Damek.

I love Disinfopedia. It’s “a collaborative project 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 interests. Sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy, the Disinfopedia was started in February 2003 and are now working on 4998 articles.” Based on the popular Wikipedia, you can get involved and help create and edit articles.

What’s so great about Disinfopedia? Well, let’s say, just for example, you’re Googling for global warming. As I write this, the second major result is a site run by “the Cooler Heads Coalition, a sub-group of the National Consumer Coalition.” Who are these groups? They sound rational, unbiased, concerned about consumers. Well, don’t take their own PR for granted, go check out the CHC at Disinfopedia and also the NCC. You’ll quickly discover that they are highly industry-friendly organizations run by Consumer Alert, a group once approached by Philip Morris as a possible ally, and identified by PM as a ” “DC free market consumer group, antithesis of the Nader effort.” Not that I particularly love Ralph Nader, but it chaps my hide that there are these groups out there which basically front for corporations, through multiple degrees of separation and gratuitous Orwellian use of words and phrases like “consumer concerns”. At least, thanks to Disinfopedia, you can look up groups as you hear about them and find out where their funding comes from and who is behind them. Now you know…

BTW, a better site for global warming information is Global Warming: Early Warning Signs, a more fact-based site run by actual scientists & real citizens’ groups.

I believe in free speech – these corporate front groups are made up of fellow citizens, and they have just as much right to spread their views as anyone else. But they aren’t really spreading their own views, they are paid to spread someone else’s, and even if they claim the views they spread as their own, theirs are opinions formed through the filter of corporate profit hunting. Free speech is great, but it’s unfortunate that concentrations of wealth are so able to fund these disinformative public relations efforts to encourage continued growth of said wealth. While we, the actual citizens, bumble about with very little money or power, trying to counter their efforts when we become aware of them, with little PR expertise and therefore little effect, usually.

What we need is some sort of citizens’ PR umbrella group like Moveon.org or Democracy For America, but whose sole job is to research & combat these corporate PR front groups. A Public Relations resource for citizens instead of organizations, something like the National Lawyers Guild, but made up of socially conscious concerned Public Relations professionals. It’s a nascent idea that needs tons of work, but I think it could be a good one.