SourceWatch

Portals: Koch Exposed  · FrackSwarm · CoalSwarm · OutsourcingAmericaExposed · ALECexposed  · NFIBexposed  · Fix the Debt · State Policy Network · All Portals Welcome to SourceWatch—your guide to the names behind the news. SourceWatch is a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. A primary purpose of SourceWatch is documenting the PR and propaganda activities of public relations firms and public relations professionals engaged in managing and manipulating public perception, opinion and policy. SourceWatch also includes profiles on think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Over time, SourceWatch has broadened to include others involved in public debates including media outlets, journalists, government agencies, activists and nongovernmental organizations. Unlike some other wikis, SourceWatch has a policy of strict referencing, and is overseen by a paid editor. SourceWatch has 77,724 articles.

In the news Just Say "No" to Sex and the Public Option?: Heads are spinning after the discredited Senate Finance Committee blocked the public option from being part of the health care bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus of Montana and then voted for spending $50 million on the (also discredited) abstinence-only education program that President Obama had pressed to eliminate from the federal budget. Making War Spin McChrystal Clear: General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. military and NATO commander in Afghanistan, wants to change strategic communications goals there from a "struggle for the 'hearts and minds' of the Afghan population to one of giving them 'trust and confidence'" in their government and their future. He also wants to focus on exposing insurgents' "flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran," which is already a talking point for U.S. military-funded public relations contracts in Afghanistan. New Oil and Coal Fronts Greenwash Global Warming: Television ads from a new Montana-based group called CO2 Is Green claim: "There is no scientific evidence that CO2 [carbon dioxide] is a pollutant. In fact higher CO2 levels than we have today would help the Earth's ecosystems." The ads urge voters to contact their Senators and Representative, "and remind them CO2 is not pollution." The ads are meant to stoke opposition to climate change legislation. Not surprisingly, the man behind the ads, the lobbying group CO2 Is Green and a related "educational" group called Plants Need CO2 is "a veteran oil industry executive." H. Leighton Steward was a director at EOG Resources, which was previously named the Enron Oil and Gas Company, and is an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute. Shareholders Approve Takeover of Medialink Worldwide: Medialink Worldwide -- the largest producer of video news releases and audio news releases -- has announced that shareholders approved a proposal to merge with TNM Group, a subsidiary of The NewsMarket. Of the shareholders who voted at a special general meeting, 91% approved the merger. In May, TNM offered to buy the company's shares for 20 cents, well above where it has traded before the offer. In the proxy statement (pdf) filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Medialink bluntly stated, "We have had a history of operating losses and have not reported operating income since the year ended December 31, 2000." The merger had the full support of Medialink Worldwide's board of directors. Who Is Bankrolling the League of American Voters?: "Standing in a medical exam room, a neurosurgeon in a white lab coat stares solemnly into the camera and warns that President Obama’s health care plan 'will hurt our seniors' and 'end Medicare as we know it.' ... How this ad came to be produced and distributed provides a case study in modern American political advocacy. It shows how a quickly assembled group with uncertain origins and funding can make a mark on one of the most contentious public policy debates in memory. The group that says it paid for the campaign -- the League of American Voters -- incorporated less than two weeks before the ad was released online. A New Way to Enjoy Nicotine Addiction: Amid an increasingly hostile climate towards secondhand smoke and tobacco advertising, tobacco companies are battling to maintain both their nicotine markets and the ability to use their logos. R.J. Reynolds stopped advertising cigarettes in magazines in 2008, but is once again printing its Camel logo in major magazines like Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated and Maxim, in ads for a new form of non-combusted tobacco called "snus" (rhymes with "moose"). Recent blogs on PR Watch John Stauber notes that Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, was the only public interest group advocate invited to testify in Washington on Wednesday, September 23, before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in its hearing on the Patriot Act and national security surveillance issues. See CMD's Lisa Graves Testifies Before U.S. Senate on Patriot Act, September 23; Mary Bottari announces the winner of the "Golden Throne Award" award to Eward Yingling]], the President and CEO of the American Bankers Association. See "CMD's First Golden Throne Award Presented to Eward Yingling, Bank Lobbyist Extraordinaire", September 17; Mary Bottari looks into the decision of New York Federal Judge Jed Rakoff to reject a settlement in a case between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission]] and Bank of America. See "Federal Judge Issues Blistering Decision on Failure of SEC to Police Banksters: Oscar Wilde Weighs In", September 15; Diane Farsetta review the increasing corporate role in World Water Week. See Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility", September 1; Wendell Potter's powerful speech to a rally on healthcare reform in Portland, Oregon. See Wendell Potter: Rally Against Wall Street's Health Care Takeover, August 31; Anne Landman reviews what to look for if you suspect a front group is trying to deceive you. See Attack of the Living Front Groups: PR Watch Offers Help to Unmask Corporate Tricksters, August 28; Mary Bottari reviews a recently released report on bank bonuses paid by the largest banks in 2008. See Bank Looting Bonuses Reported--Will the SEC Awake from Its Slumber?, August 21; Wendell Potter critiques the suggestion reportedly emanating from members of the Senate Finance Committee that nonprofit co-operatives could compete with for profit health insurance behmouths. See Wendell Potter Warns: Co-op Kool-Aid Is Bad for Your Health, August 21;

