SourceWatch

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 and government agencies. Unlike some other wikis, SourceWatch has a policy of strict referencing, and is overseen by a paid editor. SourceWatch has 37,502 articles.

• U.S. Navy to PR Firms: Throw Us a Life Preserver!: The U.S. Navy's Chief of Information (CHINFO) is taking on water. "Navy leaders have placed increased demands on CHINFO," which have "long outstripped CHINFO's capacity to respond," admits the Navy's solicitation for public relations help. Between "news media, television and movies, and social media such as web logs (blogs), internet video sites such as YouTube, and social interaction sites such as MySpace," the military branch just can't keep up. So, the Navy is seeking proposals from PR firms "to provide public affairs support on an as-needed basis for up to five years."

• Return of the "American Energy Alliance": An industry front group best known for opposing the BTU tax in the 1990s has resurfaced in New Mexico, where it's running radio ads attacking congressman Tom Udall for his opposition to oil drilling. According to Time magazine, the American Energy Alliance was created in 1993 when the National Manufacturers Association "got together with the American Petroleum Institute, 1,600 large companies, small businesses and farmers to form ... a group designed solely to defeat the BTU tax. The coalition paid more than $1 million to Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm, to deploy nearly 45 staff members in 23 states during the past two months."

• Private Spooks Court Journalists: Melissa Sweet, a freelance Australian health journalist, reports that she recently received an email from a staffer with the private intelligence company Hakluyt. In it, she was asked if she would like to become part of a "network of well-placed individuals around the world who are able to provide us, very discreetly, with intelligence on specific commercial or political issues that may arise." The Hakluyt staffer stated that the company already works with "a number of quality, usually specialist journalists." In 2001 Hakluyt was outed for infiltrating Greenpeace in Europe.

• How the Gun Lobby Beat Activists to the Draw: Readers of the book "Toxic Sludge Is Good for You" may remember the name Mary Lou Sapone -- a corporate spy who, while secretly in the employ of U.S. Surgical, infiltrated animal rights groups. More recently, Sapone has been active with gun control groups, while secretly working for the National Rifle Association. As Mary McFate (her maiden name), she volunteered with numerous local and regional gun control groups, even running (unsuccessfully) in 2005 for a board position with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

• Olympics Ideals Prove as Fragile as China: When China submitted its bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, it promised that journalists would have "complete freedom to report" from the country. However, "sites such as Amnesty International or any search for a site with Tibet in the address could not be opened at the Main Press Center [in Beijing], which will house about 5,000 print journalists when the games open Aug. 8," reports the Associated Press. Now, it turns out that International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials "negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related," reports Reuters.

• Whose Line Is It, Anyway?: It's an "open secret of lobbying," writes Jeffrey Birnbaum. "Public relations firms regularly solicit authors of opinion-page articles, draft the pieces for them and place the articles in publications where they will have the most impact -- all for a fee." Recently, an op-ed criticizing a bill that would reduce credit card fees appeared in Southern newspapers, attributed to Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The column -- which neither Steele nor his office authorized -- complains that the bill "would boost the profits of Wal-Mart," an SCLC sponsor. Steele's attorney blamed "the K Street public relations shop LMG" for the mix-up.

• Puerto Rico: Not So Rico Ed Morales takes the 110th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico as an opportunity to talk about its status. "The United States invaded the island on July 25, 1898, and claimed it as booty after the Spanish-American War. Long since obsolete as a strategic outpost in the Cold War, the Caribbean island is America's best-kept secret: an unfree state within the land of the free." A portion of Puerto Rico's Vieques Island was routinely used as a bombing range by the U.S. Navy. The island of nearly four million inhabitants "is an 'unincorporated territory,' which means that the island is subject to the authority of the U.S. Congress, which can overturn any action by the island's legislature." Puerto Ricans are not able to vote in U.S. presidential elections, nor do they having voting representatives in Congress.

• Having a Blast with the U.S. Army: For the U.S. Army it's "an innovative way to reach a new audience" and "an opportunity to shape their tastes." The "Virtual Army Experience," a multi-million dollar videogame and traveling exhibit, has been making stops at amusement parks, air shows and county fairs over the past year and a half. One lieutenant colonel said of the exhibit, "There's no sales going on here. ... It's another way to tell our story." That's in addition to collecting the "age, address, phone number and email" of the young people who play the game. At the end of the videogame -- in which players protect "international aid workers" from "genocidal indigenous forces" -- an Iraq veteran talks to the players.

