Biden Admin Funded ‘Censorship’ Targeting Conservative Media Sites

Most regular readers of alternate online or conservative media and news are weary of leftist elites forcing their agenda and views on the American people, and are tired of the left talking down to them about what is “real” news. 

This is being done by self-appointed “media gatekeepers;” the result is political censorship.

Yet it is so-called conservative media which is doing the dogged and truthful reporting we once used to expect from the traditional media sources. 

And news organizations like the California Globe have been the target of such political censorship by the U.S. Defense Department-backed, Microsoft-backed, Big Pharma-backed “NewsGuard.”

Just the name “NewsGuard” should freeze everyone’s insides.

Sadly, the Globe is in good company – Dennis Prager’s “Prager U” just launched a campaign to expose NewsGuard with a petition, and an enlightening Prager U video explaining how this is being done.

Prager U listed some of the other news/media outlets targeted by NewsGuard:

The Daily Wire, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Epoch Times, The Federalist, Fox News, the New York Post.

The Globe spoke with other media including our sister website, The Nevada Globe about being targeted, and RedState. We know The Blaze and Clash Daily have been attacked as well.

For the Globe, the attacks started in 2021. We received an email from John Gregory, health editor at NewsGuard. We exchanged many emails with Gregory in 2021 and 2022 about NewsGuard’s rating of CaliforniaGlobe.com, where Gregory accused the Globe of publishing misinformation and disinformation about Covid protocols.

Our publisher Ken Kurson spent an inordinate amount of time sincerely responding to Gregory’s charges, understanding full well that Gregory could put his Microsoft/Big Pharma/Govt. boot on our neck and squeeze the Globe’s Google rankings, which as it turns out, happened anyway because we were over the target and too close to the truth.

Mr. Kurson gently but firmly pushed back on several issues, and even made some nuanced concessions on others, for which clauses were added to a few articles further explaining sources, and in one case, a retraction was issued on a Stanford study about masks during Covid. Stanford came out after we published, and said the author of the study was not a Stanford Professor but had been a visiting professor.

But Gregory kept his inquisition up demanding to know how and why we reported the way we did on Covid, mandatory masking, the shots, reactions and injuries from the shots. He even claimed that the CDC’s VAERS reporting system (vaccine accident reporting system) was unreliable.

He questioned how and why we chose the articles to write. He challenged our sources. He said we reported falsely about Covid. He demanded corrections and retractions – or else he would see to it our Google rankings suffered:

“As we endeavor to do every year with all the sites we rate, we are now updating CaliforniaGlobe.com’s rating and wanted to seek on-the-record comments regarding specific articles and editorial practices on the site,” Gregory said.

And what happened is that it felt as if we were buried under a mountain of big tech censorship, even though the Globe’s reporting on Covid, our skepticism and questions about lockdowns, masking, social distancing and mandatory shots was proven correct. There are numerous studies now that proved masks don’t prevent the spread of the Covid flu or any flu; that social distancing was totally made up out of whole cloth by the NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, that the shots are not vaccines and did not/do not stop the transmission of Covid, and the Marxist lockdowns caused more harm by locking healthy people and children into their homes.

The bottom line is the science has conclusively proven that we were right to be skeptical about mask effectiveness, lockdown harms and vaccine overpromising.

And no, we did not receive an apology from Mr. Gregory for the two years of harassment and apparent big tech censoring.

To think we were punished for skepticism flies in the face of real journalism. We weren’t pushing a narrative, we were just asking important questions and talking to experts for answers.

Recently, the troll with Newsguard emailed us again from his ivory tower in the Ministry of Truth, but had switched up subjects. Now he questioned our reporting on California Governor Gavin Newsom, abortion laws, climate change, crime, trans kids, race/racism and DEI, and… sudden deaths of athletes.

Mr. Gregory said:

“A February 2024 article, “Sudden Deaths of Vaxxed Athletes, Students, Pilots, Military, but Why No Politicians?,” pushed the false narrative that COVID vaccines have caused hundreds of cardiac-related events and deaths in athletes.”

“In fact, there have been numerous news articles and scientific studies showing no link between COVID vaccines and a purported increase in cardiac arrests or deaths among athletes or young people, none of which were mentioned in this article.”

It’s as if we are dealing with AI or a bot person from another continent. And, as one of our owners recently retorted, “I don’t get the sense there’s any chance he’ll rank us higher if we do reply.”

Gregory’s questions and assertions, in and of themselves, are biased. He’s only attempting to harass and bully us into submission. And my standard of not replying really bugs him.

In 2023 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the Biden administration of contributing to the censorship of conservative media and filed a lawsuit. Joined in the suit by conservative media outlets The Daily Wire and The Federalist, “they alleged the U.S. State Department used tax dollars to fund groups that work to censor right-leaning news outlets,” Fox 11 reported.

“Organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index each received State Department funding, the suit claims. These groups have connections to major social media outlets such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. NewsGuard also holds contracts with the American Federation of Teachers and municipal entities, such as public libraries, across the country.”

Prager U reported what NewsGuard is: an extortion racket for which the Big Tech titans can hide behind as they censor media companies to control the narrative.

Breitbart, also a target of Newsguard, reported:

The PragerU CEO also pointed out that Big Tech has found a loophole in censoring speech online with the help of NewsGuard, noting that all Big Tech companies have to do is point at NewsGuard’s ratings to explain why they are silencing certain outlets and voices.

“In short, NewsGuard enables them to censor speech without leaving any fingerprints,” PragerU CEO Marissa Streit said.

The government also uses NewsGuard as a tool for this endeavor, with the Defense Department paying the rating system over $700,000 to monitor “misinformation” online — an Orwellian way of saying “information that the Defense Department doesn’t like,” Streit added.

If NewsGuard has red-flagged a source, all you need to know is that the left doesn’t want you to read it, watch it, or hear it.”

So, while we knew we were over the target with our skepticism and journalistic curiosity because of the negative attention we received from Newsguard, it took many more news and media outlets to be attacked for anything to happen.

May 8th, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he secured an important victory in his ongoing lawsuit against the Biden Administration for unlawfully censoring American media companies. “The federal government sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, but a federal district court judge denied the Biden Administration’s request and ordered expedited discovery, the Texas AG said. “The Biden Administration made a reprehensible attempt to censor the American press with funding intended to monitor foreign propaganda, aiming to repress viewpoints the federal government disagreed with,” said Attorney General Paxton.

Lastly, Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee released an interim staff report titled, “GARM’s Harm: How the World’s Biggest Brands Seek to Control Online Speech,” which details how large corporations, advertising agencies, and industry associations through the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and specifically its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative participated in boycotts and coordinated action to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content that GARM and its members deem disfavored. They represent 90% of all advertising dollars spent, according to House Chairman Jim Jordan. The full interim staff report here.

Our job as journalists is to hold government accountable and suss out the truth. NewsGuard is funded by the government, Big Pharma, and Big Tech to prevent that. Dennis Prager says, “If truth is allowed to prevail, the Left will fail.”