SUMMARY In late April, a “disinformation” summit was held at the University of Cambridge in the UK, attracting well-known figures from the international censorship industry. One UK politician boasted of his regional legislature’s plans to weaponize the judicial system to ban political candidates from running for office if they violate online censorship laws. Another panelist…
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SUMMARY A 2022 memo prepared for the State Department advises rolling out “media literacy” and “digital literacy” lessons in schools to combat disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech. The report shows that children’s online safety was not the original motivation of the US federal government’s push for media and digital literacy curricula — it was the…
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SUMMARY A British media agency is at the center of a diplomatic row after allegations of election interference from the Slovakian government, under the pretext of “countering disinformation.” The agency, Zinc Network, has received over $12 million from the UK Foreign Office and over $13.7 million from USAID, the U.S. Department of State, and the…
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SUMMARY Under the previous administration, DHS spent $7 million, funneled through FEMA, to push media literacy lessons into schools. Ideologically biased, pro-censorship organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center and NewsGuard have led the way in building media literacy curricula. Numerous states including California, Rhode Island, Texas and Florida have passed new laws to ensure…
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SUMMARY Founded in the UK, Bellingcat is an “open source investigations” organization that received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED is an international NGO created by the U.S. government in the 1980s to perform influence operations previously carried out by the CIA. Bellingcat has been a major supporter of efforts to censor…
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On August 15, 2024 Microsoft published a lesson plan for teachers on “Information literacy fundamentals” as part of its Search Coach program, which involved NewsGuard as a partner. On this particular lesson plan, Microsoft worked with the Digital Inquiry Group, a NGO whose other partners include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Library of Congress,…
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SUMMARY Publicis Groupe is one of the world’s largest ad agencies, handling advertising and PR for a wide range of corporate clients including major pharmaceutical companies. Publicis subsidiaries have received over $500 million from lucrative U.S. government contracts, including the CDC’s national tobacco awareness campaign. In 2018, Publicis Groupe led the seed round for NewsGuard,…
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SUMMARY The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded a $2.6 million contract for “dis-, mis, and mal-information analysis” to Guidehouse Inc, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, in September 2024. FEMA is a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), home of the now-terminated “Disinformation Governance Board” and incubator of the Election Integrity Partnership, which…
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Microsoft has staked a claim in the growing field of “media literacy” and “digital literacy,” which aims to instruct members of the public – especially schoolchildren – in what types of digital media they ought to trust and distrust. As FFO has previously reported, media and digital literacy is the latest in a long string…
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SUMMARY The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British NGO with non-profit status in the US, has been plotting behind closed doors to “Kill Musk’s Twitter,” recently revealed internal emails show. CCDH has close ties with the US government and elected officials, including the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and former House Intelligence Committee…
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