The German Marshall Fund (GMF), an influential globalist think tank founded by the state of Germany to promote deeper ties between America and Europe — and funded in part by the U.S. government — has branded Breitbart News, Fox News, the Blaze, and the Federalist as “deceptive” news outlets, urging social media platforms to suppress their engagement.
The GMF, which claims to be a “non-partisan” organization, relies on the opinions of NewsGuard, an unaccountable Microsoft-linked establishment project that purports to “rate” the validity of news sites.
The report divides so-called “deceptive” news outlets into two tiers. “Manipulators,” that the GMF accuses of manipulating facts, and “false content producers,” which publish outright false articles.
Both descriptions are used by the GMF to smear conservative news outlets. The “manipulators” listed by the think-tank include Breitbart News, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Blaze, and Western Journal. The “false content producers” include the Federalist, World Net Daily, and black conservative radio host Wayne Dupree.
The think tank complains that too many of these sites enjoy high levels of engagement on Facebook, and argues that “de-amplifying—or adding friction to—the content from a handful of the most dangerous sites could dramatically decrease disinformation online.”
The globalist outfit also calls for a “new PBS of the Internet, funded by a fee on online ad revenue.”
The GMF’s motives and objectives, which are transparently in favor of widespread censorship of independent and conservative media, were so egregious that they were condemned by the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Via WSJ:
The German Marshall Fund (GMF) is an influential think tank based in Washington, D.C., named for U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall’s 1948 plan to help European countries resist Communism. What a shame that in 2020 the outfit is promoting political suppression of conservative news, with state media as a recommended replacement.
…
Such outlets allegedly “pose a threat to informed democratic discourse.” Their content reaches readers because it is “often oppositional to ‘mainstream media’ and so-called elite or conventional wisdom.” The horror!…
The GMF report suggests “a new PBS of the Internet, funded by a fee on online ad revenue.” Critics sometimes refer sarcastically to pro-Trump independent outlets as “state media,” but liberals are promoting genuine state media.
Social media has had a disruptive effect on American institutions, for good and ill. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg was right to commit Facebook against political censorship in 2019. Unfortunately, he’s ceded ground since.
The think-tank cites just one example of alleged “deception” from Breitbart News, but the last line of the item (emphasis ours) implicitly admits that the premise of Breitbart’s story is correct.
Breitbart: “Colorado Secretary of State Encourages Non-Citizens, Deceased to Register to Vote.” The Colorado secretary of state sent mailings to everyone she believed might be eligible to vote in Colorado but listed the qualifications to vote; about a dozen mailings went to people who were deceased or were not citizens.
The GMF is closely tied to the governments and defense industries of major world powers, including the United States.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is listed as a major funder of the organization, contributing “$1 million and above.”
It is also funded, to a lesser extent, by the European Commission, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The foreign ministries of Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Embassy of Japan, and NATO.
Other U.S. agencies also fund the organization. The U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. embassies of Belgium, France, and the U.S. missions to NATO and the European Union are all listed as donors.
Other notable donors — Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Bank of America, JP Morgan, ExxonMobil, and the Open Society Foundations, the infamous funding network founded by George Soros.
In other words, numerous U.S. federal agencies are funding an organization that is a) backed by George Soros, b) backed by Big Tech, and c) is promoting the suppression of conservative media on the internet.
Notably, Facebook — the primary target of GMF’s critique — is a big tech company that is not on its list of donors.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.