by Laura Miller

In the spring of 2002, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices became a sponsor of National Public Radio. While ABEC acknowledge on their website that "America's coal-based electricity industry (producers, transporters, and electricity generators) have provided the primary initial funding for this worthwhile project," their on-air spot did not mention this support, leading listeners to email the Center for Media & Democracy (CMD), PR Watch's publisher.

"Do y'all know anything about Americans for Balanced Energy Choices?" inquired a Texan. And from Maine, we read, "So I happened to hear an underwriting announcement on 'All Things Considered' a few days ago for a non-profit group with the somewhat Orwellian title 'Americans for Balanced Energy Choices' that promotes coal as America's energy choice for the future. Needless to say, I almost jumped out of my seat. . . . It's very clearly a front group for the fossil fuel industry (can't imagine why some civic-minded citizens concerned about energy consumption would decide to form an organization touting the amazing qualities of that stuff Santa leaves us when we're bad), but does anyone have any further information about it?"

CMD staff investigated and found that ABEC's website is registered to the Center for Economic and Environmental Development, a coal industry trade group and an active opponent of the UN Global Climate Treaty (the Kyoto Protocol). We also found that ABEC's PR firm, Denver-based MGA Communications, specializes in public-private partnerships, "green" product marketing, and crisis communications (among other things). Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Shell Oil were other MGA clients.

We often expose, "Who's behind this front group?", but we've been frustrated at not having a way to make this research available in an organized fashion to the public. How many other NPR listeners had wondered, "Who is ABEC?" And how many activists, journalists and others have unmasked corporate and PR created front groups? There clearly needs to be a place for this information to be researched, updated, archived and shared. But where? And how?

We think we've found the solution: Disinfopedia.

Disinfopedia (www.disinfopedia.org) is a powerful, interactive web-based encyclopedia of propaganda. The truly unique thing about Disinfopedia.org is its emphasis on collaborative, "open document" writing and editing. This means anyone can create and edit any article on Disinfopedia. (Yes, that sounds scary, but it works.)

Disinfopedia runs on the same software as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), a "collaborative project to produce a free and complete encyclopedia in every language." Wikipedia operates under the "GNU open document license," which is similar to the "open source" license used to develop free software such as the Linux computer operating system. It's an increasingly popular model of collaborative scholarship that operates according to surprisingly simple principles. The high standards of thoroughness and accuracy to which Wikipedia aspires are realized by allowing everyone to be a contributor and a peer reviewer.

You might think this would lead to anarchy and gibberish, but the quality of the articles on Wikipedia is generally quite good. For every person who makes a malicious or erroneous contribution, numerous others correct errors and make improvements--exactly like the process by which open source software keeps evolving. Furthermore, we've recently hired Australian author and journalist Bob Burton as Disinfopedia's online editor, ensuring an even higher degree of accuracy.

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 and already contains more than 180,000 articles, some of which are comparable in detail and accuracy to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Disinfopedia launched March 2003 with 200 articles seeded by CMD staff. It now contains more than 2,500. This is just the beginning.

Using a similar "open document" strategy, Disinfopedia enables activists, journalists and other researchers to collectively maintain it as a directory of propaganda and disinformation campaigns that seek to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and other special interests. Others have previously attempted to develop such a directory, but failed. There are thousands of industry-funded think tanks and front groups, with new ones forming all the time and constant shuffling of personnel. Developing a comprehensive directory of these groups, and keeping it current, requires more time and attention than any existing group or individual can bring to bear on the effort. However, an open document approach can enable a community of volunteers and activists to work collaboratively and develop a resource that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Beyond the immediate goal of developing a resource on propaganda, we're hopeful that this global, open-source information project can contribute to the development of an alternative model to conventional, mass-media journalism. Traditional media lend themselves readily to a "propaganda" style of communication, in which a small number of individuals produce messages that are broadcast to thousands or millions of information consumers. The Internet has contributed somewhat to breaking down this dichotomy between "broadcaster" and "audience," but we think it is possible to take this further. Within the PR and journalism professions, we hear quite a bit of concern about the Internet on grounds that it eliminates the "filter" of professionalism and thereby enables garbage to circulate freely. In reality, though, the traditional filters don't do a very good job of eliminating garbage either. By breaking down the distinction between audience and journalist, we think it should be possible to demonstrate that "the masses" can do as good a job of "filtering" as the so-called pros.