The House Judiciary Committee sent letters to more than 40 major companies on Thursday as part of its ongoing investigation into a left-leaning advertising cartel that allegedly plotted to defund news organizations and platforms, including The Washington Post.
The committee, chaired by Sen. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), called on companies including Adidas, American Express, Bayer, BP, Carhartt, Chanel, CVS, General Motors and Goldman Sachs to preserve documents and provide information about their activities to the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
“The Committee has learned of collusive activities taking place within the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of which your company is a member,” the letter begins.
“In particular, the Committee found evidence of coordinated action by GARM and its member companies, including boycotts of objectionable social media platforms, podcasts, and news media.”
According to a bombshell House Judiciary Committee report released this month, GARM, a Global Alliance of Advertisers initiative led by radical activist Rob Rakowitz, controls roughly 90% of global marketing spending and is using its enormous influence to attack free speech online.
The committee’s letter said GARM has “strayed significantly from its original intent and has collectively used its enormous market power to demonetize opinions and views with which the group disagrees.”
The letter also noted that Rakowitz “has maintained the view that the advertising issue is an ‘extreme international interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.'”
The Post has reached out to GARM for comment.
GARM allegedly instructed companies to avoid spending on right-wing media outlets, including The Daily Wire, Fox News and Joe Rogan’s popular Spotify podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
of Report of the Committee Rakowitz accused GARM of instructing its member companies to turn to left-leaning “fact-checkers” such as the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard.
In 2022, GDI, a taxpayer-funded, London-based group, published an advertising blacklist of 10 news outlets with conservative and libertarian opinion sections, including the Post, Real Clear Politics and Reason.
“We ask that you develop inclusion and exclusion lists based on information from trusted partners, such as NewsGuard and GDI, who are GARM partners and many of its members,” Rakowitz wrote in an email to GARM members obtained by the committee last month.
The committee also obtained documents showing that GARM members were instructed not to advertise on X after Musk purchased the platform in fall 2022, when it was known as Twitter Inc.
Musk bought Twitter with the idea of relaxing content moderation policies and returning to the platform right-wing voices that had been banned from the site, including former President Donald Trump and the satirical publication The Babylon Bee.
The tech mogul called GARM an “ad boycott organization” and threatened legal action for contributing to X’s declining revenue.
According to an email dated April 14 last year, an employee of Danish energy company Ørsted wrote to Rakowitz and other WFA leaders: [b]Based on your suggestions, we stopped all paid advertising [on Twitter]”However, he added, “It’s an important platform for us to reach our audience so we would consider returning.”
In his testimony before the committee, Mr. Rakowitz denied urging Mr. Orsted to stop advertising on Twitter.
Records obtained by House Republicans also revealed that when Spotify considered joining GARM, it was told by advertising giant GroupM, a GARM member company, that it would need to censor Logan because of his controversial views on vaccines.
An email dated Jan. 27, 2022, shows Joe Barone, managing partner of brand safety at GroupM, told Spotify that the company was “conducting a full review of the trust and safety of Spotify’s platform and policies, and will begin that process immediately.”
