Citizen Journalism

Fake Green Certification Backfires

by Bob Burton — August 29, 2007 - 5:13am

The Australian supermarket company Woolworths has withdrawn a range of tissue products after being outed by an anonymous blogger for using a "Sustainable Forest Fibre" logo on products sourced from a notorious Indonesian forestry company.

Main Source: 
Australian Associated Press, August 27, 2007

SourceWatch Tracks the Pro-War Lobby and Vets for Freedom

by John Stauber — August 15, 2007 - 9:37am
  • Topics: Citizen Journalism, Right Wing, Iraq, Front Groups, Terrorism, Third Party Technique, U.S. Congress, Lobbying, Public Relations, War / Peace

    • SourceWatch citizen journalist Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a dogged and prolific investigator of the pro-war lobby. AI began digging into the pro-war front group Vets for Freedom in June 2006. AI's research exposing the neoconservative agenda and Republican operatives behind VFF has been used by scores of journalists. Just do a Google search for "Vets for Freedom" and you'll find AI's work in our SourceWatch article right at the top of your returns, next to the VFF's own website.

    Pro-war funding appears plentiful for VFF as it gears up to lobby Congress in September. Here's some of the latest from AI and the VFF article on SourceWatch:

    Bob Burton Takes Readers "Inside Spin"

    by Diane Farsetta — August 7, 2007 - 3:08pm

    The PR industry in Australia "employs more than 10,000 people and turns over more than $1 billion a year," writes the Center for Media and Democracy's Bob Burton, drawing on research published in his new book, "Inside Spin." While some PR campaigns are benefic

    Main Source: 
    Sydney Morning Herald, August 7, 2007

    New Participatory Project: Help Sen. Durbin Write a New Internet Bill

    by Conor Kenny — July 31, 2007 - 2:52pm

    Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has opened up the legislative process to citizen participation for a new "national broadband strategy" bill that would cover network neutrality policy, broadband Internet availability and spectrum policy. He has been blogging and asking for suggestions at the new OpenLeft.com site and his office has encouraged CMD to setup a parallel project on Congresspedia where we are collecting all the arguments, data and research needed to draft and evaluate the legislation when Sen. Durbin posts it online.

    You don't need to be an expert to join this effort - Simply go to the project homepage and check it out. If you'd like to pitch in, leave a note on the project's discussion page or email the Congresspedia managing editor at CKenny [at] Congresspedia.org.

    If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here. And if you'd like to work on something else, earlier citizen journalism projects are here and here.

    Main Source: 
    Congresspedia's Nation Broadband Project

    An Open Knowledge Base for the National Broadband Project

    by Conor Kenny — July 26, 2007 - 3:53pm
  • Topics: Citizen Journalism, Internet, U.S. Congress, Democracy

    • Note: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has opened up the legislative process to direct suggestions and feedback from citizens over at the new OpenLeft.com site, where he has been live-blogging about a new, comprehensive Internet bill he is writing. This post is about a parallel project we've started on Congresspedia. Cross-posted at OpenLeft.

    Any good piece of legislation is built on a solid understanding of the available research and data. Sen. Durbin has enlisted several knowledgeable experts to help him in this project and there's been some great discussion in the comments on OpenLeft. But comment threads can only go so long before, well, the threads get tangled.

    So, to fully enable collaboration between all the Internet wonks, policy geeks and regular Joes and Janes out there who have some relevant information (or can find some), we've created an open knowledge base on the Congresspedia wiki for Sen. Durbin's project.

    New Participatory Project: What Should Congresspedia Cover?

    by Conor Kenny — July 3, 2007 - 7:59pm

    Next week the Congresspedia project on SourceWatch will launch a new section of the site on legislation and issues. Congresspedia's staff and citizen editors have worked with more than a dozen policy wonks to write a first set of 150 articles, but we need you to help us identify what we've missed.

    New Participatory Project: Information on the Top 100 Foundations by Giving in the U.S.

    by Judith Siers-Poisson — June 26, 2007 - 6:21pm

    SourceWatch is CMD's on-line, collaborative encyclopedia of people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. Granting foundations -- regardless of their areas of interest or position on political spectrum -- certainly fit the bill. The Foundation Center has a list of the top 100 foundations by giving as of March 2007. Can you help us include this information in SourceWatch?

    Main Source: 
    Foundations on SourceWatch

    New Participatory Project: Cleaning up Tobacco Documents Biographies

    by Anne Landman — June 18, 2007 - 6:20pm

    [img_assist|nid=6159|title=|desc=|link=url,http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Tobacco|align=right|width=84|height=157]We need help cleaning up existing articles in our new Tobaccowiki Biographies database. Tobaccowiki is a new project to mine information from tobacco industry documents now available online.

    Main Source: 
    SourceWatch Tobaccowiki

    Join the Discussion: New Forums for Communication on SourceWatch

    by Conor Kenny — June 13, 2007 - 9:12am

    The SourceWatch staff has recently created two new 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.

    Main Source: 
    Community Portal

    New Participatory Project: Updating Profiles on Think Tanks

    by Judith Siers-Poisson — June 5, 2007 - 10:13am

    Some of the highest traffic pages in SourceWatch are those on the proliferating number of think tanks scattered around the world. Keeping track of what their latest projects are, their finances and key personnel is a challenge. That's where you come in.

    Main Source: 
    SourceWatch
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