State Fires a Shot Against ‘Blacklisting’ Conservative Media
Fred Lucas /
West Virginia state senators passed a bill to prohibit what it called “news censorship,” as other state legislatures have considered similar speech proposals.
Specifically, the “First Amendment Preservation Act” bans state agencies from entering contracts with companies that use media monitoring or bias-rating organizations. The contracts could be used as guides to direct state agencies to prohibit state advertising dollars from going to news outlets.
The legislation, Senate Bill 531, was sponsored by state Sen. Mike Azinger, a Republican, who has backed other First Amendment measures.
“It was simply brought to my attention that ideologically-based fact checkers and media monitors are a distinct potentiality in West Virginia as it is already occurring in other states; so we set out to catch this proactively,” Azinger told The Daily Signal.
“Also, I had a viscerally positive reaction to the bill when it was offered to me to sponsor it, since I have run and passed many a number of freedom and First Amendment bills; this drew me naturally to SB 531, The First Amendment Preservation Act,” Azinger said.
This could primarily target NewsGuard, a media monitoring site that sued the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission for investigating its alleged efforts to blacklist conservative-leaning news outlets. NewsGuard argues the West Virginia proposal could prevent detection of fake news sites by foreign adversaries.
The West Virginia proposal is similar to a provision approved in December in the National Defense Authorization Act.
That provision prohibits the War Department from forming contracts for the purpose of advertising for military recruitment with “advertising firms like NewsGuard that blacklist conservative news sources,” according to the House Armed Services Committee.
Among past free speech bills, Azinger sponsored a bill that passed to ensure student journalists in high school and college have greater protections from censorship, and that school administrators could not exert prior review or punish student media advisers for refusing to censor content.
The American Legislative Exchange Commission, a conservative group that recommends state legislative proposals, introduced its “Statement of Principle on News Censorship in 2024. It says that if government agencies rely on “fact-checking” or media monitoring groups based on subjective content judgments, it could chill press freedom.
“Whether in print, over the airwaves or online, government agencies should harness the full potential of today’s media offerings to communicate official notices on the platforms where their constituents actually frequent – not put their thumbs on the scale exclusively in favor of ‘mainstream’ outlets,” the ALEC Statement of Principles on News Censorship says.
“A troubling trend has emerged in which ‘media monitoring organizations’ analyze news outlets for the accuracy of their reporting and then blacklist or otherwise exclude certain publications from advertising,” the statement of principles continues. “This accuracy is often determined by adherence to official government positions.”
ALEC referenced organizations that initially cited accurate reporting on the COVID-19 lab leak theory and the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation.”
NewsGuard disapproves of the West Virginia bill, which still requires passage in the state’s House of Representatives, and the signature of West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican.
“The bill pending in the legislature would prevent state government agencies from using a non-partisan service like NewsGuard,” NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz told The Daily Signal in a detailed statement.
Brill is founder of Court TV, and Crovitz is a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
“NewsGuard’s services include a targeted, non-partisan exclusion list that only excludes websites identified as being Russian, Iranian, or Chinese disinformation outlets,” the co-CEOs added.
“Believe it or not, there are now hundreds of such sites posing as American news sites,” the co-CEOs continued. “And with the typical online advertising campaign advertising on an average of 40,000 websites by using computerized “programmatic” advertising algorithms, an exclusion list like this is the only way to keep West Virginia tax dollars from inadvertently financing the work of these foreign malign actors.”