With a new policy outlawing state financial services contracts with media monitoring services like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, Florida’s chief financial officer axed the censorship program.
On Wednesday, the president of Florida, Jimmy Patronis, unveiled the proclamation to forbid agency partnerships with organizations that “often result in social disagreements, subjective biases, and stance discrimination, rather than factual inaccuracies, thus resulting in censorship and blacklisting.” These ratings have been used to judge non-leftist material using falsehoods for scientific reporting on topics like Hunter Biden’s laptop.
No Florida company may experience simply because it expresses sights that these organizations do n’t like, according to Patronis in a press release. For news and information rating activities appear to be a part of a larger effort to devalue reputable private entities and create social credit scores, related to ESG. That’s improper, and I’ll use my power as CFO to shield businesses and consumers from these deceptive strategies.
The Department of Financial Services is prohibited from entering agreements with repression organizations like NewsGuard, one of the most well-known website extensions that has been used with federal funding in K-12 classrooms nationwide. People are directed to websites that NewsGuard considers to be reliable if they follow the rules set forth by the pro-censorship organization’s administrators. The censorship tool scored identity outlets— quite as Politico, NPR, and the New York Times — with great credibility, despite their history of fake reporting on key news, including Spygate, unfounded Brett Kavanaugh allegations, and Biden family corruption. In addition, it caused results to be lower for other sources that effectively reported these stories.
With taxpayer funding, the Global Disinformation Index ( GDI) makes it clear to advertisers which websites are worthwhile for putting their hard-earned marketing dollars to use. The score was exposed last year for keeping a record of , blacklisted , sites, which included The Federalist, The American Spectator, Newsmax, The , American Conservative,  , One America News, The , Blaze,  , The , Daily Wire,  , RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the , New York Post. GDI’s colleagues have included the U. S. State Department and , previously , the National Endowment for Democracy, the latter of which is almost entirely funded by the past. In June, the House Oversight Committee opened a spacecraft into the repression government’s use of such “disinformation” companies to break down on rebel conversation.
Additionally, Texas filed a complaint against the State Department for funding GDI and The Federalist in December 2023. The State Department is “actively intervening in the news-media industry by funding the system, growth, and development of repression technology and secret censorship enterprises to spy suppress speech of a segment of the American press,” according to the lawsuit.
The Pro-Censorship Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard are both equally negative. [READ:
NewsGuard and GDI were explicitly named in Wednesday’s declaration with Graphika Technologies, in addition to “other similar organizations]which ] are attaching largely subjective’ trust rankings’ and ‘ misinformation’ names to media sources”. The company Graphika, which uses artificial intelligence to combat “disinformation,” was named one of the top 100 most influential companies in 2023 by Time Magazine.
Prior to the end of the previous legislative session, Patronis had attempted to pass legislation that would apply to the entire state government.
Patronis stated to The Federalist,” I may not be able to control it on a statewide, but I can definitely do that within our office.” He added that he hopes the decision to outlaw partnerships between his agency, which has more than 3, 000 employees, will pique lawmakers ‘ interest in the issue once more in his own state and among others.
” We turn up the visibility of the issue” to” catch some momentum”, and” and then ultimately Washington reacts”, he added.
