Center for Media and Democracy

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The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), founded in 1993, is a progressive organization founded and administrated by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (amongst others, see "People" below). According to its website, CMD "strengthens participatory democracy by investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda, and by promoting media literacy and citizen journalism."

Other organizations with similar names

CMD was founded in 1993. Since then a number of other unaffiliated organizations with similar names have arisen. They also are named, or have in their name, "Center for Media and Democracy." These different groups include:

  • CMD Pakistan - a civil society group in Pakistan, which says its goal is "to ensure free, fair and transparent holding of upcoming general elections" (in February 2008) [1]
  • Schumann Center for Media and Democracy - a foundation based in New Jersey, which focuses on the environment, good governance and media issues
  • DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy - a research center at Duke University that supports "democratic free media in the United States and around the globe" [2]
  • CCTV Center for Media and Democracy - a Burlington, Vermont community media center (CCTV stands for Chittenden Community Television) with a mission of ensuring "free speech and opportunity in the increasingly centralized and commercialized world of electronic media" [3]

The rest of this SourceWatch article deals solely with the Madison, Wisconsin based media watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy.

Critiques

CMD has been criticized for having an anti-corporate viewpoint by industry lobbyists like Berman & Co., a public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman. ActivistCash.com, an industry-funded website run by Berman & Co. and associated with Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom, has run such critiques. ActivistCash.com accuses CMD of operating "as do most self-anointed progressive watchdogs, from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye." This website also opines, "If someone in a shirt and tie dares make a profit (especially if food or chemicals are involved), Rampton and Stauber are bound to have a problem with it. Unless, of course, that food is vegetarian, organic, certified fair-trade, shade-grown, biodynamic, or biotech-free â?? in which case, the skyâ??s the limit!" See the article on CMD on ActivistCash.com, and the criticisms section of the Wikipedia article on SourceWatch.

Politics

The group presents itself as a nonpartisan media research organization. Some dispute the characterization, citing the writings of its founder, the writer, political activist, and environmentalist John Stauber who describes himself as "a democracy activist in leadership roles since highschool around controversial issues of war, peace, public affairs, environmental health and social justice."

In their 2004 book, Banana Republicans, CMD staff members Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber document that the right wing in the United States regards politics as a form of "war by other means" and that this philosophy, combined with Republican control of every branch of the U.S. federal government, has moved the United States in the direction of becoming a one-party state. They write that notwithstanding conservatives "stated aversion to 'big government,' now that they have become the government they have not hesitated to expand its powers in precisely those areas that are most threatening to individual freedoms, through the USA Patriot Act and other measures that authorize spying on citizens and detentions without trial. The likelihood that those powers will be abused has increased, moreover, as the conservative movement accuses its ideological adversaries of 'treason,' 'terrorism' and 'un-Americanism,' threatening long-standing traditions of tolerance and diversity. ... In sum, the direction in which forces in the GOP are moving looks - at times absurdly, at times ominously - similar to the 'banana republics' of Latin America: nations dominated by narrow corporate elites, which use the pretext of national security to violate the rights of their citizens."

Rampton and Stauber warn that one-party domination of politics carries the danger of "incestuous amplification," a tendency for policymakers to "only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation." They note that in one-party dictatorships like Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, "hierarchical, command-driven social systems" were "notorious for their tendency to make disastrous decisions, in the areas of both domestic and foreign policy."

With regard to the United States, Rampton and Stauber argue that "incestuous amplification" helps explain "how the Bush administration managed to convince itself that Iraq truly did possess awesome weapons of mass destruction, that it was closely tied to Al Qaeda, and that the people of Iraq would greet a U.S. invasion of their country as liberation. Much of the administration's intelligence information about Iraq actually came from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an organization created and funded by the U.S. government at the behest of the first Bush administration for the purpose of creating conditions for Saddam Hussein's overthrow. Not surprisingly, the information from the INC and its head, Ahmed Chalabi, tended to reinforce the already-existing assumptions of policymakers in the second Bush administration, even when that information contradicted other reports coming from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."

Rampton and Stauber argue that incestuous amplification can also distort other areas of knowledge and policy, such as science. In the Soviet Union, for example, agricultural development was seriously undermined when biologists were charged with sabotage, terrorism and Trotskyism, fired from their jobs and even killed for perceived deviations from the government's official party line. "Under Republican rule, of course, scientists are not being arrested or shot," they write, "but the Bush administration has begun a disturbing process of subordinating science to politics, with potentially dangerous consequences. To inform its decisions on issues including sex education, environmental health, global warming, workplace safety and AIDS, the Bush administration has used a variety of political litmus tests to create scientific panels stacked heavily with members who have scant scientific credentials but strong industry ties and right-wing agendas. It has altered official government websites, removing scientific information that contradicts the political views of industry groups and the conservative movement. In some cases, scientists have been ordered to remain silent by their politically appointed higher-ups."

Projects

Books

People

Staff

Volunteer Board of Directors

  • David Merritt
  • Joe Mendelson
  • Inger Stole
  • Ellen Braune
  • Jan Miyasaki
  • John Stauber (nonvoting)
  • Anna Lappé

Funding

Over its history, CMD has received over $500 from the following foundations: [4]

The Center does not accept corporate or government grants. [5]

Contact

Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Ave.
Suite 227
Madison, WI 53703
phone (608) 260-9713
fax: 608-260-9714
Email: email editor AT prwatch.org
Web: http://www.prwatch.org/

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