Disinformation and misinformation…the dreaded evil twins who populated our news feeds throughout the pandemic. The President himself warned that these two rascals were killing people as they strafed across the peaceful plains of social media platforms. People can’t be allowed to just say whatever they want! The horror!
As the Twitter Files have repeatedly shown, government, tech companies, and Big Business have been busy making sure anyone who spoke out of turn was bundled into obscurity. Intelligence personnel were embedded in social media companies and state department money was funneled through offshore fact-checking companies. Sketchy think tanks like Hamilton 68 were also cited to shape media narratives.
Though many pandemic conspiracies have now been confirmed as fact, zealots in big business, media, and government have grown fond of being the gatekeepers of what is allowed to be accepted as fact and are not willing to relinquish that power. The Washington Examiner is publishing a series of reports uncovering the groups who are trying to defund media companies who publish things they don’t like. Strangely, everyone in the crosshairs if right-wing, conservative or libertarian.
Investigative reporter, Gabe McKinsky, says one of the main players is the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). GDI is a British organization funded in part by US taxpayer dollars which creates blacklists of “risky” news outlets. Their purpose is to dissuade advertisers from doing business with companies such as Daily Wire, Real Clear, and The Federalist. GDI warns advertisers they might be “unwittingly” fueling the production of “adversarial narratives” and disinformation. And we can’t have that, can we?
Never mind the fact that the news companies deemed “untrustworthy” by GDI were the same ones who expressed doubt about covid mandates, blew the whistle on Hunter Biden’s laptop, and revealed the swirling lies at the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The least riskiest sites were actually the ones who perpetuated the false Trump-Russia collusion story and carried water for the anti-science covid police. As Margot Cleveland writes, “The GDI doesn’t seek to prevent disinformation; it seeks to censor accurate information.”