The House is again looking to include language in a budget implementing bill that would bar agencies from using state funds to hire an advertising agency “or other contractor” that either acts as, or uses the services of, “media reliability and bias monitors.”
As detailed by Jason Garcia of Seeking Rents, House lawmakers included similar language last year after behind-the-scenes lobbying by Newsmax, which scores low on such reliability measures, such as NewsGuard’s analysis.
Now, it appears that language is back again.
Such a service can be a headache for Newsmax, which last year paid more than $100 million to settle two separate defamation lawsuits. The outlet scores poorly, which can deter advertisers from buying time on the network.
But lawmakers are looking to penalize ad agencies from utilizing NewsGuard’s services by excluding them from working with the state of Florida.
Politically, the provision has become a proxy battle over whether credibility ratings and fact-checking are consumer-protection tools or “blacklisting” mechanisms. The right-leaning news outlet convinced the supermajority in Tallahassee last year that NewsGuard was the latter.
Last year’s language will expire with the current budget on July 1, prompting the need to revive the language in the upcoming fiscal year budget.
The House and Senate released their initial budget proposals late last week, revealing significant conflict between the two chambers. The Senate announced a delay until the following week on Thursday, only for the House to drop its budget hours later. The Senate responded by releasing its documents on Friday.
That means both that the chambers can now formally begin negotiating numbers and language to reach a consensus document, and that ongoing tensions could mean some of this language is up for debate. But it remains to be seen whether the language governing bias monitors will serve as a sticking point.
