Jimmy Patronis takes aim at ‘so-called media monitoring groups’

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 2/6/23-Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, center, is flanked by lawmakers while he speaks during a news conference on IRS overreach, Monday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

CFO Jimmy Patronis is taking aim at media rating groups, such as NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index, and Graphika Technologies, saying they are arms of censorship and thought control, with a directive “aimed at holding censorship and blacklisting groups accountable.”

The CFO is calling for “divisions within the Department of Financial Services that utilize promotional contracts for marketing and/or public education campaigns” to be barred from efforts to “enter into or renew a contract or agreement with an entity for the purpose of developing, providing or using news source censorship or blacklisting services.”

Similar bans apply to contractors, the directive continues.

“This year, we’ll be launching media campaigns on protecting the public from insurance fraud and educating Floridians on the services DFS provides, and we need maximum returns on those dollars. We don’t need so-called media-monitoring groups being middlemen and burning up cash needlessly when we’re trying to get the best returns on our investments. No taxpayer money from my agency will fund censorship on my watch, and no Florida business should suffer simply because it expresses views that these groups don’t like,” Patronis said Wednesday.

The CFO doesn’t believe these “censorship-oriented credibility rankings” are legit; they are driven by “political disagreements, subjective bias, and viewpoint discrimination.”

“Such news and information ratings activities appear to be part of a larger effort to create social credit scores, similar to ESG, that result in debanking and deplatforming legitimate private entities. That’s wrong, and I will use my authority as CFO to protect businesses and consumers against these abusive tactics,” Patronis vows.