Good Information Foundation
The Good Information Foundation is an American non-profit organization based in New York City, New York. Its stated purpose is to combat disinformation and misinformation online by promoting verified traditional media outlets and has called for the regulation of social media platforms to combat misinformation.1)
History
Founding
The Good Information Foundation was founded by Tara McGowan, a Democratic operative who headed political advocacy organization ACRONYM and previously worked at Priorities USA, NextGen Climate Action, and on President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.2)
In 2021, McGowan announced plans to launch Good Information Inc, which was referred to in the early stages of its founding as the Project for Good Information, and it was reported that the group was seeking $65 million in financial backing from wealthy left-of-center and Democratic donors. The Good Information Foundation is the tax-exempt arm of the organization with Good Information Inc. acting as a for-profit “public benefit corporation.” The Good Information Foundation’s role is to fund nonprofit news organizations and efforts while Good Information Inc. is intended to provide funding to for-profit media companies.3)
Organization
Funding
Donors to the foundation include George Soros, Reed Hoffman, and Ken and Jen Duda.4)
Activities
In addition to investing in nonprofit media organizations, the Good Information Foundation operates two main campaigns: Voting Counts and the Civic News Initiative.
The group’s Voting Counts campaign states that it intends to “debunk conspiracies” regarding the 2020 United States presidential election, citing polls that showed 78 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Donald Trump voters believe that President Joe Biden “did not legitimately win the election.” The program states a goal of attempting to “restore trust” in the U.S. electoral system and attacks what it calls “GOP efforts to restrict the right to vote and gerrymander their districts.”5)
The other main campaign of the Good Information Foundation is the Civic News Initiative. The initiative plans to hire a network of local freelance reporters that it will pay to distribute news and content to local communities and publish the reporting online or to provide to local media outlets free of charge.6)
1)
Bernstein, J. (2021, August 9). Bad News. Harper’s Magazine. https://web.archive.org/web/20221125005435/https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/
2)
, 4)
Fischer, S. (2021, October 26). Reid Hoffman and George Soros back new media firm to combat disinformation. Axios. https://web.archive.org/web/20221204190547/https://www.axios.com/2021/10/26/soros-hoffman-disinformation-tara-mcgowan
3)
Schleifer, T. (2021, February 23). Inside the new $65 million push from progressives to compete with conservative media. Vox. https://archive.ph/CEQKR
5)
Voting Counts. Good Information Foundation. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://archive.ph/vLGGa
6)
Civic News Initiative. Good Information Foundation. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20221204192757/https://goodinfofoundation.org/civic-news-initiative/