerprints” data catalogue, which tracks “misinformation narratives spreading online.” That contract’s end date was December 8, 2022.
NewsGuard’s website said Misinformation Fingerprints has also “alerted” the Pentagon’s analysts at Cyber Command “Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and other hostile-information operations.” In September 2020, NewsGuard won a Pentagon and State Department contest for detecting COVID-19 “misinformation and disinformation,” and was awarded $25,000 to work with the Pentagon and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
NewsGuard’s co-CEO, Gordon Crovitz, a former journalist, said on Wednesday the provisions would not affect his company.
NewsGuard “has not had and does not have any contracts with the Pentagon relating to recruitment advertising, nor have we ever sought any,” he told the Washington Examiner.
According to the Washington Examiner, the provisions did not go as far as Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA)’s original proposal, which would have banned Pentagon funds for any reason from going to NewsGuard, GDI, or any similar entity.
A McCormick spokeswoman told the outlet, “It didn’t go as far as it did in our original amendment. This is still good progress for free speech.”
Last week, the state of Texas and two conservative media outlets — the Daily Wire and the Federalist — sued the State Department for awarding grants or contracts to NewsGuard to censor conservative media.
In October, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of X, posted that NewsGuard should be “disbanded immediately.”
“What a scam! ‘Newsguard’ should be disbanded immediately,” he posted.
What a scam!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2023
“Newsguard” should be disbanded immediately.
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