PR Watch, Third Quarter 2004, Volume 11, No. 3

There is no doubt that the Internet has changed the political world that we live in. This year so-called online bloggers reported back from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, providing readers with personal, behind-the-scenes accounts of the two parties' campaign pep rallies. But perhaps even more noteworthy, political organizations were able to use the Internet to disseminate a strongly progressive and anti-war message that had been mostly absent from corporate, mainstream media.

by Sheldon Rampton

Since its launch in September 1998, the MoveOn.org Web site has become a fundraising and organizing powerhouse, attracting more than 2 million subscribers and raising tens of millions of dollars for liberal causes and Democratic party candidates. Its success has surprised even its founders, computer entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd.

by Diane Farsetta

by Bob Burton

For over two decades, a Virginia-based organization has been quietly working as the Johnny Appleseed of conservative think tanks. With a modest $4 million budget in 2003 and a staff of eight, Atlas Economic Research Foundation is on a mission to populate the world with new "free market" voices. In its 2003 review of activities, quaintly titled its Investor Report, Atlas boasted that it worked with "70 new think-tank entrepreneurs from 37 foreign countries, including Lithuania, Greece, Mongolia, Ghana, the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina," as well as with several American groups.

Briton Antony Fisher founded Atlas as part of his lifelong campaign to influence the "climate of ideas" and combat "creeping socialism." Atlas credits Fisher with assisting in the early stages of development of several conservative think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute, Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada.