Internews, Backed by $400M USAID War Chest, Pushes Ad Blacklists - Foundation for Freedom Online Skip to content
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Internews, Backed by $400M USAID War Chest, Pushes Ad Blacklists
by FFO Staff<br>July 9, 2026
SUMMARY<br>USAID-funded media nonprofit Internews advocated using advertiser exclusion lists to redirect advertising revenue away from publishers accused of spreading "disinformation."<br>Internews has long faced questions over its relationship with the U.S. government. Its own president acknowledged that overseas journalism training sessions often began with discussions of whether the organisation was "really U.S. propaganda, or the CIA."<br>Founded in 1982 alongside the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Internews emerged during the Reagan administration’s expansion of publicly funded democracy-promotion programs that replaced many earlier covert Cold War influence operations.<br>The parallels between Internews and NED suggest that advertiser blacklisting was part of a broader taxpayer-funded counter-disinformation ecosystem rather than an isolated initiative.<br>The role of the National Endowment for Democracy in financing the post-2016 counter-disinformation industry is now well established. Through grants to organisations such as the Global Disinformation Index, NED supported efforts to financially blacklist American media outlets by steering advertisers away from publishers accused of spreading "disinformation." NED itself also called for coordinated international efforts to "demonetize disinformation."<br>Internews, another US government-funded NGO, bankrolled by hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars, has taken the same approach.<br>Ostensibly an independent nonprofit, Internews funds thousands of news organizations and journalists around the world, an international empire of media influence run out of the United States.<br>This astroturfed network of global media is largely the result of US funding: roughly $400 million in from USAID since the early 2000s. A report during the George W. Bush administration estimated that roughly 80 percent of Internews’ funding came from government sources. Of those government funds, USAID accounts for the vast majority.
Much like other arms of US foreign influence, Internews in recent years has turned its attention to the censorship of online content, with no apparent distinction between foreign and domestic content, with senior Internews officials urging global censorship action as recently as last year.<br>Speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2025, Internews President and CEO Jeanne Bourgault argued for the return of global advertiser blacklists, a practice that was widespread prior to actions by the House Judiciary Committee, Elon Musk, and the current Federal Trade Commission aimed at combating the practice.<br>"Disinformation makes money, and we need to follow that money, and we need to work with in particular the global advertising industry… you can work really hard on exclusion lists or inclusion lists and really try to focus ad dollars to the accurate and relevant news information."
Bourgault’s support for blacklists runs completely contrary to the policy of the US government to which her organization owes the vast majority of its funds. She also makes no distinction between blacklisting "disinformation" abroad vs. at home — meaning the American taxpayer dollars supporting Internews are also supporting the censorship of Americans.<br>On top of this, because Internews’ goal is to astroturf media around the world, Bourgault is essentially calling for the financial throttling of her competition — competition which does not have the advantage of a US government slush fund.<br>Recently, Internews changed its tagline to say “Information Saves Lives,” implying that if the Trump administration were to cut their funding, that people would die from a lack of USAID-funded media.
Internews has also attracted attention for its longstanding relationship with the U.S. government.<br>Founded in 1982, the organization emerged in the same year as the National Endowment for Democracy, during the Reagan administration’s effort to expand overt democracy-promotion programs. NED itself would become synonymous with this shift. Its founder, Allen Weinstein, famously observed that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," while The New York Times later described the organization as carrying out openly what the CIA had previously done covertly.<br>Internews occupied a similar position within America’s international media development apparatus.<br>According to a profile published during the George W. Bush administration, roughly 80 percent of Internews’ funding came from the U.S. government. The organization’s then-president, former Marxist activist David Hoffman, acknowledged that this funding frequently led to suspicion among journalists participating in its overseas training programs.<br>As Hoffman explained:<br>"Training sessions often begin with discussion of...