GARM Exposed: House Judiciary Report Says Ad Coalition Likely Broke Law To Silence Conservatives
July 10, 2024
In The News
Brent Scher
Daily Wire
A congressional investigation has uncovered overt political bias in the leadership of an advertising coalition that’s being used to control online speech, according to a House Judiciary Committee report released on Wednesday ahead of a hearing on whether advertisers are violating federal competition laws.
The report on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM, accuses the group of attempting to influence what content appears online by starving disfavored content, or even entire platforms, of advertising dollars needed to survive. Internal emails obtained by the committee found that GARM’s leadership strategized how to use the coalition against news outlets, including The Daily Wire, with opposing views from its leadership.
Although GARM claims not to impact content moderation policies, or the rules that dictate what content can appear online, the Committee’s investigation shows that GARM’s efforts are aimed at removing and defunding certain content and voices, including:
GARM directed its members to boycott Twitter after Elon Musk acquired the company. Although Rob Rakowitz, the leader of GARM, denied having done so in his transcribed interview before the Committee, a GARM member documented discussions about the boycott, noting that the company had pulled advertisements from Twitter based on GARM’s recommendations.
GroupM, a GARM Steer Team member, attempted to pressure Spotify into censoring Joe Rogan due to his views on the COVID-19 vaccine. GroupM even asked Spotify how it could reconcile being a member of GARM with its stance against misinformation and threatened to halt advertising across Spotify if the platform did not take action against Joe Rogan.
Unilever, a GARM Steer Team member, sought to have a Trump campaign ad flagged as misinformation, aiming to effectively remove the ad from the platform. Facebook, however, maintains a policy of not fact-checking political candidates to ensure Americans can see speech from elected officials and hold them accountable. GARM’s founder criticized this policy of transparency as “honestly reprehensible.”
GARM documents obtained by the Committee show an anti-conservative bias that permeates GARM’s board of directors, known as its Steer Team. When discussing conservative media outlets such as The Daily Wire, Fox News, and Breitbart, employees from GroupM stated that they hated those outlets’ ideology and even discussed placing these outlets on GroupM’s exclusion lists.