SourceWatch is a wiki-style website run by the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy.[1] The website’s content has a liberal bias[2] and the site “cannot guarantee the validity of the information found [on the site]”.[3]
SourceWatch’s content is characterized by a left-leaning selectivity double standard, whereby the site focuses on perceived misdeeds of conservative leaning organizations while ignoring similar tactics used by liberal organizations.[4]
Additionally, the site is marred by hypocrisy in that it attacks center-right organizations and networks for taking anonymous funds it calls “dark money”[5] while its parent organization has received a large portion of its budget from liberal dark money interests.[6]
SourceWatch partners with numerous left-wing publications[7] and environmental activist groups[8] to publish content supporting its liberal issue agenda and to limit business political participation by demonizing the mechanisms pro-business and free-market groups deploy to influence public policy. [9]
Organizational Background
SourceWatch is a project of the liberal non-profit Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). The purpose of the website from its inception has been to track conservative individuals and organizations in order to serve SourceWatch’s liberal political agenda.[10] The project was founded by then-CMD Research Director Sheldon Rampton in February 2003 under the name Disinfopedia.[11] The name was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek liberal criticism of the George W. Bush administration.[12] In January 2005 the website’s name was changed to SourceWatch.[13]
SourceWatch currently claims to contain 74,147 articles,[14] which generally present a hostile view of free-market organizations.[15]
According to the independent Media Bias Fact Check, SourceWatch has a left-bias meaning that they may “utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes.”[16]
SourceWatch does not adhere to a “neutral point of view” policy (like Wikipedia) and a paid staff of editors oversees the content.[17] SourceWatch also admits that it does not provide “complete, accurate or reliable information” and as such does not guarantee the validity of its information.[18]
Liberal Double Standards
SourceWatch focuses on the perceived misdeeds of conservative leaning organizations while ignoring similar tactics used by liberal organizations. [19] For example, in 2013 a commentator writing for The Hill noted that numerous SourceWatch articles attack past links between free-market groups and the tobacco industry, however SourceWatch’s articles conveniently omit an in-depth exploration of the substantial funding that the tobacco industry has given to advocacy groups affiliated with labor unions.[20]
The commentator also argued SourceWatch’s selective ideological attacks on nonprofits are marred by the website’s hypocrisy and double standards.[21]In its criticism of SourceWatch’s double-standard, the commentator proclaimed, “undisclosed donations are only taboo if a nonprofit lacks the proper left-wing credentials.” [22]
Hypocrisy
In 2013, SourceWatch was accused of seeking to condemn anonymous contributions, which it called “dark money,” in politics while at the same time its parent organization, CMD, had taken large anonymous donations. [23] In 2011, CMD took in two anonymous contributions through a donor-advised fund worth $520,000, approximately 60% of CMD’s annual 2011 budget. [24]
In another example, SourceWatch’s page dedicated to the Wisconsin Club For Growth, published research blasting the free-market Club as the center of a “dark money web,” funded by “top Republican donors and Koch-connected dark money conduits.” However, as the conservative Watchdog.org website points out, SourceWatch’s parent organization was funded by some of the most politically active Democratic “dark money” organizations, including over $160,000 from the left-wing Tides Foundation.[25]
Featured Campaigns
SourceWatch operates as a clearinghouse for numerous specialized liberal opposition websites that are openly adverse to American businesses, conservative policy positions, and the Republican Party.[26]
SourceWatch featured opposition research pages are created in partnership with notably left-wing organizations such as ProgressNow[27] and Common Cause.[28]
Anti-Corporate Political Participation
A number of SourceWatch’s featured pages attack with the intent to demonize[29] free-market policy organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),[30] the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB),[31] and the State Policy Network (SPN).[32] On its “NFIB Exposed” featured page, SourceWatch aggregates hundreds of news articles in an effort to attack the NFIB for lobbying on issues that favor conservative free-market policies and for supporting Republicans in partisan elections.[33] Similarly, SourceWatch’s anti-ALEC page aggregates numerous attacks against this bipartisan business-friendly group’s free-market legislative agenda as part of a concerted effort to make membership in ALEC toxic for both business members[34] and state legislators.[35]
SourceWatch’s double standards on the issue of interest groups involved in state-level policy[36] is evident from the fact that the site doesn’t have any information about the State Innovation Exchange, which is widely acknowledged as the liberal counterpart to ALEC.[37]
Featured Liberal Issue Agenda
SourceWatch’s featured pages support liberal policies and attack conservative entities that they feel are against those policies. These efforts are focused largely on liberal environmental, labor, and economic positions.
