Nonprofit group boasted to Feds it suppressed advertising for alternative media

Staff, World Tribune

A leftist nonprofit group which received federal funds boasted about how it killed $100 million in advertising revenue to mostly independent and conservative media outlets by deeming them “disinformation spreaders.”

The UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) was awarded grants to fight perceived disinformation via its U.S.-based affiliate, AN Foundation, from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a congressionally chartered and taxpayer-funded agency in Washington. The grants were officially designated as targeting foreign “disinformation” spreaders.

Michael Chamberlain, head of the nonprofit watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, which obtained the memos under the Freedom of Information Act, said the memos proved that while NED’s effort was billed as targeting overseas propaganda, it ended up routinely focusing on suppressing American speech, mostly right-leaning or conservative in nature.

“The Censorship Industrial Complex was hard at work early in this decade, and they were using taxpayer dollars to do so,” Chamberlain told Just the News in an interview. “They effectively gave funding to GDI to look at disinformation, misinformation in foreign countries, such as countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America—Nigeria, India, Malaysia, Mexico are mentioned specifically in the grant application.”