Editor's pick of the week One of the groups spearheading opposition to proposals to reform the U.S. healthcare system is FreedomWorks. In 2009, FreedomWorks has been a prominent opponent of proposals by U.S. President Barack Obama to reform the U.S. healthcare system, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill to address global warming, and state proposals to raise taxes. Who are they? Projects for citizen editors With the Waxman-Markey climate change bill before the U.S. Senate, coal and energy utility lobbyists are out in force. While the legislation will only have direct effect in the United States, it will indirectly have a major influence on the negotiation of a replacement agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. (The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change hopes to complete a new climate change agreement at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen in December.) Earlier this year, the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative journalism group based in Washington D.C., launched a database on the mostly corporate lobbyists working on climate change issues. If you would like to help bring to the fore the details of the lobbying firms and individual lobbyists helping the top ten U.S. power utilities, here's a citizen journalism project that you can help with. See here for more details. If you have never added material to SourceWatch before, don't worry, as three of our regular editors are at hand to help get you started. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here, here and here. Hold onto your hat, have fun, and thanks for your help! And if you would like to work on something else, take a look at some of our earlier citizen journalism projects here. Popular articles over the last week The most popular pages over the last week have included those on Tom DeLay, the former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who made an appearance on ABC's Dancing with the Stars program. Other popular page have been the listing of Existing U.S. Coal Plants, Public relations firms, think tanks, greenwashing and Corporate Social Responsibility. The most popular new page has been the Inside Zion Oil article which looks at an oil exploration company that blends religion with its search for oil in Israel. What they're saying about SourceWatch "The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy have done incredible work documenting fake grassroots ("astroturf") groups. Here, they're helping protects the rights of all Americans to exercise their right to vote. They are completely non-partisan. These guys are the real deal." Craig Newmark, Craig's List "A truly impressive project based on cutting edge web technology." David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. "The troublemakers at the Center for Media and Democracy, for example, point to dozens of examples of "greenwashing," which they defined as the "unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government or even a non-government organization to sell a product, a policy" or rehabilitate an image. In the center's view, many enterprises labeled green don't deserve the name.—Jack Shafer, "Green Is the New Yellow: On the excesses of 'green' journalism", Slate, July 6, 2007. "As a journalist frequently on the receiving end of various PR campaigns, some of them based on disinformation, others front groups for undisclosed interests, [CMD's SourceWatch] is an invaluable resource."—Michael Pollan author of The Botany of Desire "Thanks for all your help. There's no way I could have done my piece on big PR and global warming without the CMD [Center for Media and Democracy] and your fabulous websites."—Zoe Cormier, journalist, Canada "The dearth of information on the [U.S.] government [lobbying] disclosure forms about the other business-backed coalitions comes in stark contrast to the data about them culled from media reports, websites, press releases and Internal Revenue Service documents and posted by SourceWatch, a website that tracks advocacy groups." Jeanne Cummings, 'New disclosure reports lack clarity", Politico, April 29, 2008.

Getting Started Looking for somewhere to start? To learn how you can edit any article right now, visit SourceWatch:About, SourceWatch:Welcome, newcomers, our Help page, Frequently Asked Questions, or experiment in the sandbox. If you are unsure where to start, you could expand some of the recently created but currently very brief articles. (If you look at the recent changes page you will see some noted as being 'stubs' - articles that may just be a line or two and needing to be fleshed out). So if you would like to add to some of those you would be most welcome. Or if you would like some other suggestions closer to your interests you could drop SourceWatch editor, Bob Burton an email. His address is bob AT sourcewatch.org SourceWatch content SourceWatch also includes specific case studies of deceptive PR campaigns, the activities of front groups, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts. We are also building profiles on public relations associations, specific criticisms of PR, common propaganda techniques, war propaganda and much, much more. Research and Writing Tips Article guidelines How to research front groups Resources for studying propaganda Research using the web

SourceWatch history SourceWatch began as the "Disinfopedia" in February 2003. In January 2005, the name was changed to SourceWatch. Contributors are now working on 77,724 articles. In the last twelve months SourceWatch has served over 97 million pages to users.

Disclaimer: SourceWatch is an encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda. It is a project of the Center for Media & Democracy—email bob AT sourcewatch.org. Antispam note: To avoid attracting spam email robots, email addresses on SourceWatch are written with AT in place of the usual symbol, and we have removed "mail to" links. Replace AT with the correct symbol to get a valid address. We regret the inconvenience this entails. Lobby your government for more effective antispam regulations. Read the full disclaimer