Global Disinformation Index (GDI)

Activities

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) seeks to “[defund] disinformation” by rating the propensity of online news outlets to produce disinformation and advising online advertisers. ¹ The GDI rating system evaluated numerous factors of a news outlet’s content and organization, including sensationalism, truth accuracy, fact checking, and funding transparency. ² The GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that rates 2,000 websites for their risk of “disinformation.” Major advertising companies, like Microsoft-owned Xandr, pay GDI for access to the list and blacklist high-risk entries. ^{3 4}

The GDI defines “disinformation” as when “someone pushes an intentionally misleading narrative which is adversarial against democratic institutions, scientific consensus or an at risk group — and which carries a risk of harm.” ⁵

As of December 2022, the GDI’s advisory panel for evaluating disinformation risk included employees from Facebook, the Pew Research Center, and the Open Society Foundations. ²

Controversy

Neutrality on Disinformation

Global Disinformation Index (GDI) claims that it evaluates disinformation with “several safeguards to ensure that site reviews are fair and that scores are not based on whether the research team agrees or disagrees with content on the site,” including multiple rounds of review for pieces of content, and blinding reviewers from a content’s media producer. ²

GDI has been accused of promoting censorship against conservative news outlets, costing them millions of dollars in advertising revenue. ^{6 4}

The report’s 10 “riskiest” online news outlets are all right-leaning or libertarian: Reason, the New York Post, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, the Blaze, the Federalist, One America News Network, Newsmax, the American Conservative, and the Spectator. ²

In October 2022, the GDI released “Measuring Disinformation Risk on TV News Programming,” which compared the disinformation risk of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. The report concluded that the right-wing Fox News was the most prone to disinformation, followed by the left-wing MSNBC and the left-leaning CNN. Eight of the nine “high risk” and “maximum risk” programs were on Fox News, while the left-wing “Rachel Maddow Show” was given a low-risk ranking. ⁷

In December 2022, the GDI and Global Disinformation Lab at the University of Texas produced “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in the United States,” which evaluated the risk of disinformation production of 69 American news websites. The report’s 10 “lowest-risk” online news outlets included nine left-leaning publications: National Public Radio (the lowest risk), the Huffington Post, ProPublica, Insider, APNews, USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and BuzzFeed News. The sole arguably right-leaning publication was the Wall Street Journal. ²

In January 2023, the GDI released “Ad-Funded Disinformation: Misogyny,” which identified instances of alleged misogyny misinformation on websites with sponsorship from major companies including BMW, Hulu, and Urban Outfitters. The highlighted content consisted mostly of opinion pieces challenging feminist philosophy or abortion. For instance, one article posted on NewsBuster and sponsored by Google criticized the notion that getting an abortion is an act of bravery. ⁸

In December 2025, it was announced on the X (formerly Twitter) account of Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rodgers that the U.S Department of State had sanctioned GDI co-founder and CEO Clare Melford. The post on X stated “If you question Canadian blood libels about residential schools, you’re engaging in “hate speech” according to Melford and GDI. This NGO used @StateDept taxpayer money to exhort censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press.” ⁹

Leadership

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) was co-founded by CEO Clare Melford and executive director Daniel Rogers. Melford was formerly CEO of the International Business Leaders Forum, managing director of MTV Networks, and led the European Council on Foreign Relations during its break away from the Open Society Foundations. Rogers founded and led Terbium Labs, a U.S. intelligence community contractor, works as an adjunct Professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and is a senior fellow at the left-leaning Truman National Security Project. ^{10 11}

Funding

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) has received funding from the Argosy Foundation, the Catena Foundation, Luminate, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, Reset, the Disinfo Cloud, and the United Kingdom government. ¹²

According to a report by Gabe Kaminsky at the Washington Examiner, the U.S. Department of State has given $330,000 to the GDI, $230,000 of which came through the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit almost entirely funded by the U.S. government. ⁶