Lawmakers are seeking information from a “disinformation”-tracking activist group as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigations into the extent of executive branch collusion with third parties to limit and censor speech during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has written to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British non-profit with a United States affiliate, to determine to what extent the U.S. federal government may have coordinated with the group to silence dissenting voices online.
Jordan writes, “Certain third parties, including organizations like yours, appear to have played a role in this censorship regime by advising the government and social media companies on so-called ‘misinformation’ and other types of content— sometimes with direct or indirect support or approval from the federal government.”
Jordan further asserts that “the Biden White House relied on CCDH’s report titled ‘The Disinformation Dozen,’ in its unconstitutional pressure campaign against social media platforms to censor those, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who CCDH maligned as ‘anti-vaxxers.’”
The letter requests that CCDH provides all relevant documents and communications with the executive branch and social media companies “referring or relating to the moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, demonetization, or reduced circulation of content; the accuracy or truth of content; or the attribution of content to the source or participant in a foreign malign or state-sponsored influence operation.” Read Chairman Jordan’s full letter here.
Jordan’s request for information comes amid a legal battle between X Corp. (formerly Twitter) and CCDH. In a new lawsuit, X Corp. alleges that CCDH harmed X Corp. through false claims that “hate speech” has increased and proliferated on X since Elon Musk’s takeover, and that CCDH “intentionally and unlawfully” accessed the company’s data. On July 20, X Corp. sent a letter to CCDH identifying “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically” and threatening to sue. CCDH has published numerous papers and reports maligning Twitter, which the letter characterizes as false or misleading. The letter also claims that CCDH is “funded in support of an ulterior agenda” by competitors and “government entities and their affiliates.”
CCDH purports to “stop the spread of online hate and disinformation through research, public campaigns and policy advocacy,” targeting supposed offenders by “[holding] them accountable and responsible for their business choices by highlighting their failures, educating the public, and advocating change from platforms and governments to protect our communities.”
CCDH is one of several nonprofit and for-profit groups that claim to identify bad actors and provide authoritative data on truth and trustworthiness in media. In reality, these firms exhibit notable anti-conservative bias and vitriol against views that dissent from the left-leaning mainstream. From the “Twitter Files” to reports from the Washington Examiner, several major firms such as the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard have been exposed as developing disinformation ratings and exclusion lists with the intent of financially handicapping and limiting the reach of conservative groups.
In May 2023, NRB’s Board of Directors approved a resolution opposing weaponization of the federal government, writing:
The weaponization of the federal government is a tool aimed at depriving individuals of the ability to speak, gather, or do business because of their religious beliefs or the incompatibility of their beliefs with prevailing cultural trends . . . NRB opposes all weaponization of the federal government to strike down and silence Christian viewpoints, maintaining that civil rights liability for constitutional violations should be strictly enforced against any federal government agency and any private entity with whom they have collaborated to deny free speech and equal protection.
As Congress investigates coordination between the executive branch and private companies to limit speech, NRB continues to monitor this issue and advocate for the rights, freedoms, and interests of Christian communicators.
