Secretary of State Marco Rubio says dismantling the “censorship-industrial complex” is a key priority of the Trump administration and his department had officially closed the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office used to stop free speech.
In an article for The Federalist published Wednesday, Rubio said, “Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center.”
The GEC, which had originally begun in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications, or CSCC, was tasked with countering extremist propaganda.
But in 2016 the Obama administration moved to rebrand it as the Global Engagement Center, broadening its scope to combat what it called “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.”
Critics say the shift turned a counterterrorism office into a tool for censoring political speech.
“When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name,” Rubio wrote, referring to the office’s transition to the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI)” initiative. “Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.”
Rubio particularly noted GEC’s support for left-wing “misinformation” monitors like NewsGuard and GDI. Both groups had received State Department grants and, in turn, have been targeting conservative media for censorship.
“Another entity receiving State Department dollars was NewsGuard, a company that rates the reliability of various websites, once again for the purposes of driving traffic and ad revenue away from those rated poorly,” Rubio wrote.
“NewsGuard claims to be nonpartisan — but its board of advisers has included one Rick Stengel, the very man who built the Global Engagement Center, who says Donald Trump uses ISIS propaganda tactics, and who believes that propagandizing the American people is a good thing,” Rubio added.
Conservatives have complained that advertising agencies are taking political sides by using NewsGuard to determine what outlets get ad revenues.
French advertising giant Publicis was an early investor in NewsGuard, with one of its top executives serving on the group’s board until recently.
NewsGuard was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill, a long-time Democrat activist, advocate, and donor who has backed many liberal candidates including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
In three comprehensive studies, the Media Research Center found NewsGuard consistently ranks conservative media outlets with lower ratings than liberal ones.
With low ratings from NewsGuard, conservative media find themselves blocked on browsers like Microsoft’s, see their search and social media traffic plummet, and often get little ad revenue from advertising agencies.
The NewsGuard products effectively handicap conservative media by de-ranking and defunding them.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi has castigated the group for taking government funds and says NewsGuard is nothing more than a “state sponsored bullying operation.”
Elon Musk has called NewsGuard a “scam” with legal expert Jonathan Turley adding its work is both censorship and “blacklisting.”
Rubio also noted that NewsGuard was not alone in working the censorship angle.
“One recipient of your taxpayer dollars was a British entity called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI),” he noted.
“GDI once produced a list of the top 10 ‘riskiest online news outlets’ in a direct bid to drive off their ad revenue and put them out of business. Every one of those 10 sites was on the political right, and The Federalist was among them.”
The Trump administration described the GEC and its successors as key players in what it calls the “Censorship-Industrial Complex,” citing partnerships with social media companies and nonprofits that allegedly targeted conservative voices and platforms.
“GEC’s history shows the pernicious way Washington turns laudable public goals into a means of entrenching its own power and rolling back the freedom of regular Americans,” the statement said.
“My choice to publish this piece in The Federalist is no coincidence,” Rubio wrote.
The Federalist, a conservative opinion website, has long been a target of groups like NewsGuard and GDI.
“This travesty has gone on long enough,” Rubio said. “Our republic is based on putting trust in the ordinary citizenry.”
In closing, Rubio reiterated the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting speech at home while remaining alert to authoritarian censorship abroad, including from China and other unexpected sources.
“We are not afraid,” it said. “At her birth, America was a lone beacon of freedom to the world. If necessary, we will happily be that lone beacon once again.”
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