POLITICS: Bombshell: State Department Funded Foreign Organizations That Promoted the Censorship of Reporters, Conservatives

This outlet has obtained a letter sent by U.S. Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding the “the State Department’s funding of foreign organizations that have promoted the censorship of American citizens.”

The New York Post published an exclusive article on the bombshell story:

The State Department sought to denigrate two reporters and a member of Congress as part of damage control attempts over having helped fund an advertisers’ “blacklist” of The Post and other outlets allegedly spreading “misinformation,” according to internal documents.

In March 2023, the department distributed press guidance about how to counter bombshell reports by “Twitter Files” scribe Matt Taibbi and Washington Examiner investigative journalist Gabe Kaminskyconcerning the State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).

Taibbi’s first report about the GEC, in a lengthy Twitter thread published Jan. 3, 2023, revealed efforts to pressure US social media platforms early in the COVID-19 pandemic to censor Americans online, purportedly to counter “disinformation.”

Banks’ letter explains the scenario of Gabe Kaminsky, the Washington Examiner reporter who “Published a series of articles outlining the State Department’s funding of a ‘disinformation’-related non-governmental organization called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). GDI had been maintaining a list of up to 200 news outlets that allegedly publish disinformation and then sending their list to advertising companies”

The Post continues:

Taibbi testified to Congress in March of 2023: “We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA.”

Kaminsky also uncovered a $100,000 grant from GEC to the London-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) in 2021 and 2022, an entity that calls itself “the world’s first rating of the media sites based on the risk of the outlet carrying disinformation.”

Despite GEC’s mandate proclaiming that it is only involved in international affairs, GDI went on to concoct a blacklist of 10 outlets, including The Post, with conservative or libertarian-leaning opinion sections in an effort to demonetize them, The Post continues.

Ad associations further participated in GDI’s efforts to blacklist the media outlets, though some called the list “bewildering” for having “somehow placed the NYPost [sic] as ‘at most risk’ paper in the USA for disinformation.”

Both the GEC grant, distributed between October 2021 and March 2022, and another $756,923 government-funded grant from the National Endowment for Democracy to GDI, have not been renewed.

The State Department records, exclusively obtained by The Post, make no mention of these taxpayer-funded entities’ conduct, choosing instead to fault Taibbi, Kaminsky and now-X owner Elon Musk for spreading alleged falsehoods about GEC.

Banks’ letter continues:

An interim report that was released by the House Committee on Small Business last week confirms GDI’s support for domestic censorship and confirms that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and the National Endowment for Democracy sent GDI a combined nearly $1 million dollars in grants. The report also explains that the GEC privately supported GDI in its interactions with U.S. tech companies. 

In response to Mr. Kaminsky’s reporting, the State Department sent out press guidance defending its attempted suppression of U.S. news organizations. That guidance misleadingly changes a quote that I sent to Gabe Kaminsky and the Washington Examiner criticizing the GEC. The intentional misquotation gives the impression that I had been speaking with a Russian propaganda outlet.