A State Department-backed “disinformation” tracking group blacklisting conservative news outlets pressured advertising companies to punish websites boosting the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory, which a federal agency now says is the most likely origin of the virus.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British group with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit organizations, has continued to come under fire for feeding conservative news blacklists to advertising companies. This same government-funded entity repeatedly applied pressure on companies to cut ties with websites promoting the once alleged right-wing “conspiracy” that COVID-19 emerged from a lab — which the Energy Department recently concluded is probable based on intelligence.
“GDI is part of [a] disturbing constellation of pop-up censorship organizations that all descended on stifling COVID origins discourse online simultaneously,” Mike Benz, a former State Department official and director of Foundation For Freedom Online, a censorship watchdog, told the Washington Examiner.
A Sunday report by the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Energy Department has determined that a lab leak is the most likely culprit for the spread of COVID-19. In 2021, the FBI said with “moderate confidence” that a lab leak is likely the cause of the pandemic, while the CIA and another agency haven’t reached a conclusion.
GDI, which compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” intended for brands to target conservative websites like the Washington Examiner, has published several reports on alleged COVID-19 disinformation. The group notably received $665,000 combined between 2020 and 2021 from the State Department-backed Global Engagement Center and National Endowment for Democracy , a nonprofit group that has said it will no longer fund GDI.
www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-inc-government-backed-group-tried-to-punish-sites-boosting-covid-lab-leak-theory