• 4,000 U.S. Deaths and a Handful of Images: Zoriah Miller, a freelance photojournalist who published images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack in Iraq, has been forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country and may be barred from all United States military facilities throughout the world. His case "has underscored what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war," write Michael Kamber and Tim Arango. "News organizations say that such restrictions are one factor in declining coverage of the war, along with the danger, the high cost to financially ailing media outlets and diminished interest among Americans in following the war. By a recent count, only half a dozen Western photographers were covering a war in which 150,000 American troops are engaged."

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  Weekly Radio Spin: I Spy with My Little Firm: Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at who's recruiting journalists, how the UK Parliament took out the trash and the fuel behind a new front group. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," the sordid past of a corporate spy. Podcasters can subscribe to XML feed on http://www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

• Diane Farsetta surveys the breadth of the U.S. nuclear lobby. See Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby (July 1);

• In a guest blog, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner reviews how the the U.S. Administration is building its anti-Iran message. See Same Old Dog and No New Tricks: Update on Messaging on Iran (June 20);

• Anne Landman reviews the latest bout of "pinkwashing", with numerous companies trying to boost sales by associating their products with the fight against breast cancer. See Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer? (June 11);

• Diane Farsetta reports on the recent National Conferences on Media Reform in Minneapolis. See Pentagon Pundits, Media Reform and Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly, June 10; and

• Sheldon Rampton scritinises the review of former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan's new book by John Stodder, one of the two former Fleishman-Hillard consultants convicted in May 2006 of multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud in a scheme to overbill the city of Los Angeles for public relations consulting services. See McClellan and the Ethics of Spin (June 5).

• Portal:Superdelegate Transparency Project: The Superdelegate Transparency Project (STP) is a project of LiteraryOutpost.com, OpenLeft, DemConWatch, HuffPost's OfftheBus project and the Congresspedia community on SourceWatch. It is the central gathering place for compiling information on the 2008 Democratic Convention superdelegates, their endorsements and the delegate voting process, including for comparison to the district-by-district allocation of pledged delegates. It is based on fully sourced research generated largely by citizen journalists, bloggers and activists who have the common purpose of bringing public transparency to the role of superdelegates in the Democratic nomination process. More...

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  Help Publicize What the Candidates for Congress and the White House Stand For: The online world is rife with complaints that it's hard to tell what Barack Obama and John McCain's positions and records really are on the issues. Fortunately, the Congresspedia staff have come up with a handy guide to tracking their positions - and those of every congressional incumbent and candidate - down. Who supports continuing the War in Iraq? Who wants to make abortion illegal? Who voted for the Bush tax cuts?

• Who Are the Pentagon's Pundits?: On Sunday, the New York Times outed the Pentagon's "military analyst program," an extensive effort to cultivate retired military officers as "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" spouting Bush administration talking points on Iraq and other hot-button issues. We've compiled a list of known participants, and started SourceWatch profiles on each. Can you help us uncover more about the Pentagon's pundits? What did they say, on what news programs? Do they also lobby on behalf of defense contractors? More information on the program is here. The list of participants is also repeated here, with tips on how to investigate each. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here and here. Thanks for your help!

If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site 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. Have fun, and thanks for your help!

• Join the Discussion: Forums for Communication on SourceWatch: The SourceWatch staff has created two forums for citizen journalists on SourceWatch to communicate with each other about what's going on in the site: a Yahoo group and a Community Portal. The Community Portal is a place where you can find announcements by staff and citizen editors, links to important policies and help pages and categories of outstanding tasks and projects identified by readers and editors, such as articles that need updating, expanding or fixing. The Yahoo group is meant primarily for sysops and other editors who are most concerned with the administration of the site and facilitating the contributions of the users, but both the group and the community portal are open to everyone to view and post. SourceWatch is only as strong as its community of editors, so please dive in and let us know what you think.

With the U.S. election primary season dominating news headlines, it is no surprise that pages on the 2008 Presidential election campaign are amongst the most popular pages over the last week. Heading the list are those on Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, the main campaign issues, Congresspedia's Superdelegate Transparency Project and the Economic Stimulus Bill of 2008.

Other popular pages include those on the Heartland Institute, a corporate-funded think tank which this week convened a meeting of global warming skeptics in New York; the article on Corporate Social Responsibility and the profile on the military contractor, Blackwater USA.

"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.

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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.

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SourceWatch began as the "Disinfopedia" in February 2003. In January 2005, the name was changed to SourceWatch. Contributors are now working on 37,502 articles. In the last twelve months SourceWatch has served over 113 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.

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