Two conservative media outlets and the state of Texas have united to sue the Biden administration for imposing censorship on conservative news sources.
According to The Daily Wire, one of the plaintiffs in the case, which was filed Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s State Department “funded censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions.”
In the lawsuit, which the plaintiffs are pursuing with the help of the conservative New Civil Liberties Alliance, the State Department pursued “one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history.”
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The website The Federalist joined the Daily Wire and Texas in the lawsuit.
Biden’s diplomats abused their power and authority through two agencies: the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard, which operate under and are financed by the department’s Global Engagement Center, or GEC.
The GEC was launched in 2011 under former President Barack Obama. Its mission, under parameters set by Congress, was to target the rhetoric of terrorists spreading lies about the West.
In funding the agency, the Daily Wire noted, Congress made clear that none of its authorized funding “shall be used for purposes other than countering foreign propaganda.”
Yet the GEC, according to Daily Wire, used taxpayer funds “to finance the development and promotion of censorship organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which regularly target conservative media outlets such as The Daily Wire and The Federalist with the stated goal of limiting ad revenue.”
According to the website, the GDI’s main product is called the “Dynamic Exclusion List,” which encompasses media outlets that it rates for a “high risk for disinformation.”
The GDI sells the list to advertisers, who adopt it to avoid blowback from liberals. GDI, according to Daily Wire, claims its purpose is to destroy “the incentive to create [disinformation] for the purpose of garnering advertising revenues.”
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GDI reportedly hides its primary blacklist, but has revealed what it considers the 10 “riskiest” news outlets. Not surprisingly, the list ws all conservative or at least right-leaning. Besides the Daily Wire and The Federalist, the list included the New York Post, The Blaze, One America News Network, Newsmax, The American Conservative and The American Spectator, Real Clear Politics and Reason magazine.
For its part, according to Daily Wire, NewsGuard issues “trust scores” that highlight who appears on the company’s list of media companies it says are “unreliable.” NewsGuard also licenses its reliability ratings to advertisers so they can “make decisions about which news sources to advertise on.”
In a statement, the Daily Wire noted, “The Biden administration is illegally funding organizations with the stated goal of financially crippling media outlets whose coverage does not walk in lockstep with the government’s ideological agenda.”
“We sued the Biden administration before over its unconstitutional vaccine mandate, and we won. This time, we’re suing for our rights, all news organizations’ rights, and the constitutional guarantee of a free press that all Americans deserve.”
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In his own statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton noted he’s in the battle “to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from [President] Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government.”
“The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American,” Paxton said. “This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.”
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