MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider called out a conspiracy to choke out right-of-center media and pro-free speech platforms by stripping them of advertising dollars.
Schneider shamed bad actors who participated in efforts to strip advertising from publications like The Daily Wire and platforms such as Elon Musk’s X. During the Aug. 2 edition of Saturday Agenda, Schneider went after media ratings firms, saying MRC has investigated and "uncovered so much evidence about what NewsGuard did, [the Global Disinformation Index] (GDI) and its secret subsidiaries in Texas, and what Ad Fontes did, “coordinating and colluding with these various advertising firms, mostly digital advertising firms.”
Schneider told Newsmax host Rob Astorino, “We've been working to stop that kind of censorship.” He went on to make clear that NewsGuard had even pushed for viewpoint discrimination at the federal government:
“For example, the Department of Defense under the Biden administration had contracts with NewsGuard to evaluate which media outlets should be used to recruit soldiers and airmen into the U.S. military. Guess why we couldn't meet our targets in our military? Because they were using just left-wing sources–It was just a big sop to the left-wing media getting tons of our taxpayers’ dollars to subsidize their work, while right-of-center and neutral media outlets were being starved to death by these conspiracists.”
Schneider’s remarks follow a series of huge free speech victories over advertiser collusion. According to a June 1 announcement from FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, Omnicom and IPG renounced “illegal collusion or coordination to direct advertising away from media publishers based on political or ideological viewpoints” as a condition of their merger.
In August 2024, the World Federation of Advertisers, which controls 90% of world advertising dollars, announced it was disbanding its pro-censorship Global Alliance of Responsible Media (GARM). In just a few months, free speech activists defeated two major antitrust violations and threats to free speech.
After disbanding, GARM was exposed on June 27 for trying to crush The Daily Wire and trying to work with anti-American government officials to push censorship on X, among other anti-free speech moves. A July 2024 House Judiciary report found that GARM pushed members to use NewsGuard, GDI and similar media rating firms. Notably, NewsGuard used GARM’s anti-free speech standards to push “brands, ad agencies, DSPs, SSPs, and other ad tech companies” further towards censorship.
During his interview, Schneider used MRC research to expose NewsGuard’s biased approach further. “So NewsGuard is this company founded by a guy on the hard left, a Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama supporter who said, ‘I'm going to evaluate media outlets and I'm going to give them nutrition labels on how good they are.’ And guess what? Our research shows that you're on the left. You've got good nutrition labels. If you're on the right, you've got bad nutrition labels.”
And in three consecutive MRC studies, NewsGuard repeatedly used these “nutrition labels” to give an A- average to left-of-center sources and a D average to right-of-center sources. A December 2023 study showed that NewsGuard gave a high average rating of 91 percent to publications on the left, far better than the average rating of 65 percent given to publications on the right. Earlier studies showed 25- and 27-point gaps between ratings for left-of-center and right-of-center sources. MRC used media ratings from AllSides to determine media outlets' political leanings.
Schneider warned that this bias has serious and intended consequences: “These advertising firms would then work with NewsGuard and then, based on NewsGuard data, not allow ad dollars to go to pay or to provide ads on right-of-center media outlets.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
