Docs Show Corporate Giants Are "Colluding To Demonetize Conservative Platforms", Judiciary Committee Says - Advertising industry's anti-conservative blacklist campaign could violate antitrust laws, Rep. Jim Jordan says

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether major advertisers ran
afoul of antitrust laws by coordinating about which news outlets to
blackball.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), obtained documents from the
World Federation of Advertisers that show how it implemented a strategy to
prevent major advertisers from doing business with disfavored news outlets.
The coordinated effort could have the effect of bankrupting news
organizations that don�t get the stamp of approval.

�The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) through its Global Alliance for
Responsible Media (GARM) initiative may be acting inconsistent with U.S.
antitrust laws and congressional intent by coordinating GARM members� efforts
to demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online,� Jordan wrote in March
27 letter demanding further documents from advertisers.

�Evidence the Committee has obtained suggests that GARM members, led by Steer
Team members, are colluding to demonetize conservative platforms and voices.
Further, this coordination does not always revolve around �brand safety� and
�harmful� content as GARM publicly claims, but instead the desire to censor
conservative and other views that GARM members disfavor,� Jordan added.

The letters indicate that documents obtained by the committee suggest that
the group tried to blackball mainstream conservative news organizations,
specifically asking for �communications referring or relating to conservative
news outlets, including Fox News, Daily Wire, and Breitbart.�

The letters went to major corporations on GARM�s �steering committee� �
Unilever, Procter & Gamble, GroupM, Diageo, and Mars � saying the documents
�directly connect� the companies with such efforts. The documents in the
active investigation have not been released to the public.

The letters seek communications from the companies �relating to the
categorization, demonetization, or elimination of online speech.�

They also ask for communications discussing �changes to X following Elon
Musk�s acquisition of the company,� when many advertisers left the platform
in protest of the left-wing Jack Dorsey being replaced by the billionaire
entrepreneur Elon Musk.

The probe suggests that the companies could be held individually responsible
for the actions of the group they created, and that GARM may act in a
cartel-like manner, even though many of its members are nominally
competitors.

WFA announced the GARM�s creation at the 2019 Cannes festival, a gathering of
global elites, amidst complaints about �disinformation� and �fake news,� but
later that year said it would become a flagship project of the World Economic
Forum (WEF)�s �Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and
Culture.�

In an announcement that seemed like something from Darth Vader, the World
Economic Forum stated, �The Global Alliance is creating a safe media
ecosystem.�

�GARM focuses on viewer safety for consumers, reducing risks for advertisers,
developing credibility for digital platforms and, more broadly, ensuring a
sustainable online ecosystem,� it said. �Partners involved in the Global
Alliance for Responsible Media through the Forum�s Platform for Shaping the
Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport include companies such as LEGO
Group, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, NBC Universal � MSNBC, Dentsu Group, WPP
(through GroupM), Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom Group, Facebook
and Google.�

READ MORE: Ben Shapiro Details The Global Entities Working To �Demonetize And
Deplatform� Conservative Voices

In 2022, GARM added �misinformation� to the types of online content that it
views as unethical to run ads against.

It said companies should look to firms like NewsGuard, the Global
Disinformation Index, and the Journalism Trust Initiative to decide which
news outlets to do business with, writing that the groups �can help ensure
that ad buyers and users looking for news can be in safe and suitable
places.�

GARM says it provides members with �Brand Safety.� For-profit firms like
Newsguard have shown what that means in practice: Companies that might buy
ads are given lists of what TV programs, channels, podcasts, or newspapers
are either safe to advertise on or should be avoided. This is billed as
avoiding risks to their reputation or boycotts�essentially saying that if a
company wants to avoid boycotts from the Left or smear campaigns, they should
not do business with certain media outlets.

In a progress report in 2022, GARM boasted of qualities that, viewed in
another light, could show anti-competitive practices.

�GARM�s launch was propelled forward by uncommon collaboration, a unique way
of working recognizing that all sectors of the advertising industry and
companies benefit from partnering to create new brand safety standards and
solutions that could be accepted industry-wide, where there had been no
established protocols,� it said.

The challenge of meaningfully steering the entire media ecosystem was �big,�
it said, yet GARM included 61 major companies that buy a large portion of the
advertising in the world, as well as 35 separate industry associations that
represent many more advertisers.

The WFA, along with the Global Disinformation Index, Newsguard, and other
firms that would profit from �disinformation� crackdowns, lobbied the
European Union for a �Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation� in
2022.

Companies that want to advertise are likely to defer judgement to such
nominal �experts� about who is credible, leading to wide-scale, coordinated
blacklists. But those purported experts have rated even the most measured and
staid news outlets as risky if they are conservative, such as the New York
Post and Reason Magazine.

Such news outlet raters often assign credibility ratings based on how closely
news outlets hew to official government lines, dinging outlets for
questioning, for example, whether COVID could have come from a lab � a theory
discouraged by the government at the time, but now largely supported by the
government.

Newsguard even worked directly with the U.S. government, leading The Daily
Wire and the Federalist to sue the State Department in a lawsuit that alleged
�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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Let's go Brandon!