Texas university censors conservative media with state funding.

Exposed: Anti-Conservative Bias in Blacklisting Report

Conservative news outlets, including The Federalist, New York Post, Daily Caller, and Washington Examiner, were blacklisted as the “riskiest” disinformation media companies by the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). Shockingly, it has been revealed that the report was researched and written by students at the University of Texas at Austin’s Global Disinformation Lab, who were found to have an anti-conservative bias.

Internal communications obtained by The Federalist show that the academics running the lab held a clear bias against conservative media outlets. This is just one of several troubling revelations contained in the 1,000-plus pages of documents reviewed by The Federalist.

But that’s not all. The report also revealed that the University of Texas’ Global Disinformation Lab joined forces with GDI in this censorship enterprise. The lab conducted the review for the “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in the United States,” which targeted conservative outlets, leading to The Federalist filing a public-records request at UT Austin for all communications related to GDIL’s work with GDI on the U.S. media market review.

The documents obtained by The Federalist reveal that a handful of students, with limited training, evaluated the media outlets and wrote the report that GDI then marketed to advertisers for blacklisting media outlets. This cost the conservative press potentially millions of dollars, and even more appalling is that the students used a state-funded lab, and the university profited from the project.

Political Bias on Display

Internal communications between lab staff revealed an anti-conservative bias. One message suggested GDI “should be more aggressive in going after conservative outlets.” This is a clear indication that the blacklist was politically motivated and not based on any objective criteria.

GDI’s Partner in Censorship

The report also revealed that the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy granted GDI more than half a million dollars between 2020 and 2021. The State Department’s Global Engagement Center likewise awarded the GDI $100,000 in taxpayer funds in 2021. This raises serious questions about the government’s role in censorship and the use of taxpayer funds to silence conservative voices.

GDIL Did the Dirty Work

The internal documents from the University of Texas’ GDIL show that the Global Disinformation Index paid the state university to manage student workers who would then apply the GDI methodology to rate the various media outlets and write the final report. The students received minimum training for the project, and when GDIL struggled to meet the deadlines, the lab manager, Sally Dickson, stepped in to help with the ratings, with everyone rushing the reviews of the various media outlets.

It is deeply concerning that a handful of students, with limited training, evaluated the media outlets and wrote the report that GDI then marketed to advertisers for blacklisting media outlets. This cost the conservative press potentially millions of dollars, and even more appalling is that the students used a state-funded lab, and the university profited from the project.

Conclusion

The blacklisting of conservative outlets by GDI and the University of Texas’ Global Disinformation Lab is a clear example of political bias and censorship. The use of taxpayer funds to silence conservative voices is deeply concerning and raises serious questions about the government’s role in censorship. It is time to hold these institutions accountable and ensure that free speech is protected for all.

Government-Funded Censorship: The Censorship Complex

Internal communications from the Global Disinformation Index Lab (GDIL) reveal the extent of the State Department’s involvement in promoting censorship activities. GDIL works with governments, policymakers, social media platforms, and adtech companies to defund disinformation. The lab’s risk-ratings report is “really going to be hammered,” with right-wing media outlets like The Federalist, Daily Caller, and New York Post being targeted. Even the students conducting the research saw problems in GDI’s rating system, with one student finding the methodology “to be a little interesting in that it requires reviewers to give subjective scores in response to objective trends in data.”

Additional internal communications indicate other students involved in the project also had concerns about the methodology. The GDIL executive director defended the methodology, framed disagreements with the report as “quibbles,” and declared the right-wing media don’t care about the details. However, the “misinformation landscape” is dotted with “one-sided … media consumption.”

State Department Shenanigans

GDIL’s reach and the State Department’s involvement in promoting censorship activities are revealed in internal communications. GDIL has formal and informal relationships with “trust and safety teams at various big platforms, the most recently announced partnership is with Twitch.” The State Department’s Global Engagement Center invited GDIL to participate in a technology pilot, titled “the Ukraine Content Aggregator,” which claims it seeks to “amplify unique and verified content related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including war crimes being committed.”

Significantly, for this project, the State Department was working with the Centre for Information Resilience, which is where Nina Jankowicz landed after backlash forced the Biden administration to shutter the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, which Jankowicz had been tapped to head.

So Much More to Learn

While these new details raise additional concerns about the government’s funding of efforts to silence speech, The Federalist’s open-records request reveals there is so much more to uncover to understand the breadth and depth of the Censorship Complex fully.

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