A new congressional report accuses the State Department of exceeding its authority to combat foreign disinformation by funding groups that target and censor small businesses in the United States.
of Washington Examiner A recent report by the Republican-led House Small Business Committee 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 125 employees, is funding groups engaged in domestic censorship and avoiding its primary mission of combating foreign disinformation.
The investigation was launched following a series of reports about GEC's involvement with the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British group that pressures advertisers to stop funding center-right media in the United States, which revealed a pattern of questionable funding practices. The reports allege that GEC “pimped out tech startups and other small businesses in the field of disinformation detection to private companies with domestic censorship capabilities.”
Additionally, the National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department-funded nonprofit that has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI, has been accused of violating international restrictions by working with fact-checking organizations to evaluate the credibility of domestic news organizations.
The report also found that GEC was involved in secret group chats targeting conservatives with alleged “fake news” content. Internal documents show that GEC was added to a private email list, “#FakeNewsSci,” where supposed censorship activists criticized applicants, including domestic companies such as the Daily Caller and its fact-checking organizations.
Participants on the email list came from a variety of organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy, Snopes, Poynter, Clemson University, and the University of Washington. In one example, then-National Endowment for Democracy official Dean Jackson blasted the Daily Caller, citing links to articles critical of the paper's content and reporters.
The House Small Business Committee report stressed that it was inappropriate for the GEC and NED to “belong to a group that blocks national news organizations from belonging to private credibility organizations.” The report also cited record-keeping problems at the GEC and inadequate audit procedures to effectively track how taxpayer money is being spent.
These findings have left the GEC facing the possibility of losing funding due to Republican-led discontent over its apparent association with domestic censorship groups. The Department's annual appropriations bill contains a provision that bars future checks on the GEC, and the bureau is facing a lawsuit from conservative media over its support for GDI and NewsGuard, blacklisting organizations that rate news organizations' levels of “misinformation” in order to target conservatives for censorship.
The report concludes that federal funds should not be used to support companies whose goal is to undermine or interfere with the monetization of the nation's news media. Although the government no longer has ties with NewsGuard or GDI, the organizations used federal support to host their products on GEC's testbeds, recommend them to partners and help grow their products, so the damage is already done, the report argues.
The report's findings raise serious questions about the GEC's activities and its possible interference in domestic affairs outside its scope of operations. As the controversy continues, the GEC will likely come under increased scrutiny and calls for greater transparency and accountability regarding its use of taxpayer funds.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
