Analysis of the House Judiciary Hearing on GARM Advertising Policies
The House Judiciary Committee released groundbreaking findings on July 10, confirming that some media companies are purposely steering ads and ad revenue away from platforms perceived to be conservative. In his opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee on July 10, political pundit and columnist, Ben Shapiro said that the White House has created an “informal pressure system” that “guarantees that advertising dollars flow only to left-wing media brands.”
The hearing revealed that a vast swath of media advertising is controlled by a political conglomerate known as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. Ben Shapiro’s content on the Daily Wire has been called a “gateway drug that leads children to watch neo-Nazi content” by some media outlets, despite the blatant fact that Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew. Shapiro testified to the dangerous reality of media censorship of conservatives. Politicians across all three branches of government have threatened media platforms with political targeting. These media platforms have subtly obeyed by quietly adopting the standards of the third-party “informational safety” group GARM. GARM is made up of marketers, media agencies, platforms, and data providers who address what they deem “harmful content” on media platforms and its monetization via advertising. GARM is an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and holds “tremendous market power” in advertising. The report released by the House Judiciary Committee exposes evidence of GARM’s likely illegal conduct.
GARM establishes standards for “brand safety” criteria that advertisers and platforms can use to determine what content should be considered suitable for advertising. However, according to Shapiro, GARM functions more like a cartel. Its members control nearly 90% of ad spending in the United States, amounting to almost $1 trillion each year, making it nearly impossible to generate any ad revenue outside of compliance with GARM standards. If your content fails to align with their political narratives, you risk being labeled as “brand unsafe.” These standards begin by targeting the obvious dangers, like “the distribution of child sexual abuse material.” But they go even further, targeting what they arbitrarily deem “hate speech, harassment, misinformation” and a vague category of “insensitive, irresponsible, and harmful treatment of debated sensitive social issues.” House Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), accused media ad agencies of violating antitrust laws in their implementation of GARM standards.
During the hearing, Congress heard from another witness, Christian Juhl, the CEO of GroupM, the world’s largest social media investment group and media buying agency. GroupM creates ads for clients and buys the media space where the ad lives. Juhl explained the rationale behind the creation of GARM standards.
“Brand suitability” is the desire by marketers to protect their brands’ value by ensuring their ads are not placed adjacent to content that could negatively affect their reputations … For example, environments deemed unsuitable by a confectionary brand may be deemed suitable by an alcohol, tobacco, or gambling brand. But all brands generally agree they do not want to appear next to illegal or dangerous content, such as intellectual property infringement, child exploitation, or promotion of narcotics.
According to Juhl, GARM policies were created because various companies found their ads were running alongside ISIS propaganda online. The backlash from these companies led GroupM and similar corporations to “tighten” their policies and restrict where ads could be placed. Juhl said, “GroupM has no interest in impinging on anyone’s right to speak or publish their points of view,” and he further added the caveat that, “free and robust speech also means that the internet contains controversial content … companies also have the right to choose where they do and don’t place their advertisements. It is a legitimate choice for companies to avoid placing advertisements in environments that may produce suboptimal or even negative returns on their investment.”
This seems to be Juhl’s backdoor to escape the accusations of free-speech censorship. Free speech is being limited to the whims of business prerogatives colluding with the federal government. As several Republican congressmen pointed out, GroupM and her counterparts have routinely restricted ad access for conservative media sites and accounts.
The hearing concluded with Ben Shapiro’s compelling testimony; he reported that the managing director at GroupM explicitly told the Daily Wire that their conservative platform would face significant challenges breaking into the market due to its political orientation.
Big media has colluded with U.S. government officials and regulatory agencies to stifle the voices of platforms with whom they disagree. Hidden behind the guise of empathy lies one of the greatest mass-scale violations of free speech in modern American history. In his opening statement, Chairman Jim Jordan accused these media ad companies of “depriving good journalists of rights based on internal biases.” Regrettably, some political operatives reduce the platforms being censored to “far-right extremists who want to spread propaganda online.”
Congress has found that agencies that implement and practice GARM policies participate in biased political censorship. The current administration is unlikely to stop these policies and will continue to collude with big media to favor their interpretation of events and their narrative of reality unless legislative action is taken. The November election is pivotal for several reasons, one of them being the future of free speech in the media. It’s clear that Congress needs to pass legislation that protects free speech for all political accounts on social media platforms.
In his dissenting opinion in the recent Supreme Court case, Murthy v. Missouri, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government.” Perhaps GARM policies are intended to target dangerous or “false” news, like child pornography or ISIS recruiting videos; however, Alito continues, suppression of valuable speech “inevitably happens when entry to the marketplace of ideas is restricted.” In yet another landmark case decided in 2024, the Court established that government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech (NRA v. Vullo). Alito further clarifies that “internet platforms, although rich and powerful, are … far more vulnerable to Government pressure than other news sources … for months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech.”
The House Judiciary hearing on GARM’s social media advertising policies exposed the illegal coordination between certain media companies and government agencies to suppress viewpoints with which they disagree. The hearing underlined the troubling reality: media platforms are complying with biased “brand safety” standards that stifle free speech.
Upholding the principles of free speech is crucial to maintaining our vibrant constitutional republic, and Congress must take decisive steps to ensure that the marketplace of ideas remains open to all, regardless of political orientation. After all, it’s a republic, if we can keep it.