Birdnow's Aviary

April 09, 2026

The Government Plot to Censor Free Speech

Timothy Birdnow

How an Obama-era creation targeted The Blaze media outlet in using a counter-terrorism program to suppress free speech in the United States.

Yes, they actually did that.

Like the Devil this organization has gone by many names, starting out as the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications and then being known as the Gobal Engagement Center, and finally the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub.. President Trump finally killed the accursed thing in his second term.

From the article:

Prior to negotiating a deal with the State Department and settling the case last week, the Federalist obtained discovery evidence confirming that the Global Engagement Center had regularly backed and promoted censorial technologies including NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index.

Blaze Media previously reported that NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index generated blacklists of supposedly risky or misleading news outfits with the aim of getting them demonetized and directing funds to news organizations that advanced establishment narratives.

In the Global Disinformation Index's fall 2022 report, for example, NPR, the Washington Post, and other liberal news outfits were labeled as the "least risky sites," whereas Blaze Media, Reason, the Federalist, the Daily Wire, the New York Post, and other conservative publications made the top 10 list of "riskiest sites" and were smeared as having the "greatest level of disinformation risk."

It turns out that Blaze Media was targeted for more than just a blacklist.

In an August 2020 press release, NewsGuard showcased that it and two other technology companies — PeakMetrics and Omelas — had won a $25,000 contract earlier that year offered jointly by the State Department and the Pentagon to develop solutions that would help the departments evaluate "disinformation narrative themes in near real time 'by identifying online sources spreading COVID-19 disinformation or misinformation narratives.'"

The Federalist obtained evidence that these Global Engagement Center-funded companies ran a test from Dec. 14, 2020, until Jan. 7, 2021, wherein Blaze Media was apparently a featured target.

The Global Engagement Center reportedly explained ahead of time that the test would entail PeakMetrics "first identify[ing] popular yet potentially divisive narratives relevant to the U.S. elections that are trending across channels."

Omelas, in turn, was supposed to provide "evidence of direct attribution of these narratives to state-sponsored sources of disinformation."

After PeakMetrics and Omelas assessed which narratives were becoming "integrated into domestic messaging," NewsGuard "would highlight which sites the narratives continue to surface from and 'provide information on the reliability, popularity, and endurance of the sites and dissemination platforms,'" reported the Federalist.

This is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and it should have gotten a lot of people tossed in jail. Of course they are all still out there enjoying their ill-gotten gains.

If America is "home of the free" then it cannot have such abuse by it's governmet of media outlets and the people who seek those outlets out. It's disgraceful.

And the Left calls defunding PBS "censorship" when in fact they are quick to censor actual information which hurts their political power.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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