House Oversight Committee Demands More Docs From NewsGuard In Probe Of Government Censorship
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are demanding more documents from the censorship service NewsGuard in their probe of the company’s collusion with federal “misinformation” monitors.
On Friday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky sent a letter to NewsGuard executives “to seek additional documents and communications” from the censorship group related to “present contracts with or grants administered by federal government agencies or any other government entity, including foreign governments.”
NewsGuard is one of the more popular web browser extensions deployed in K-12 classrooms across the country with the support of federal taxpayer funding. The service rates the credibility of online websites and redirects users to news organizations approved as regime friendly. Such ratings have been weaponized to censor non-leftist content with misinformation labels for factual reporting on stories such as Hunter Biden’s laptop.
[RELATED: Meet NewsGuard: The Government-Backed Censorship Tool Billed As An Arbiter Of Truth]
“The protection of First Amendment rights of American citizens is paramount and attempts by government actors to infringe on those rights is dangerous and misguided,” Comer wrote.
The House Oversight chief cited a recent statement from President Joe Biden’s former climate adviser, John Kerry, who complained about “disinformation” at a speech to the World Economic Forum.
“Our First Amendment,” Kerry said, “stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.”
The remark, said Comer, “indicates that tendencies toward censorship and speech restrictions and government entanglement with censorship may have support from senior government officials.”
This week’s letter is a follow-up to a June congressional investigation seeking documents related to NewsGuard’s government contracts.
“Our investigation has particularly focused on abuse of government authority to censor American citizens under the guise of protecting them from so-called misinformation,” Comer said Friday.
NewsGuard’s partial compliance with lawmakers’ initial records request, however, failed to render a complete picture of the company’s engagement in the censorship industrial complex.
“These wide-ranging connections with various government agencies are taking place as the government is rapidly expanding into the censorship sphere,” said Comer. “For example, one search of government grants and contracts from 2016 through 2023 revealed that there were 538 separate grants and 36 different government contracts specifically to address ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”
Comer gave NewsGuard a deadline of Nov. 8 to comply with lawmakers’ latest request.
In July, Florida’s chief financial officer banned NewsGuard and other supposed disinformation services from receiving contracts from his own state agency. Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis signed the proclamation this summer, and he hopes it will be implemented across state government and serve as a model beyond Florida to resist the censorship machine.
“We turn up the visibility of the issue” to “catch some momentum,” Patronis told The Federalist, “and then ultimately Washington reacts.”
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