Bill Targeting ‘Media Monitors’ Heads to the West Virginia Governor’s Desk

A bill to stop what critics call a media blacklist is headed to the desk of West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, after the legislature gave final passage to the measure on Monday. 

This follows a national trend, as Congress, the Trump administration, and the state of Florida have taken measures to address so-called “media monitoring” organizations that rate news outlets.

The West Virginia House of Delegates approved the First Amendment Preservation Act, or Senate Bill 531, on Monday. It passed the Senate in mid-February. 

If Morrisey signs it, the measure will prohibit state agencies from contracting with advertising and marketing firms that use so-called “media monitors” or “misinformation monitors” to block advertising based on politically biased ratings. 

These contracts could be used as guides to direct state agencies to prohibit state advertising dollars from going to news outlets.

Left-of-center organizations such as U.S.-based NewsGuard and the British-based Global Disinformation Index have used what critics say are skewed ratings to block conservative media from receiving advertising revenues.

“By approving the First Amendment Preservation Act, the West Virginia House has taken an important step to protect free speech and ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” said Christine Czernejewski, spokeswoman for the Independent Media Council, which represents more than a dozen media outlets, including The Daily Signal. 

“Lawmakers in the Mountain State are making it clear that when taxpayer dollars are used for public outreach, they should inform all citizens—not just a narrow political audience,” Czernejewski added. 

West Virginia follows Florida, which enacted a similar law. 

In December, Congress approved a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit the War Department from forming contracts for advertising for military recruitment with “advertising firms like NewsGuard that blacklist conservative news sources,” according to the House Armed Services Committee. 

Similarly, the Federal Trade Commission emphasized safeguards against viewpoint discrimination in advertising markets. This was in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting federal coordination to suppress lawful speech.

The new West Virginia law 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.

In a statement last month to The Daily Signal, NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz blasted the state’s bill. 

“The bill pending in the legislature would prevent state government agencies from using a non-partisan service like NewsGuard,” Brill and Crovitz said. 

Brill is the 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,” Brill and Crovitz 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.”

The Daily Signal contacted Morrisey’s office by phone and email for this story. A spokesperson did not respond by publication time.

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