The Center for Media and Democracy publishes SourceWatch, this collaborative resource for citizens and journalists looking for documented information about the corporations, industries, and people trying to influence public policy and public opinion. We believe in telling the truth about the most powerful interests in society—not just relating their self-serving press releases or letting real facts be bleached away by spin. SourceWatch focuses on the for-profit corporations, non-profit corporate front groups, PR teams, and so-called "experts" trying to influence public opinion on behalf of global corporations and the government agencies they have captured. —Lisa Graves, Executive Director P.S. To make a tax-deductible donation to keep this information online and strong, please donate now. To protect our site, we have also instituted a new registration procedure for editors.
Featured Work from the Center for Media and Democracy
On September 23, the House of Representatives passed the American Legislative Exchange Council-inspired "Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act" and forwarded it to the Senate. On September 8, the Center for Media and Democracy reported on House Majority Leader and ALEC alumnus Eric Cantor pushing ALEC's federal agenda vis-a-vis the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On September 13, we reported on the heavy funding of ALEC alumni like Cantor and Speaker of the House John Boehner by corporate members of ALEC. The TRAIN Act, introduced by ALEC alumnus Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK), "would create a special committee to oversee the EPA's rules and regulations, and require the agency to consider economic impacts on polluters when it sets standards concerning how much air pollution is too much." Not only does this act conform to ALEC's "Resolution Opposing EPA's Regulatory Train Wreck" and the accompanying report, "EPA's Regulatory Train Wreck," but another piece of ALEC "model" legislation, the "Environmental Priorities Act," would create for the states the same sort of assessment committee that the TRAIN Act would create at the federal level.
Security camera footage of armed police raiding private, organic Co-Op Rawesome Foods
by Rebecca Wilce
The nationwide battle over the right to consume foods produced on local farms entered a new phase this summer. In August, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested three individuals -- James Stewart, manager of the private Rawesome Food Club in Venice, Sharon Palmer, owner of Healthy Family Farms, LLC, and her associate Eugenie Bloch -- "on criminal conspiracy charges stemming from the alleged illegal production and sale of unpasteurized goat milk, goat cheese and other products" after "a year-long investigation" during which "investigators made undercover purchases of unpasteurized dairy products." This was the second raid of Rawesome Foods by armed officers in the space of a year. The June 2010 raid was caught on the security camera, with officers pointing guns as though they were breaking up a drug ring. Read the rest of this item here.
by Jill Richardson
Kern County has the sad role of being California's toilet. Kern County receives everything that goes down the drain from households, hospitals, and industry, from one of the largest and most densely populated counties in the country, not Kern but Los Angeles County. The resulting toxic stew of industrial and human sewage sludge is not a pretty thing, and most people in Kern County and their representatives don't want any of it. Unfortunately for citizens of Kern County, Los Angeles is willing to fight -- and fight hard -- to continue dumping sludge in Kern County. Read the rest of this item here.
by Brendan Fischer
As the "Occupy" protests spread across the country with the slogan "we are the ninety-nine percent," two reports released this week demonstrate how the top one percent are playing an increasingly outsized role in American elections. The New Yorker reports on a conservative multimillionaire's successful efforts to buy North Carolina's elections, and a report from campaign finance reform groups describe how an elite group of donors have laundered unlimited contributions to presidential campaigns. Much of this influence was made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and anger over corporate influence in politics is helping fuel the populist uprisings in Manhattan, D.C., and around the country. Read the rest of this item here.
Recent Articles from PRWatch.org
Lime Ridge, Wisconsin Farmer John Kinsman, out standing in his field
by Rebekah Wilce
the Center for Media and Democracy's new Food Rights Network launches a series of interviews with "food and farm heroes." It's easy for an organization dedicated to exposing corporate spin to focus on negative corporate propaganda with its ubiquity, but we would be remiss not to highlight courageous people who fight corporate agendas and spin in other ways, large and small. Some devote their lives to it. The first hero we feature is John Kinsman, a dairy farmer from Lime Ridge, Wisconsin. He is a pioneer of rotational grazing, a strong proponent of small, diversified agricultural operations, and an activist since the 1970s. Mr. Kinsman, who is now in his eighties, helped establish a cultural exchange in the early 1970s between black children from Mississippi and white children from Wisconsin called Project Self-Help and Awareness (PSA). As a result of this work, he met and interacted with Southern black farmers filing discrimination complaints against the USDA that resulted in the Pigford v. Glickman trial and settlement. "That helped me to see how broad the picture is, of how agriculture and urban life and factory workers and everyone fit together," Kinsman says. Read the rest of this item here.
What is Coca-Cola doing behind closed doors with Koch Industries? CMD has uncovered the smoke-filled back room where Fortune 500 firms and right-wing politicians craft the bills that undermine our wages, legal rights, voting rights, and our democracy -- and it is called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Coca-Cola serves on ALEC's corporate governing board, along with Koch Industries. We were surprised to see Coke linking itself to an extreme right-wing agenda that works to disenfranchise voters, bash immigrants, privatize Medicare and Social Security and dismantle public education for the benefit of private for-profit schools. Click here to send a letter today to President and CEO of Coca-Cola, Mr. Muhtar Kent, telling him to DUMP ALEC!
by Anne Landman Synagro Technologies is the latest big corporation trying to ditch a scandal-ridden past by re-branding itself. In an August 10, 2011 press release, the company announced it is launching a new website as part of a "rebranding initiative." The press release says the initiative "is a reflection of the enhanced and growing service and solution offerings that have resulted from organic growth and recent acquisitions." Of course, the press release fails to mention the back-to-back scandals that have plagued Synagro since 2008 as well as earlier controveries. Synagro is in the business of marketing sewage sludge as "compost," or, as the company's new, PR-approved website puts it, "Transforming natural waste challenges into sustainable, planet-friendly solutions." The company is a subsidiary of the Carlyle Group, the largest private equity firm in the world. Carlyle is also a sizeable part of the military-industrial complex with ties to numerous national politicians, including former British Prime Minister John Major, Alice Albright (daughter of former Secretary of State Madelyn Albright), and both George W. and George H.W. Bush.Read the rest of this item here.
Projects for Citizen Journalists
Citizen Journalism Challenge
Do you think corporations have too much influence over our democracy? Do you have good sleuthing skills? If so, we need your help in exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council! ALEC is a bill mill for corporate special interest legislation. Help us find out what ALEC bills are moving in your state, which of your legislators are ALEC members, and what corporations you've discovered are rewriting laws in your state through ALEC. Add your findings to our ALEC Exposed Community Portal page.
Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy and John Nichols of ''The Nation'' magazine expose ALEC on Ed Shultz
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Praise for SourceWatch!
Here's 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 protect 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.
"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.
Disclaimer: SourceWatch is part of the Center for Media and Democracy—email the publisher of SourceWatch, CMD's Executive Director, Lisa Graves, via lisa AT prwatch.org. You can also contact our Managing Editor, Anne Landman, via anne AT sourcewatch.org.
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