A Washington Examiner investigation revealed that well-funded “disinformation tracking” groups are part of a covert operation to blacklist and try to defund conservative media. This likely costs news companies large amounts in advertising dollars.

According to sources, emails and public memos obtained by The Washington Examiner, major ad agencies are seeking advice from “nonpartisan” groups that claim to detect and combat online “disinformation.”

Companies are now turning to digital advertising companies to help them promote their products online. Some of these companies contract “disinformation” trackers in order to get private information about which websites they should “defund.”

One entity that shapes the advertising world is the Global Disinformation Index. It is a British nonprofit group with two affiliate U.S. non-profit groups. Clare Melford, a former senior vice president at MTV Networks is GDI’s CEO. Daniel Rogers is its executive director. Rogers is a member of Human Rights First’s tech advisory board. Human Rights First is a left-leaning non-profit group that believes disinformation fuels violence and public health crises.

The ex-deputy assistant to the State Department for internal communications and information policies, Mike Benz, said that it was “devastating”. “The implementation of ad revenue crushing sendinels like Newsguard and Global Disinformation Index has completely crippled alternative news sources’ ability to compete on an economic level with approved media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times.”

GDI’s mission, according to its website, is to “remove financial incentives” to create disinformation. Its “core output” is a secretive dynamic exclusion list that rates news outlets based upon their alleged disinformation risk factor. Melford stated that at least 2,000 websites are on this exclusion listing, which “has had a significant effect on the advertising revenue going to those sites.” Melford spoke on a podcast episode in March 2022 hosted by Safety Tech Innovation Network, an organization supported by the British government.

GDI, along with other similar organizations, has been making a lot of cash as disinformation tracking funding continues to flow in. According to tax records, its charity in San Antonio, Texas posted $345,000 in income in 2020. However, its affiliated private foundation saw its revenue of roughly $19600 jump from 2019 to more than $569,000 in 2020.

According to emails leaked by the Washington Examiner, Xandr is an influential ad agency that subscribed to GDI’s exclusion list to defund outlets purportedly spreading misinformation. It was purchased from AT&T by Microsoft in 2021 for $1 Billion.

In September 2022, Xandr advised companies that it would adopt GDI’s exclusion listing to punish content that was “morally reprehensible and patently offensive”, lacking “redeeming value” or could include misleading or false information. Emails show.

“To enforce this change Xandr is partnering avec the Global Disinformation Index (‘GDI) and will be adopting them exclusion list,” Xandr wrote, linking to a appeal “webform”, which publishers can complete if they disagree about their “risk” rating.

According to GDI reports, this exclusion list was created with oversight from GDI’s “advisory board”, which includes journalists, professors and data scientists. Ben Nimmo (global lead for threat intelligence at Facebook parent company Meta), Anne Applebaum (journalist), who stated that Hunter Biden’s foreign transactions are not “interesting”, and Franziska Roesner, University of Washington professor.

According to a source familiar with right-leaning media’s ad-buying operations, the Washington Examiner was informed by a source that the outlet was on GDI’s exclusion list. This was based on communications with ad firms. The Washington Examiner was not contacted by GDI and wasn’t informed about how it fell short of GDI standards.

GDI did not respond to multiple requests for information on its exclusion list. However, it reports the outlets it considers to be the most dangerous and worst for disinformation dissemination. These 10 outlets, which tend to lean to the right, include the American Spectator and Newsmax, as well as the Federalist, One America News, One America News and the Blaze. RealClearPolitics is Reason, Reason, Reason, Reason and the New York Post.

“The American Conservative had one the lowest scores in our study for bias, indicating almost all of the content sampled to be either somewhat or completely biased,” stated GDI. It did not specify how its ratings might differ for websites publishing news articles or opinion articles.

However, GDI’s “disinformation tracking” efforts have led to opinions being flagged. In an October 2022 memo, the organization claimed that a Washington Examiner commentary article entitled “The Left’s gender-bending obsession in tiresome and absurd” was “anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation.”

According to a senior executive of a company that purchases ads in digital outlets and Breitbart News, the exclusion list for GDI is also being applied. Melford mentioned Breitbart in her podcast appearance for 2022, noting that the outlet was targeted by a “whole ecosystem” of organizations.

Melford stated that topics that have been the subject of “disinformation” include COVID-19 and anti-vaccine content, abortion, mask protests, and voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Melford said that disinformation narratives also revolve around the notion that a corrupt elite is working for their own ends and not the common man’s, and that only strong men can eliminate the corrupt elite.

Washington Examiner spoke to a member of GDI’s advisory panel, who was allowed anonymity to talk candidly about internal operations. Although they claimed not to have been involved in the creation of the exclusion list, the member said that “disinformation labeling” could in general appear to be covered censorship.

The member stated that “this is the concern” and added it “sounds plausible”, adding that any website listed on the index’s most risky list would be.