News Corp CEO Robert Thomson called for a “commercial outcome” for the now-disbanded left-wing advertising cartel, which is accused of orchestrating an advertising boycott of a number of news outlets and platforms, including The Washington Post.
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) abruptly shut down on Thursday after a damning House Judiciary Committee report uncovered evidence that the group’s autocrat, Robert Rakowitz, had orchestrated a campaign to stifle free speech and restrict advertising.
Thompson said The Washington Post’s parent company, News Corp., is currently “considering its legal options to counter the advertising trade association’s blatant political bias, which has caused serious damage and denied many advertisers access to a critical readership.”
“We applaud the House Judiciary Committee’s efforts in pursuing the misnamed Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and its coordinated boycott of media platforms that illiberal liberals view as outdated,” Thompson said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday.
“The damage caused by GARM is real and there must be commercial consequences,” he added.
A News Corp spokesman declined to comment further.
GARM is a non-profit initiative founded by the Global Federation of Advertisers, an international industry association whose members include dozens of major companies representing 90 percent of global marketing spending, according to its website.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s X filed an antitrust lawsuit naming GARM, WFA, and a handful of other specific companies as defendants, including CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever.
Company X is seeking treble damages and an injunction against the defendants for participating in an illegal advertising boycott. The lawsuit, filed in Texas, claims that Company X has lost “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” as a result of the defendants’ actions.
WFA noted that the House Judiciary Committee report and X’s antitrust lawsuit were key factors in its decision to close GARM.
“GARM is a small, non-profit organisation and unfortunately recent allegations that misrepresent its mission and activities have caused confusion and significantly drained its resources and finances,” the WFA said in a statement on its website on Friday.
“As such, WFA has taken the difficult decision to discontinue GARM’s activities.”
The House committee report included internal conversations in which Rakowitz appeared to boast that X had “missed revenue projections by 80%” because GARM had targeted Musk over brand safety issues.
Rakowitz told investigators the email was written as a “humble joke.”
According to the report, GARM relied on tools such as the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a London-based group that in 2022 published an advertising blacklist of 10 news outlets with conservative- or libertarian-leaning opinion sections, including The Washington Post, RealClearPolitics and Reason magazine.
The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether GARM, WFA and their members violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which provides for unlawful restraint of trade.
In an interview with The Washington Post after GARM was shut down, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called GARM’s closure “great news for freedom, free markets, the First Amendment, everything good that makes America special.”
“We believe the World Federation of Advertisers has similar bias,” Jordan added. “Our investigation is looking into all of this. It’s all about stopping censorship, whatever form it takes.”
