Disinformation Group Demanding Media Transparency Won’t Disclose Its Own Donors

The Global Disinformation Index, which is funded by the State Department and is intent on blacklisting media outlets with “opaque ownership structures”, is violating its own transparency recommendations as it seeks to keep its donors and leaders anonymous. The organization has even redacted the name of its biggest donor, as well as those of its accountants, executives, and board members, in the IRS tax filings for two related non-profit organizations. The group’s lawyer asserts that this was necessary because the group’s leaders became victims of harassment post-reports that the organization worked with advertisers to harm conservative media institutions. These disingenuous tactics threaten to open the Global Disinformation Index to charges of hypocrisy by Republican lawmakers who are investigating the State Department for financing the group in 2020 and 2021. The group, which is based in Great Britain but has affiliates in the United States, published a report that penalized news outlets for not revealing their financial and editorial decision-makers, arguing that “opaque ownership structures” undermined the public’s ability to monitor news organizations for editorial and financial conflicts of interest. The organization’s own spotty operational and funding transparency impedes the public’s capacity to hold the group accountable for any potential editorial or financial conflicts of interest and could damage its credibility. The Global Disinformation Index also criticized media outlets that do not publicly state their sources of revenue, indicating that funding transparency is necessary to “monitor the incentives and conflicts of interest that can arise from opaque revenue sources”. However, ironically, the group’s associated private charity, AN Foundation, neglected to report the name of its main donor, who provided $115,000 to the organization that year, from its 2021 tax filings. According to the IRS, private foundations such as AN Foundation have to disclose publicly their primary contributors.

The Global Disinformation Index, AN Foundation, and the associated Disinformation Index, Inc. did not react to requests for comments. The group’s lawyer cited an obscure federal law allowing non-profit organizations to withhold information from their Form 990 tax returns if they believe that bad actors are attempting to disrupt their operations, asserting that the group’s personnel and their families had received multiple threats and hacking attacks, including threats of assault against their children. According to the lawyer, the group is collaborating with appropriate law enforcement authorities, telecommunications, and internet organizations and has therefore withheld information that might further such behavior. However, charity professionals informed the Examiner that the law does not permit the Global Disinformation Index to redact the names of its leaders and funding sources from its Form 990 disclosures. Nonprofit attorney Jeff Tenenbaum stated that “This exception does not provide for redactions and would not apply merely because certain board members or staff are individually the target of harassment campaigns unrelated to requests for Forms 990”. Meanwhile, Alan Dye, another nonprofit attorney, emphasized the unconventional nature of the index’s redactions, stating that “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 990 that excludes the names of officers and directors. And I’ve looked at hundreds.”