US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on August 1 requested documents from more than 40 companies that are members of the controversial, powerful advertising initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
The Committee has long had GARM (set up by the World Federation of Advertisers, WFA) in its sights in the context of a broader investigation into the government colluding with tech companies, but also other corporations, to censor online speech.
In this case, GARM is suspected of getting the world’s biggest brands to effectively demonetize, by withholding ads, various platforms, podcasts, news sites, “and other content that GARM and its members deem disfavored,” Committee Chairman Jim Jordan writes in his letter sent to dozens of GARM members.
We obtained a copy of the letters for you here.
GARM’s official purpose is to provide brand safety to its clients (and theirs amounts to some 90% of marketing spending globally) – but Jordan says that this WFA initiative (with ties to the World Economic Forum, WEF) has significantly deviated from that goal.
Instead, it has “collectively used its immense market power to demonetize voices and viewpoints the group disagrees with – even intervening in situations that do not have a so-called ‘brand safety’ concern,” Jordan writes.
Among those who received the letter are Electronic Arts, Red Bull, McDonalds, General Motors, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, Volvo, American Express, Chanel, CVS, Pepsi, Adidas, Nike, IKEA, Sony, Shell – and that’s just a third of the corporations listed, but it gives a clear idea of the power GARM, as their “brand safety umbrella,” has to make or break any entity “disfavored” for their speech.
Jordan informed these corporations that the committee he chairs “has learned that collusive activity is occurring within the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of which your company is a member.”
That activity included boycotting sites, podcasts, etc., that GARM decided should be excluded from the members’ marketing spending. Among those that were allegedly targeted in this way are conservative media outlets like Daily Wire and Fox News, but also Joe Rogan’s podcast.
A WFA spokesperson denied that GARM was involved in “operational steps relative to monetization eligibility” nor things like content ratings, platforms assessments – “or media investment decisions.”
But a recent Judiciary Committee interim report said that GARM head Rob Rakowitz was influencing members to make their decisions based on what “fact-checkers” like Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard had to tell them.
These are considered “left-leaning” while those who suffered “censorship through demonetization” are entities considered conservative or libertarian.
Famously, one of them was Twitter – as soon as Elon Musk acquired it, that is.
