Conservative leaders are calling on Congress to include in the final version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) an amendment to prohibit the Defense Department from working with so-called fact-checking organizations that censor news outlets.
The Nov. 22 letter from the right-leaning Media Research Center (MRC) was addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The House version of the NDAA includes the amendment, introduced by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), that comes in light of reporting that the Pentagon has worked with NewsGuard, which has come under fire for allegedly pushing for censorship of right-wing publications.
The GOP-controlled House passed its NDAA on July 14 mostly along party lines. The NDAA is the Pentagon’s annual blueprint and is separately backed by an appropriations bill. The Senate version doesn’t have a similar amendment.
NewsGuard rates the reliability of news outlets, with high scores often going to left-wing media and low scores to right-wing publications. On average, NewsGuard has given the former a 91 percent rating and the latter a 66 percent rating, according to MRC, a conservative watchdog monitoring and combating leftward media bias.
In 2020, NewsGuard gave The Epoch Times a score of 49.5 out of 100.
“Despite NewsGuard’s obvious bias the government continues to fund its efforts, bankrolling a payout of $750,000 from the Department of Defense,” the letter reads.
It was signed by 36 prominent conservative figures, including MRC President Brent Bozell III, Young America’s Foundation President and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, One America News Network President Charles Herring, and Lt. Col. Allen West.
Mr. Herring told The Epoch Times that he signed onto the letter because of certain groups seeking to censor outlets they don’t like by going after their income stream.
“It’s clear that some advocacy groups simply want to silence media that don’t fall in line with their political agenda,” he said.
“Such advocacy organizations shouldn’t receive government grants to fund their political whim. The weapon of choice for such progressive groups is to attack the advertising revenue.”
Dan Schneider, vice president of the MRC’s Free Speech America initiative, lamented to The Epoch Times what he said is the silencing of dissent by the Biden administration.
“No tax dollars should ever be used by government to do what it cannot do on its own constitutionally,” he said.
“Funding NewsGuard and GDI [Global Disinformation Index] to silence conservatives is unconstitutional, and it’s wrong. It is critically important that we cease funding of these censorship regimes.”
NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz told The Epoch Times that his organization stands by its work and that claims that it isn’t objective is baseless.
“Claims that NewsGuard is biased in its ratings are ill-informed,” he said.
“NewsGuard uses nine basic, apolitical criteria of journalistic practices to rate news sources. Right-wing sites get high scores and liberal sites get low scores and vice versa.
“The result of our apolitical ratings is that the conservative Daily Wire gets a higher score than the liberal Daily Beast, the conservative Daily Caller a higher score than the liberal Daily Kos, and the website of Fox News higher than the website of MSNBC.”
The letter also called out the State Department for funding GDI. The department-funded National Endowment for Democracy gave almost $546,000 to GDI between 2020 and 2021, according to a February report in the right-wing Washington Examiner. GDI has also been criticized for pushing for censorship of right-wing outlets.
Mr. Johnson’s and Mr. McConnell’s offices, in addition to GDI, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the letter.
Mr. McCormick’s amendment wouldn’t allow the Defense Department to “enter into any contract or other agreement” with NewsGuard, GDI, Graphika Technologies Inc., or “any other entity the function of which is to advise the censorship or blacklisting of news sources based on subjective criteria or political biases, under the stated function of ‘fact checking’ or otherwise removing ’misinformation.'”
“These media monitors claim to be nonpartisan while almost always serving to censor conservative viewpoints and bury stories that liberals don’t like,” Mr. McCormick said in a June 21 statement. “Suppression of our First Amendment rights has no place in our Armed Forces, and I look forward to my amendment becoming law.”
However, the amendment faces an uphill climb in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Nonetheless, Mr. McCormick is one of the members chosen by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to be part of the negotiations between the House and Senate to create a version to pass both houses of Congress.
NewsGuard, which was founded in 2018, has a history of perpetuating established narratives on topics ranging from COVID-19 to the Russia–Ukraine conflict and ostracizing countering viewpoints.
Mr. Herring called for Republicans to get Mr. McCormick’s amendment to be included in the final NDAA.
“The government should not be funding advocacy organizations that selectively censor media,” he said. “Members that still believe in the First Amendment need to fight for Section 1532 of the House bill.”
Mr. Schneider echoed Mr. Herring but acknowledged the political reality of a divided Congress.
“We have to be pragmatic. We can’t get everything all the time,” he said.
“Joe Biden and Senate Democrats are pushing very hard to expand censorship. This is a pitch battle, and we need to keep supporting our friends in an effort to win back our constitutional rights.”
