Congresspedia: Citizen Journalists Take On Congress
by Conor Kenny
On April 26, 2006, the Center for Media and Democracy launched a new experiment in citizen journalism: Congresspedia, the " citizens' encyclopedia on Congress," housed at www.congresspedia.org. Congresspedia is built on our collaborative SourceWatch website and uses the same wiki model to enable anyone to contribute their own research on members of the U.S. Congress, major legislation and Washington DC scandals.
Congresspedia was a natural addition to SourceWatch, whose contributors often created articles on members of Congress to round out discussions of other issues. We thought that the same spirit of " many hands make light work" that helps CMD expose the public relations industry could help citizens collaboratively expose the inner workings of Congress.
Congresspedia started with 539 articles on every sitting member of Congress, plus convicted former California Rep. Randy " Duke" Cunningham. Veteran SourceWatch users and people new to wiki websites have been busy adding to those profiles and creating new articles on legislation, such as Rep. John Conyers' resolution to begin investigating impeachable offenses by President Bush. Congresspedia contributors have also created new articles like " Congressional Bribery and a DC Sex Scandal, " which documents how two military contractors may have provided former Rep. Cunningham with prostitutes, hotel suites and limousine access.
Congresspedia is a joint project with the Sunlight Foundation, a new organization dedicated to increasing transparency in government. Sunlight is an ideal partner for CMD, because it hosts muckraking bloggers on its own website and is helping to develop new technologies to bring together public-interest research. For example, Sunlight is working to merge the lobbying and campaign contributions data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics with the lawmaker profiles on Congresspedia. The goal is to provide a clearer picture of how Washington DC works, for reporters, researchers, activists and others -- and to make elected officials more accountable to the public. Potential future projects include merging databases of lawmakers' personal financial disclosure forms, public officials-turned-lobbyists, and no-bid federal contracts.
This is the power of citizen journalism -- anyone curious about the folksy-looking online ads being run by the industry front group " Hands off the Internet" can find our SourceWatch article on them with a quick online search. That profile links to Congresspedia articles detailing the dirty politics surrounding the telecom-supported legislation.
As Congresspedia grows, we believe it will become a comprehensive, central repository of information on current members of Congress. Congresspedia complements the work of reporters and political bloggers, in part due to its structure. Unfortunately, older information is often sequestered behind newspaper subscription fees or buried in blog archives. In addition, CMD actively works to ensure the fairness, accuracy and non-partisanship of Congresspedia articles. Like SourceWatch, Congresspedia requires all information to be sourced and all contributors to be registered. Congresspedia also has a full-time editor -- myself -- who reviews volunteers' edits and additions to the site.
Congresspedia is a subset of SourceWatch, and the two often work in tandem to detail Congress-related issues. For example, legislation currently being debated would allow Internet network operators to give priority to -- or even block -- some data that passes through their wires. This means that your Internet service provider could theoretically accept payments from Yahoo to make your Google search slower. The provider could also disable your free Internet-based phone service because it offers competing services; this actually happened in Canada.
Current Federal Communications Commission rules require that all data be given equal priority under a principle called " network neutrality. " However, four members of Congress are sponsoring legislation that would override network neutrality and end what many Internet pioneers and activists call the " First Amendment of the Internet. "
The big telephone and cable companies that own the networks have been flexing their muscles in Washington DC, as usually happens when profits are at stake. They've hired lobbyists and started front groups to push for ending network neutrality. That's in addition to the $66 million in campaign contributions the industry has given to sitting members of Congress since 1989.
Luckily, SourceWatch and Congresspedia are on the case! Enterprising SourceWatch volunteers created articles on network neutrality, network neutrality legislation, and the front groups that companies have created, noting their activities and financial ties to industry. The Congresspedia articles on the bill's sponsors also show that each of them -- Republican and Democrat -- has received substantial campaign contributions from the industry. In addition, two sponsors have substantial stock holdings in the telecom companies that stand to gain from the bill, and one heads a non-profit that recently received a $1 million check from one of the largest U.S. phone companies, SBC/AT and T.
This is the power of citizen journalism -- anyone curious about the folksy-looking online ads being run by the industry front group " Hands off the Internet" can find our SourceWatch article on them with a quick online search. That profile links to Congresspedia articles detailing the dirty politics surrounding the telecom-supported legislation.
We hope that as our volunteer base grows, Congresspedia and SourceWatch will become valuable references on every member of Congress, major piece of legislation, and whatever scandal is sweeping the Capitol on any given day. If you're interested in getting involved, the main pages of both SourceWatch (www.sourcewatch.org) and Congresspedia (www.congresspedia.org) have comprehensive " Getting Started" sections to help you out.
