James L. Horton of the Robert Marston & Associates PR firm is worried about Wikileaks, a new website that provides a means for people to share information about unethical behavior by governments and corporations. Wikileaks says it "is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and participatory analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we expect to be of assistance to peoples of all countries who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations." On his blog, Horton says this "statement of purpose is chilling. ... The site has been successful already in revealing the misbehavior of an African leader. If it endures, it is a matter of time before whistle-blowers use it elsewhere. I suppose one can look at it as a full-employment reason for crisis PR practitioners."

Last week we started a new participatory project to expose the government agencies, corporations and lobbying groups that have been censoring, whitewashing or otherwise spinning Wikipedia. (See CMD Senior Researcher Diane Farsetta's great blog post for some background on this sordid tale.) So far we've logged several attempts at spin into the respective SourceWatch profiles, including:

• Chevron deleting the article on "Biodiesel";
• Military contractor Raytheon deleting information on them spying on their competitors and the U.S. Air Force;
• Republican-friendly broadcaster Clear Channel adding allegations of plagiarism to Democratic Senate Candidate Al Franken's profile;
• PR firm Hill & Knowlton removing descriptions of the political repression by the government of the Maldives, an H&K client;
• Amway parent company Alticor removing descriptions of the company's use of "Google bombing" to drive down the search engine rankings of Web sites critical of the company;
• Electronic voting machine company Diebold removing descriptions of the controversies surrounding their machines' failures and glitches;
• Conservative news network Fox News changing Keith Olbermann's profile (and not in a good way - see Olbermann's reaction on this video);

The information here is obviously very important and, thanks to SourceWatch's high rankings in Google searches, easily accessible to citizens, journalists and policymakers checking out the record of these politically active and high social-impact organizations. There are many dastardly edits left, however, and we need your help to make sure they aren't lost to history. There's no need for technical expertise, just head over to the SourceWatch page for the project, where there are complete instructions, examples and an email hotline for support. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here.