| URL | SourceWatch.org |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Wiki, database |
| Registration | Available |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | Center for Media and Democracy |
| Created by | Center for Media and Democracy |
| Launched | 2003 |
| Current status | active |
SourceWatch (formerly Disinfopedia) is an internet wiki site that is a collaborative project of the liberal[1] Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). According to the project's website, it "aims to produce a directory of public relations firms, 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 interest groups."[2] The site is regularly referenced in mainstream news sources, such as the New York Times[3] and the Sunday Times.[4]
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On behalf of the Center for Media and Democracy, the Center's then-Research Director Sheldon Rampton started SourceWatch on January 15, 2003 and launched it publicly with 200 articles created by the Center on March 10, 2003. According to SourceWatch's own statistics, it included almost 50,000 articles as of August 2010.[5] The site's content is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
The publisher of SourceWatch is Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the managing editor of the site is Anne Landman.[6]
The stated goals for registered users who are permitted to edit SourceWatch are "accuracy and fairness".[7] Its editorial guidelines stress the importance of maintaining the accuracy of its source citations and admonish its editors to create articles that are "fair, accurate, and documented".[8]
Sourcewatch is available on the web as a wiki, maintained by a community of interested users worldwide. When SourceWatch began, any visitor to the site could edit existing articles and create new ones. In April 2006, however, SourceWatch changed its policy, requiring users to register and log in before editing its articles and restricting unregistered visitors to reading articles only.[2]
The Center for Media and Democracy sets the editorial and "security policies" under which SourceWatch operates. SourceWatch provides recommended editorial guidelines to its users. Some users, designated as "sysops", can protect individual articles so that they can be edited only by other sysops, as in Wikipedia. Sysops can also block other users.[2][9]
According to SourceWatch, it aims:
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 lobby groups. 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.[10]
SourceWatch is published by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a nonprofit American-based news media research group founded in 1993 by environmentalist writer and political activist John Stauber. In addition to SourceWatch, CMD publishes PR Watch and BanksterUSA.
The operation of SourceWatch depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database.
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