A new congressional report accuses an office within the State Department of funding groups that targeted and censored small businesses in the United States, overstepping its mandate to combat foreign disinformation.
The Washington Examiner outlines a recently released report by the Republican-led House Small Business Committee that raises serious concerns about the activities of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). The 66-page report alleges that the GEC, which has an estimated budget of $61 million and a staff of 125, has been funding groups engaged in domestic censorship, thereby skirting its primary mandate of thwarting foreign disinformation.
The investigation, which began following a series of reports on the GEC’s involvement with the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center media outlets in the U.S., has uncovered a pattern of questionable funding practices. The report argues that the GEC promoted “tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.”
Moreover, the National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department-funded nonprofit that awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI, is accused of violating its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities to assess the credibility of domestic press businesses.
The report also highlights the GEC’s involvement in a secret group chat targeting conservatives over alleged “fake news.” Internal documents show that the GEC was added to a private email list titled “#FakeNewsSci,” in which apparent censorship activists critiqued applicants, including domestic businesses such as the Daily Caller and its fact-checking organization.
Participants in the email list were affiliated with various entities, including the National Endowment for Democracy, Snopes, Poynter, Clemson University, and the University of Washington. In one instance, a then-National Endowment for Democracy official, Dean Jackson, slammed the Daily Caller, citing links to articles critical of the outlet’s content and writers.
The House Small Business Committee report emphasizes that it is not appropriate for the GEC or the NED to “belong to a cohort that gatekeeps domestic press companies from belonging to a private credibility organization.” The report also notes issues in the GEC’s recordkeeping and insufficient audit procedures to efficiently track its use of taxpayer dollars.
As a result of these findings, the GEC faces the potential loss of funding over GOP-led frustrations about its apparent involvement with domestic censorship groups. A provision in the annual State Department appropriations bill aims to ban future checks to the GEC, and the office is facing a lawsuit from conservative media outlets over its support of GDI and NewsGuard, the blacklisting organization that rates the “misinformation” levels of news outlets to target conservatives for censorship.
The report concludes by stating that no federal funds should be used to support companies designed to demonetize and interfere with the domestic press. Although the government is no longer in a relationship with NewsGuard or GDI, the report argues that the damage has already been done, as these entities have received the backing of the federal government in hosting their products on the GEC’s Testbed, recommending them to partners, and helping to grow their products.
The findings of this report raise serious questions about the GEC’s activities and its potential overreach into domestic matters, which fall outside its intended scope. As the controversy continues to unfold, it is likely that the GEC will face increased scrutiny and calls for greater transparency and accountability in its use of taxpayer funds.
Read more at the Washington Examiner here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
