Roger Williams Urges Congress To 'Ensure Taxpayer Dollars' Will Not 'Silence Political Opponents'

5 months ago

Prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX) questioned witnesses during a House Small Business Committee hearing.

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Transcript

00:00We will now move to the Member questions under the 5-minute rule. I want to thank all of

00:04you for bearing with us as we voted.

00:06I now recognize myself for 5 minutes. We heard in the Ranking Member's opening statement

00:11that there is no evidence of government censorship affecting small businesses. However, three

00:15of our witnesses' testimonies seem to negate that assertion. Additionally, we heard from

00:20Dr. Franks that this hearing is meant to harass research groups and universities. This is

00:25simply not true. We are asking for transparency to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not spent

00:29being weaponized to silence political opponents. Also, our committee has only sent letters

00:34to federal agencies, no universities or other private actors. This is a textbook congressional

00:39oversight.

00:40Now, though, through our investigation, we have seen hundreds of awards that have been

00:45given through the SBIR programs to companies who claim to be disinformation experts, to

00:50police the Internet, and interfere with Americans' right to free speech. One of these examples

00:54is NewsGuard. NewsGuard has multiple products, one of which uses politicized metrics to rate

00:59the media outlets based on their supposed credibility. And if NewsGuard claims an organization

01:04is not credible, their advertising revenue is severely affected. NewsGuard is reportedly

01:08rated around 10,000 media outlets, many of them small and medium businesses.

01:13So, Ms. Yunus, can you tell us more about how NewsGuard operates and how they impact

01:21the ability of businesses to earn revenue? And it is why it is a problem that the Federal

01:25Government is giving these kinds of companies money.

01:27Ms. Yunus. So, NewsGuard rates media companies based on their ostensible reliability, and

01:34that has the effect of driving advertiser revenue away from them if they are ranked

01:38unreliable. Now, I believe that GDI is even worse than NewsGuard, and their secret blacklist

01:45was actually revealed sometime before we started this litigation and was part of the reason

01:49we actually did. And their secret blacklist showed that all of the sites that they ranked

01:54reliable were liberal, including, you know, websites such as the Huffington Post, which

01:58I would argue are not, you know, don't really engage in the most journalistic practices

02:04of the highest integrity, and all of the ones that they deemed unreliable were conservative.

02:08So that really shows that this is viewpoint discrimination, not to mention the fact that

02:12the GEC shouldn't be funding any of this at all, because their mandate is to deal with

02:16foreign so-called disinformation, and this is these are domestic news sites that they

02:21are ranking.

02:22Thank you. NewsGuard and companies like them don't just impact the businesses they rate.

02:26Small businesses that are not large enough to have an internal advertising department

02:30often partner with advertising companies to help get their products or services out to

02:34the public. Many of these advertising companies look at the ratings that NewsGuard gives media

02:38companies when deciding where to place a small business ad. So, Ms. Sheffield, if I am a

02:44small business owner, which I actually am in Texas, and looking to place advertisements

02:48to online to a conservative audience, but the advertising partner I am working with

02:52is partnered with a company like NewsGuard, am I going to have issues reaching out to

02:56the audiences I need to reach out to?

02:57Well, so in the industry there is a term called brand safe, and a lot of times, especially

03:04for a small startup or a medium-sized business, a lot of these big brands, like, say, a Nike

03:09or some of the bigger marquee brands, they aren't going to be familiar with smaller startups,

03:14and so they rely on some third parties to determine whether or not this organization

03:19or this media outlet is, quote, unquote, brand safe. And that brand safe designation can

03:25really make or break the future of a business. As I said earlier in my testimony, that 40

03:31percent of small and medium business publishers say that digital ad sales drive over half

03:38of their overall revenue. So this could be the death knell if they are not considered

03:42brand safe.

03:43Okay. Mr. Weingarten, in the limited time that we have, over the course of our investigation,

03:47we found that so-called fact-checking organizations are being used to bolster traditional media

03:51outlets by labeling others, often small and medium-sized outlets, as untrustworthy if

03:57the question they accepted narrated. So this creates a conflict of interest for many news

04:02organizations to either get in line and stop asking tough questions or lose out on advertising

04:06revenue and potentially get out of the business. So based on the output of NewsGuard and similar

04:13companies' ratings, which narratives do you see being silenced? And do you think this

04:17is creating an environment where those in power are not being held accountable?

04:23I think there's substantial evidence to suggest that views, for example, with respect to virtually

04:28every aspect of COVID-19, from origins to mitigation measures, would lead a site to

04:35get downgraded to the extent they took positions that were antithetical to those of public

04:39health authorities. We've also seen this as well with respect to the war in Ukraine.

04:45And I think what is so chilling about this, ultimately, is if this entire disinformation,

04:50counter disinformation, so-called ecosystem existed in and of itself without any sort

04:55of government backing, I think we'd probably still find it objectionable, but we'd say

04:58there's a First Amendment right to it. It's protected. The problem here is that government

05:02is conferring its blessing on this entire ecosystem, which clearly exists to chill speech

05:08officials don't like.

05:10Thank you. And I now recognize the Ranking Member for five minutes of questions.

Roger Williams Urges Congress To 'Ensure Taxpayer Dollars' Will Not 'Silence Political Opponents'

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