A bombshell lawsuit has accused the US State Department of violating First Amendment rights by using taxpayer dollars to fund private censorship firms that have favored left-wing media outlets at the expense of conservative news sites.
Under the Biden administration, the federal agency has unlawfully used “censorship enterprises that target the American press” and which selectively smear news organizations — typically those that lean toward the right — as “purveyors of ‘disinformation,’” according to the federal suit filed on Wednesday.
The Federalist and The Daily Wire — a pair of self-described “right of center media” groups — jointly filed the complaint with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit civil rights group, in the US Eastern District of Texas on Wednesday.
The Biden administration has used US funds to tap “fact-checking” censorship enterprises including NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which have relationships with social media giants including Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, among others, as well as deep-pocketed advertisers like Dell Technologies, Exxon Mobile and Nike, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit claims that NewsGuard and GDI are “government-promoted censorship enterprises” that have starved conservative-leaning news sites “of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech.”
The filing points to GDI’s December 2022 “Disinformation Risk Assessment,” which rated the top 10 “least risky” and “riskiest” outlets.
Among the most riskiest sites, according to the list: The Federalist, The Daily Wire, Newsmax, The American Conservative, Reason Magazine and even The New York Post, among other perceived right-leaning organizations.
Meanwhile, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed and other reputedly left-leaning news groups topped the GDI’s “least risky” chart.
“NewsGuard also compiles a list of American press outlets it characterizes as ‘unreliable,’” the lawsuit noted.
“These entities generate blacklists of ostensibly risky or unreliable American news outlets for the purpose of discrediting and demonetizing the disfavored press and redirecting money and audiences to news organizations that publish favored viewpoints,” according to the suit.
In response, a NewsGuard spokesman insisted in a statement that The Post ranked highly on its own list of reliable news organizations.
He added that Reason received “perfect 100/100 scores from NewsGuard” — a stark contradiction to the GDI, which claimed the libertarian monthly magazine is one of the “riskiest” news outlets.
The Post has sought comment from the GDI.
The NewsGuard spokesman also said NewsGuard rates The Daily Wire higher than its liberal counterpart, Daily Kos, while Fox and The Post both outscore MSNBC.
NewsGuard is reportedly selling a censorship tool called “Misinformation Fingerprints,” funded by some $750,000 in taxpayer dollars, to a slew of companies — including Microsoft and its AI-powered bot Bing Chat and GIF database GIPHY, The Post reported last month.
A spokesman for NewsGuard said the lawsuit “inaccurately portrays” the group’s relationship with the State Department, and insisted that “NewsGuard does not offer any technology that censors or blocks any content, or that blocks ads on content.”
“Instead, we provide information — our assessments of sites — so that our clients can decide for themselves where to place their ads or which content to amplify, and each client decides for themselves how to use that data,” the spokesman told The Post.
A State Department spokesperson said, “As a general matter, we do not comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit also points out that the Biden administration has its own censorship technologies as part of its Global Engagement Center (GEC).
“There is no enumerated general power to censor speech or the press found in the United States Constitution, and the First Amendment expressly forbids it.”
The lawsuit additionally claims that censorship happens anyway thanks to agreements between government officials and social media platforms made through “regular meetings, phone calls and information exchanges.”
The Federalist and The Daily Wire allege this can be proven through previously-leaked communications at these sites, namely the 2021 release of the “Facebook Papers,” a swath of internal documents made public by whistleblower and former Facebook data engineer Frances Haugen.
“What the suit shows is that the State Department was engaged in setting up, funding, marketing, promoting and continuing to work with these private companies that are engaged in censorship of speech,” The Federalist’s editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway told Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle.”
“They privilege left-wing media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, they helped advertisers meet those people, and they unconstitutionally go after,” Hemingway added.
However, “the full breadth of the Defendant GEC’s censorship scheme is currently unknown,” the lawsuit notes.
At the end of the 67-page complaint, the news organizations ask a judge to deem the State Department’s censorship tools as “exceeding constitutional authority,” and request that the defendant’s have to pay attorney’s fees and “any other just and proper relief.”
A representative for The Federalist and The Daily Wire at the New Civil Liberties Alliance reiterated to The Post that their “lawsuit seeks to halt the State Department’s ultra vires and unconstitutional censorship scheme.”
“The State Department lacks any authority to operate domestically, as it is doing currently with its Global Engagement Center. Unfortunately, though, our federal government’s efforts to censor the disfavored media, such as the New Civil Liberties Alliance’s clients, extends much beyond the State Department.”
A public statement from The Daily Wire reiterated the sentiment. “The Biden administration is illegally funding organizations with the stated goal of financially crippling media outlets whose coverage does not walk in lockstep with the government’s ideological agenda,” the news site said.
However, “the full breadth of the Defendant GEC’s censorship scheme is currently unknown,” the lawsuit notes.
At the end of the complaint, the news organizations ask a judge to deem the State Department’s censorship tools as “exceeding constitutional authority,” and request that the defendant’s have to pay attorney’s fees and “any other just and proper relief.”
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