Disinformation Inc: State university pressed by GOP over cash from conservative blacklister
- June 6, 2023
EXCLUSIVE — A public university is being pressed for answers from a GOP lawmaker after the Washington Examiner revealed the school took cash from a State Department-funded “disinformation” tracker to help “censor” conservatives.
The State Department has been the target of Republican-led investigations over its grants to the Global Disinformation Index, a British group covertly feeding conservative website blacklists to advertisers to defund disfavored speech. But since the University of Texas at Austin’s Global Disinformation Lab was paid over $90,000 from GDI to conduct research for a widely scrutinized report slamming right-leaning news outlets, GOP Texas state House Rep. Brian Harrison is demanding the school perform “a full accounting” of all projects the lab has spearheaded, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
“I respectfully request UT’s connection with GDI be severed immediately if that has not already occurred,” Harrison wrote in a Tuesday letter to James B. Milliken, chancellor of the University of Texas System. “Additionally, if these are the types of projects that the Global Disinformation Lab is participating in, I have grave concerns with the existence of the lab at all. I request a full accounting of the projects, both past and present, that the lab has participated in, as well as any outside entities the lab collaborated with in any manner.”
Meanwhile, the GDI saga led to a right-leaning watchdog called Protect the Public’s Trust filing a lawsuit against the State Department in early May over the agency stonewalling the release of documents in connection to GDI.