House Moves Forward with Investigation of Marxist Censorship/Advertising Blacklisting Group GARM

Jonathan Turley:

We have been discussing media rating systems being used to target advertisers and revenue sources for certain cites and companies. NewsGuard and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) have been criticized as the most sophisticated components of a modern blacklisting system targeting conservative or dissenting voices. I recently had a series of exchanges with NewsGuard after a critical column. Now, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is moving forward in demanding documents and records from leading companies utilizing the GARM system, a company that I have previously criticized. It is a welcomed effort for anyone who is concerned over the use of these blacklisting systems to curtail free speech. However, time is of the essence.

The demand to preserve evidence went to various companies, including Adidas, American Express, Bayer, BP, Carhartt, Chanel, CVS and General Motors.

In my new book, I discuss the rating systems as a new and insidious form of blacklisting. Notably, Elon Musk has now filed a lawsuit against GARM and may be able to get more evidence out in discovery on the operations of this outfit.

It is an effort to strangle the financial life out of sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.

Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. GDI warned advertisers against "financially supporting disinformation online." At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.

Once GDI's work and bias was disclosed, government officials quickly disavowed the funding. It was a familiar pattern. Within a few years, we found that the work had been shifted instead to groups like the GARM, which is the same thing on steroids. It is the creation of a powerful and largely unknown group called the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which has huge sway over the advertising industry and was quickly used by liberal activists to silence opposing views and sites by cutting off their revenue streams.

Notably, Rob Rakowitz, head of GARM, pushed GDI and embraced its work. In an email to GARM members obtained by the committee last month, Rakowitz wrote that he wanted to "ensure you're working with an inclusion and exclusion list that is informed by trusted partners such as NewsGuard and GDI -- both partners to GARM and many of our members."

GARM is being used by WFA to achieve what GDI failed to accomplish. The WFA site refers to Rakowitz as "a career change agent" who will "remove harmful content from ad-supported digital media.

Read the whole thing.

Elon Musk says he's declaring "war" on GARM, and is suing them, alleging that they are an anti-competitive cartel banned by US anti-trust laws.

Elon Musk's X has just filed a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The suit accuses the group of violating anti-trust laws by creating an advertising cartel designed to restrict money going to any site or publication which refuses to meet GARM's definition of "brand safe."

...

Musk encouraged other companies around the world to file similar lawsuits.

The CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino released a video statement explaining the move. "No small group of people should be able to monopolize what gets monetized," she said.

Yaccarino makes reference to a House Judiciary Committee report that was released last month titled "GARM'S HARM: HOW THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BRANDS SEEK TO CONTROL ONLINE SPEECH." That report suggested that GARM, a creation of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), may have violated the Sherman Act. The executive summary also included a series of examples.

Section 1 of the Sherman Act makes unreasonable restraints of trade illegal. Included in these illegal restraints are certain group boycotts and coordinated actions that harm consumers. Documents produced to the Committee suggest that GARM may have engaged in coordinated conduct that violates Section 1. GARM has undertaken various actions to eliminate the monetization, and in effect existence, of certain voices online. For example:

Twitter and Elon Musk: According to one GARM member, GARM recommended that its members "stop[] all paid advertisement" on Twitter in response to Mr. Musk's acquisition of the company. GARM's internal documents show that GARM was asked by a member to "arrange a meeting and hear more about [GARM's] perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies." GARM also held "extensive debriefing and discussion around Elon Musks' [sic] takeover of Twitter," providing ample opportunity for the boycott to be organized. GARM bragged about "taking on Elon Musk" and "[s]ince then [Twitter was] 80% below revenue forecasts[.]"

Spotify and The Joe Rogan Experience: At the urging of its members, GARM and its Steer Team threatened Spotify over alleged misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, because Mr. Rogan stated an opinion that young, healthy people need not receive the COVID-19 vaccine.21 GARM even admitted it was acting outside of the scope of its work on brand safety, explaining to one of its members that "[b]rand safety is somewhat separate on Spotify versus say Facebook Newsfeed because brands aren't being slotted into" the podcast. In other words, the companies could easily choose whether to advertise on or avoid Mr. Rogan's podcast and, therefore, GARM had no business interfering in Spotify's decision. GARM even admitted the antitrust implications of getting caught, when Mr. Rakowitz told one GARM member that he "can't publicly advise all clients to do X -- that gets us into hot water by way of anticompetitive and collusive behaviors." To get around this problem, Mr. Rakowitz offered to "help [brands] formulate a [point of view] 1:1." In doing so, even as Mr. Rakowitz mistook his trade association members with "clients," such a coordinated action implicates antitrust law.

Candidates, platforms, and news outlets with opposing political views: GARM and its members discussed a strategy of blocking certain news outlets like Fox News, The Daily Wire, and Breitbart News. One GARM Steer Team member candidly wrote that although he "hated their ideology and bulls**t," his company "couldn't really justify blocking them for misguided opinion[s]" so the company "watched them very carefully and it didn't take long for them to cross the line." Additionally, GARM pushes its members to use news rankings organizations, like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard, that disproportionately label right-of-center news outlets as so-called misinformation. GARM and its Steer Team even participated in efforts to label a social media advertisement paid for by President Donald Trump as "misinformation." When Facebook would not label the advertisement as misinformation, Mr. Rakowitz told a colleague that it was "[h]onestly reprehensible[.]"

A GARM Steer Team member expressed concern about Mr. Musk exposing the truth regarding how Twitter was previously used to censor the Hunter Biden laptop and Biden family influence peddling story, describing Mr. Musk's position as an "overtly partisan take[.]"

I consider this business defamation. They are claiming that sites like this one are "hateful disinformation." That's a lie. This site mostly just quotes "real news" sources, and there is no "hate."

What they're really doing is just censoring viewpoints they don't like, and falsely labeling them as "disinformation" or "hate."

Companies wouldn't boycott sites if GARM reported the truth: That the sites dispute, for example, the idea that children should have their genitals lopped off or cut into exciting new shapes. Companies would shrug at that.

So instead they engage in defamation, claiming that the sites "encourage violence against vulnerable minority groups."

I would like Congress to pass a law making it explicit that these censorship groups may be sued for business defamation, particularly when their claimed reasons for censorship are simply lies. And I would like that law to provide that litigants may prove defamation by showing that these organizations apply different standards to different sites, depending on whether they adhere to leftist/progressive POV or right-leaning view.

The First Amendment does not, and never has, protected defamation from lawsuit. Every defamed person has the right to sue his defamers. I just want the right to sue made explicit and tailored for this particular situation.

Meanwhile, Tim Walz says the government has every right to stamp out "misinformation" and "hate speech" because the First Amendment doesn't protect it.

Note the difference we're talking about: Private parties have always been permitted to sue others based on defamation. That has never been protected by the First Amendment.

But Walz says that the First Amendment's protections against government censorship do not apply to "misinformation" and "hate speech" -- which, of course, is what the left brands every right-leaning argument and belief.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:46 PM

| Access Comments