Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) has introduced an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which forbids the Department of Defense from contracting or cooperating with any organization that facilitates the censorship of Americans.
The amendment covers organizations like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which facilitate the financial blacklisting of conservative news through their advice to advertisers. The amendment also forbids the military from working with any advertising agency that makes use of these services.
The U.S. government has in the past funded both of these organizations, including a $750,000 Pentagon contract awarded to NewsGuard in 2021.
A 20-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy, McCormick said at a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee that recruitment had been harmed by the military’s embrace of wokeness and its apparent aversion to conservative media, which has a generally pro-military audience.
“The amendment I’m offering today is a partial answer to the military’s recruiting challenges,” said McCormick. “Last year the United States Army missed its recruiting goal by 25, nearly, 20,000 soldiers short. The Navy also — it managed recruiting goals for its sailors but it fell short by 200 officers.”
“There are plenty of reasons for this recruitment shortfall — more than three quarters of the military age young people are ineligible to serve because of obesity addiction and criminal history. Then there’s the fact that political correctness is overtaking the military, and the pentagon’s obsession with diversity and inclusion has replaced our focus on recruiting and training capable war fighters.”
“In fiscal year 2024 the Army alone will spend nearly $400 million in marketing advertisement trying to close the record recruitment shortfall. We owe it to the taxpayer to make sure as many eligible recruits see those advertisements as possible.”
“This amendment will prohibit the department of events from contracting with any one of a number of misinformation or disinformation monitors that rate news and information sources. While the media monitors claim to be nonpartisan, the reality is they serve to steer advertising away from conservative news sites, which is where I’d argue most of the recruited people come from.”
“The amendment further requires that any of the advertising agencies seeking to place military recruitment advertisements also certify that they do not use these services.”
“According to Media Research Center, the average NewsGuard score for the “left” and “lean left” outlets was a “green shield” rating of 91 to 100 while the average rating for the right and lean right outlets was a low 66 of 100.”
“A Global Disinformation Index report on online news lists the 10 riskiest online outlets as the New York Post, the Federalist, The Blaze, Daily Wire, Newsmax, One America News, the American Spectator, American Conservative, Reason Magazine, and Real Clear Politics — all conservative, while left-leaning sites ProPublica, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed news and Huffington Post were among the 10 lowest risk online news sites. Perhaps even more concerning News Guard gives a better rating to two Chinese Communist Party news sites than it does to Epoch Times.”
“We need to cast as wide and then as possible when recruiting soldiers in and out of our armed services we certainly do not need to exclude large swaths of Americans simply because they watch and read conservative news. More specifically we should not be subsidizing censorship by proxy.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.