Written by by TRISTAN JUSTICE at thefederalist.com
The U.S. Department of State reportedly hired German censors to train American teachers on how to facilitate so-called anti-disinformation efforts in the classroom.
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Media Research Center (MRC) and shared exclusively with The Daily Wire reveal that the State Department paid for trainings for hundreds of teachers “created mostly by German ‘disinformation’ activists.” The “Medialogues on Propaganda,” which featured 11 online training meetings between June 2021 and April 2022 and was attended by some 700 teachers, was funded by a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.
“The intent was to train teachers to ‘inoculate’ students against disinformation that train them in ‘media literacy,’” The Daily Wire reported. “The State Department sessions were used by its activist organizers to promote products from their for-profit ‘partner,’ Ad Fontes, as well as NewsGuard.”
Ad Fontes is a for-profit firm founded in 2018 that advises advertisers, online platforms, and educators about which websites to either boycott or censor. While the company claims to be impartial, its recommendations show otherwise by disproportionately targeting conservative media as outlets for clients to avoid.NewsGuard is a similar “disinformation” group backed by federal grant money. It operates as a browser extension that rates the credibility of news organizations and has been deployed in classrooms. A study published last month by the Media Research Center shows NewsGuard’s credibility ratings “overwhelmingly favored left-leaning outlets over right-leaning ones.” Prominent examples of NewsGuard’s biased ratings include perfect grades for legacy outlets that botched the Hunter Biden laptop story while giving failing grades to conservative websites that got it right.