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 36,784 articles.

• The PR People in the Lost Chapter on Iran / Contra: To understand how the Bush administration "could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs," look to the 1980s, suggests Robert Parry. On Consortiumnews.com, Parry publishes the "lost chapter" (pdf) of the Congressional report on the Iran-Contra scandal, which was excised in order to win "the votes of three moderate GOP senators." The chapter details how a "public / private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt -- to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration's policies."

• American Association of Public Health Physicians: "Tobacco Bill Is a Scam": The American Association of Public Health Physicians (AAPHP) has published an updated analysis of H.R. 1108, the massive bill currently under consideration by Congress that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products. AAPHP concludes, "This bill is a scam. It gives the image, but not the substance of effective federal regulation of the tobacco industry. If passed in anything close to its current form ... it will assure continuing high levels of cigarette-related illness and death for years to come. The principle benefactor will be the Altria/Philip Morris Company (PM). This bill will assure their continuing dominance of the domestic cigarette market and continuing high levels of sales and profits."

• "Voluntary Marketing Standards" Mask Marketing Reality: A BBC investigation has found British American Tobacco (BAT) violating its own voluntary international marketing standards in Nigeria, Malawi and Mauritius, using tactics that appeal to youth and circumvent advertising restrictions. BAT promotes and sells single cigarettes in these countries, a marketing strategy that appeals to youth, who often can't afford to buy an entire pack. BAT also sponsored musical events that had no formal age checks at the door. Celebrities at these events wore clothing bearing cigarette brand logos. Previously-secret tobacco industry documents show that BAT adopted voluntary marketing standards as a way to "demonstrate responsibility" while staving off stricter government regulation of their products.

• Analyze This: Cable News Gets Loose with Its Labels: Daniel Libit of The Politico reports that "among the things that the proliferation of TV cable news has wrought is slackened standards for what constitutes a political strategist," a term which has lost its meaning now that it is "used as a catchall tag for a whole host of people with varied -- and often peripheral -- backgrounds in electoral politics." Jane Fleming Kleeb, a so-called "Democratic strategist" -- a label which she openly admits is misleading -- says "this group of make-believe strategists has become something of a pundits club, with participants working together to compensate for each other's experiential or informational deficiencies."

• Nevada Wary of Nuclear Industry Executives Bearing Gifts: "The State of Nevada faces almost a billion dollar budget shortfall," reports Edward Lawrence. "The Nuclear Energy Institute says there is a solution ... but it comes with one very large string attached" -- that the state end opposition to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. "In exchange for dropping any objection to shipping the waste here, [NEI's Paul] Seidler says Nevada can get access to the nuclear waste fund." But Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons said he would "not sell away the safety of the state to the Yucca Mountain proponents."

• PR Firms Holding Their Own, for Now: U.S. PR firms seem to be doing well despite uncertain economic times, at least for now. The annual Best Practices Benchmarking Survey by StevensGouldPincus showed that while the industry didn't match its 22% growth of 2006, in 2007 they still managed a 19.7% average profit.The survey found "a remarkable average of $221,388 per professional in annual billings and a huge jump in average monthly fee minimums to $14,000 from $10,000 one year earlier. "But other indications in the survey might point to leaner times ahead. Billable hours as well as account managers' salaries and bonuses were flat, and overhead costs were starting to rise. Total labor costs rose 1% over the previous year.

• People Want to Know What Docs Are Taking: Americans think that doctors are influenced by drug companies and want to know about gifts given to their healthcare provider, according to a national survey by the non-profit Prescription Project. Over two-thirds of those surveyed would support legislation that would require drug companies to disclose gifts to doctors. But only about a third said that they would ask their physician about his or her relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. Two-thirds said that they would rather have experts with no ties to the drug companies give doctors information on drugs, as a hopefully more objective alternative to the current marketing-driven system.

• The Hidden War: Big Tobacco and the GOP Team up Against Southern Democrats:When the major American tobacco companies signed the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with the 46 states who sued to recover the costs of treating sick smokers, the companies agreed to nominal advertising restrictions and massive yearly payouts to the states. Lawyers who made money on the settlement began donating heavily to the Democratic Party, which opposes the corporate-organized "tort reform movement" that works to block such suits in the future. Raw Story exposes the serious repercussions the tobacco settlement has had on the integrity of U.S. elections, particularly in the Southern U.S., as the Republican Party and corporate interests seek to cut off Democratic donations and exact retribution on lawyers and public officials involved in the original lawsuit.

• 
  Weekly Radio Spin: Who's Nevada's Sugar Daddy?: 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 the nuclear industry's largesse, Merck's marketing and cigarettes for kids. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," how is secondhand smoke like an uncurbed dog? 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).

• 
  Earlier this year, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Tom Ridge, said of his company, Ridge Global, that "we do not lobby. But I have relationships with lobbyists." However, Ridge recently filed a lobbying disclosure form on his work for the government of Albania -- nearly two years late. Ridge signed a $480,000, one-year contract with Albania in September 2006, to help the country "develop an overall homeland defense strategy based on land, air and sea security." The contract identified Ridge as the "lead on strategic advice" for the Albanian government.

• 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...

• 
  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.

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 began as the "Disinfopedia" in February 2003. In January 2005, the name was changed to SourceWatch. Contributors are now working on 36,784 articles. In the last twelve months SourceWatch has served over 103 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.