In partnership with the liberal publication The Nation, SourceWatch features a research page, with approximately 200 sub-pages, attacking the efforts of the “Fix the Debt” campaign to reign in federal spending and cut the federal debt.[38] A spokesman for the campaign said that SourceWatch’s information was incorrect and sought to demagogue rather than to find an actual solution to the problem.[39]
On environmentalist issues, SourceWatch features multiple pages run in conjunction with environmentalist David Brower’s left-wing Earth Island Institute, funded by environmentalist advocacy organizations including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the Sierra Club.[40] These featured projects include FrackSwarm, which attacks the entire domestic energy manufacturing industry,[41] and CoalSwarm, a collection of over 9,000 SourceWatch articles attacking the domestic coal production industry and pushing for a transition to costly alternative energies.[42]
SourceWatch also features a research page in conjunction with another CMD project, the Food Rights Network, attacking the food industry.[43]
Other Issue Positions
Aside from their featured pages, SourceWatch’s content espouses a left-wing ideology on numerous other policies, however these all generally relate to the site’s anti-corporate featured issues.
SourceWatch’s articles criticize free-trade policies as “little more than a scam perpetrated on the public” on behalf of the wealthy.[44] For instance, the SourceWatch article on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) blasts the deal.[45] Moreover, the page is overly critical of Mexico’s treatment and claims that the deal has not helped the Mexican economy.[46]
SourceWatch’s page on former President George W. Bush attacks his supposed “lack of ‘speed and smarts’” and highlights a number of articles that cast the 43rd President in a negative light. Moreover, SourceWatch contains an extensive documentation highlighting countless criticisms of the Bush administration.[47]
SourceWatch’s content touts the activities of many left-wing politicians and activist groups. The SourceWatch page for the extreme animal activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) touts PETA’s successful anti-corporate public relations campaigns[48] and SourceWatch’s page for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) touts her authorship of a massive Wall Street regulatory scheme and her push for liberal wage handouts.[49]
In many instances, SourceWatch’s articles are critical of other liberal organizations or policies for not going far enough to the left. For example, SourceWatch’s article on the Obamacare law blasts the legislation for failing to accomplish leftist goals.[50] Similarly, SourceWatch publishes attacks the liberal environmental activists including Defenders of Wildlife, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Greenpeace, for “abandoning or undercutting grassroots environmental struggles for fundamental change” by “selling out the environment and the grassroots movement through business partnerships and agreements with compromising politicians.”[51]
Controversies
Deleting Content
In 2014, SourceWatch was criticized for deleting all of its content related to the liberal political donor network known as the Democracy Alliance.[52]
That does not appear to be the only time the site has deleted information about influential liberal leaders. A review of SourceWatch web history reveals that as late as Aril 2016, SourceWatch contained a webpage touting the liberal highlights of Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota).[53] But a review of SourceWatch in January 2018, after Franken resigned from the Senate amid allegations of sexual misconduct, [54] revealed that SourceWatch had deleted Franken’s page and that public users are barred from creating a new page for Franken.[55]
Similarly, in August 2016 SourceWatch contained an extensive page touting the left-wing accomplishments of U.S. Senator and erstwhile Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont),[56] as of January 2018, that page also no longer exists.[57]
Anti-Israel Content
Many of SourceWatch’s articles place the blame for violence in the Middle East on Israel while ignoring the actions of other nations. For instance, SourceWatch’s page entitled “Israel’s War Against Lebanon,” talks only of Israeli bombs and propaganda, ignoring any actions by Lebanese government forces or terrorist militia.[58] Similarly, SourceWatch’s “Violence in the Middle East” page highlights an article disregarding Lebanon’s role in the violence carried out in the Middle East.[59]
Funding
SourceWatch is operated by the Center for Media and Democracy.A review of CMD’s finances revealed that CMD and thus SourceWatch are supported by a number of the nation’s largest and most well-endowed liberal foundations. [60]
As of 2010, SourceWatch’s parent organization had received at least 70 foundation grants totaling at least $2.5 million.[61] Left-wing funders who have contributed to SourceWatch’s parent organization in recent years include the prominent anti-natural-gas-exploration Park Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and progressive financier George Soros’ Foundation to Promote an Open Society.[62]
Before 2009, SourceWatch’s parent funding organization CMD refused to take money from unions.[63] However that policy changed, and according to the union-watching blog LaborPains, in 2012 SourceWatch’s parent CMD took in $69,500 from the AFL-CIO and in 2013 it took in $118,000 union expenditures from groups such as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).[64]
People
SourceWatch’s founder Sheldon Rampton joined the Center For Media and Democracy in 1995. [65] In 2001, the Village Voice described Rampton and CMD’s founder, John Stauber as the “far side of liberal” in their opposition to corporations.[66]
Bob Burton is managing editor of SourceWatch, he has authored multiple left-wing books attacking corporate and anti-environmental public relations campaigns.[67]