Exclusive: National Endowment for Democracy to Defund Global Disinformation Index for Attacking Conservative News Outlets
Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a group funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, has lost financial support from National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for its role in demonetizing conservative news outlets, Breitbart News exclusively learned Monday.
“[G]iven our commitment to avoid the perception that NED is engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly, we no longer provide financial support to GDI,” Damon Wilson, CEO of NED, told Breitbart News in a statement.
“As set forth in our Articles of Incorporation and the NED Act, our mandate is to work around the world and not in the United States,” Wilson explained. “We have strict policies and practices in place so that NED and the work we fund remains internationally focused, ensuring the endowment does not become involved in domestic politics.”
Wilson also noted the organization only recently became aware that GDI was “funded by a different donor, that focused on specific U.S. media outlets.”
According to a source with knowledge of NED’s decision to defund GDI, GOP House Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) was instrumental in ensuring that GDI no longer would receive financial support from NED. Stefanik, an NED board member, has been concerned about the targeting of conservative voices and media, especially GDI seeking to demonetize them.
NED’s decision to defund GDI is significant because NED is funded by the State Department. Financial documents show that NED has received over $300 million from the agency since 2021. Critics say the State Department’s funding of NED and its prior relationship to GDI was “a government grantmaking body” despite its legal status as a not-for-profit organization.
“The State Department should not be funding woke organizations who seek to censor and demonetize conservative outlets,” Stefanik said last week. “House Republicans will assert our oversight over the State Department’s funding of these type of groups.”
Documents additionally show NED granted $230,000 in 2020 to the AN Foundation, GDI’s group under the name Disinformation Index Foundation. The index has been a key component of the establishment’s attack on conservative news outlets by reducing their advertising revenue.
GDI maintains a media blacklist, known as the “Dynamic Exclusion List,” which reportedly flags 39 conservative news outlets — including Breitbart News, the Blaze, the Washington Times, Judicial Watch, MRC.TV, RealClearPolitics, the Daily Wire, and the Washington Examiner — as “false/misleading.”
The list is used by the establishment to discredit conservative news organizations, reduce their ad revenue, and ultimately de-platform them.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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