This is part of a Washington Examiner investigative series about self-styled ‘disinformation’ tracking groups that are secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media outlets. Here you can read other stories in this series.
EXCLUSIVE — Microsoft has removed negative flags for conservative media outlets that have blocked them from reaping key advertising dollars amid the corporation launching an internal review and suspending its subscription to a “disinformation” tracking group’s blacklist used to “defund” disfavored speech, according to internal data obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The Microsoft-owned Xandr, a major advertising company, previously abided by a secret blacklist
of conservative news compiled by the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups. Now, as Microsoft appears to be taking steps to distance itself from
GDI, the company has, for the time being, deleted flags such as “false/misleading” and “reprehensible/offensive” for right-leaning websites, data show.
DISINFORMATION INC: MICROSOFT SUSPENDS RELATIONSHIP WITH GROUP BLACKLISTING CONSERVATIVE NEWS
“I just checked in Xandr’s platform again and can confirm that all rejection flags have been removed from domains,” a senior executive in the ad industry, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told the Washington Examiner.
Xandr had labeled 39 conservative domains as, overwhelmingly, “false/misleading,” the Washington Examiner reported on Friday. Townhall, a website under a Christian publisher called Salem Media Group, was flagged as “reprehensible/offensive.”
Some websites that were flagged prior as “false/misleading” were the Washington Examiner, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Drudge Report, Newsmax, Breitbart, the Blaze, the Washington Times, Judicial Watch, and MRC.TV, which is under the Media Research Center.
However, according to an updated internal Xandr dataset provided to the Washington Examiner, all of these websites do not currently have a designation. It is unclear whether this means they now are receiving ads from certain brands, given that domains allowed to obtain ads are provided an “approved” classification, data show.
“We try to take a principled approach to accuracy and fighting foreign propaganda,” a Microsoft spokesperson said Saturday evening. “We’re working quickly to fix the issue, and Xandr has stopped using GDI’s services while we are doing a larger review.”
Breitbart.TV, a defunct domain, still is designated as “hate speech.”
Microsoft’s latest actions as part of its GDI review come after Xandr informed publishers in September 2022 that it would begin to adopt GDI’s “dynamic exclusion list,” which the organization feeds to ad companies. Through this list, which is said to include at least 2,000 websites, GDI has sought to pressure companies to shut down certain websites.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that the outlet is on this list, and GDI has also claimed that the 10 “riskiest” outlets, which are all right-leaning, are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News Network, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
GDI compiles this list with oversight from its “advisory panel,” which includes Ben Nimmo, global lead for threat intelligence at Facebook parent company Meta, and left-leaning journalist Anne Applebaum, who said Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings are not “interesting.”
One member of the panel, who previously spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it “sounds plausible” that any website on GDI’s “riskiest” list would, in turn, “probably” be on the blacklist. GDI has claimed that the 10 “least risky” websites are NPR, ProPublica, the Associated Press, Insider, the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, HuffPost, and the Wall Street Journal, according to a 27-page report.
GDI is not the only entity coming under fire as Republicans lash out at what they view as coordinated censorship. On Saturday, several watchdogs raised concerns over the Department of State funding
GDI. The agency has handed $330,000 to the disinformation group through the Global Engagement Center and the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group almost entirely funded through congressional appropriations.
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First Amendment lawyers have questioned the legality of this arrangement, arguing that the government cannot involve itself with an entity aiming to seemingly censor the free and independent press.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversees State Department grants, said on Thursday that the “most recent allegations, if verified, confirm the need for a strict accounting of all U.S. taxpayer funds going to the GEC.”
