SourceWatch's logo features a magnifying glass through which its name, somewhat distorted, can be seen. SourceWatch (formerly Disinfopedia) is 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.
The directory is available freely on the web as a Wiki, which means that any visitor to the site can edit existing articles and create new ones, and is maintained by a community of interested users worldwide. SourceWatch was started on 15 January 2003 and publicly launched with 200 articles on 10 March 2003. Conservative estimates put the number of articles in SourceWatch at over 5000 in July 2004, making it the 14th biggest WikiWiki in the world [1] (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BiggestWiki#Biggest_wikis_by_page_count_on_July_3_2004). Content in the directory is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
The SourceWatch policy for WikiWiki editors is "fairness and accuracy" rather than a neutral point of view policy, since the latter is difficult to achieve with subject matter covering "disinformation" [2] (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Disinfopedia:How_does_Disinfopedia_relate_to_Wikipedia%3F). Indeed, the directory is viewed by some as having a liberal bias in many of its articles. Though the project lacks an editor-in-chief in the traditional sense, project sponsors, the media research group Center for Media and Democracy list Australian journalist Bob Burton as SourceWatch editor [3] (http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/bios.php). Burton is the main contact for the project and provides a degree of oversight as an expert of public relations.
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