The Freedom Online Foundation reports that members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which has been accused of censoring online speech and trying to silence media outlets, including Breitbart News, have received billions of dollars in contracts from the federal government.
The federal government is sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to four major international advertising agencies that include some of the main architects of online censorship, an investigative report has found. report By Foundation for Freedom Online.
The House Judiciary Committee said a congressional investigation recently uncovered clear political bias within GARM’s leadership, which is using the group to control online speech and silence conservatives. report It was released last month.
For example, GARM co-founder Rob Rakowitz once complained in an email about “online free speech advocates” and “extreme international interpretations of the U.S. Constitution,” which he also criticized as being written “only by white men.”
“GARM and its members discussed strategies to block specific news outlets, including Fox News, The Daily Wire and Breitbart News,” the report added, pointing to emails from top officials associated with the coalition who said they “hated their ideology and bullshit.”
The congressional report further noted numerous cases in which GARM sought to punish sites or platforms that deviated from “brand-safe” speech.
Other companies GARM has targeted include Twitter (now X), which was acquired by tech billionaire Elon Musk. After Musk bought Twitter, GARM tried to tell all of its members — big companies like Coca-Cola and Unilever, which account for 90% of global ad spending — to “stop all paid advertising” on the platform, according to the report. GARM “bragged” about the fact that Twitter “missed revenue projections by 80%” after its efforts, according to the report.
According to the report, GARM had been pressuring Spotify over Joe Rogan’s podcast, particularly the host’s assertion that young, healthy people don’t need a COVID vaccine. GARM leader Rakowitz acknowledged in a private email that threats like the one they made against Spotify “paint us into a corner with anti-competitive and collusive conduct.”
The House Judiciary Committee noted that John Montgomery, an executive at GroupM, the world’s largest media buying agency, wrote in an October 2021 email after being asked about The Daily Wire that “there are interesting similarities to Breitbart.”
“We had a long discussion about whether to add Breitbart to our blacklist before they crossed the line and started spreading blatant misinformation,” Montgomery added. “We loathe their ideas and their drivel, but we can’t justify blocking them for their false opinions. We were watching them very closely, and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.”
The committee’s report concluded that “GARM likely violated federal antitrust laws” and found “direct evidence” that the company “demonetized certain viewpoints to limit consumer choice, resulting in harm to consumers.”
“A core part of GARM’s founding philosophy is that powerful marketers from the world’s largest corporations and advertising agencies conspire to suppress voices and views they do not like,” the report said.
An investigation of federal contracting data by the Foundation for Freedom Online found that four of the six largest global advertising agencies that are GARM members — IPG, Omnicom, WPP and Publicis Groupe — collectively receive billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers.
Ploughshare Group LLC, a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, has a $394.2 million contract with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for the CDC’s National Tobacco Education Campaign. $201.8 million of the obligated funds has been disbursed to date, and the contract expires in 2025. Sapient Government Solutions and OnPoint Consulting, two Publicis Groupe subsidiaries that specialize in winning government contracts, have also received hundreds of millions of dollars from various government agencies over the years.
DDB Chicago Inc., an Omnicom subsidiary, has a 10-year contract worth $4 billion to run the U.S. Army’s marketing account. Ketchum Inc., an Omnicom subsidiary, also has a $247 million contract with HHS to handle outreach efforts for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Another Omnicom subsidiary, GSD&M Idea City LLC, has a $741 million contract with the U.S. Air Force for recruitment advertising.
DXTRA Inc., a subsidiary of Interpublic Group (IPG), holds more than $1.1 billion in contracts with HHS. MullenLowe Global, also a subsidiary of IPG, holds a $454 million contract to sustain the Department of Defense’s Joint Advertising, Market Research and Research Program (JAMRS), which recruits for all branches of the military.
WPP subsidiary VMLY&R has a five-year contract with the U.S. Navy worth more than $455 million. WPP also owns Wunderman Thompson, the agency that has produced advertising for the U.S. Marine Corps for more than 70 years. WPP also owns Group M, whose former CEO Christian Juhl recently testified before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee defending GARM’s actions.
“These contracts represent billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, all of which will go to companies with a proven track record of trying to stifle free speech on the major social media platforms,” the Online Freedom Foundation reported.
“In addition to their membership in GARM, each of these four international organizations has acted independently to suppress or prevent the monetization of objectionable online speech,” the foundation added.
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