Exposing Corporate Front Groups

March 2nd, 2008 by Phil Mattera

The Center for Media and Democracy recently joined with Consumer Reports WebWatch to create a new site called Full Frontal Scrutiny, which “seeks to shine a light on front groups—organizations that state a particular agenda, while hiding or obscuring their identity, membership or sponsorship, or all three.”

Full Frontal Scrutiny is an extension of the work that the Center has long been doing to expose corporate manipulation of public opinion. That work has been widely disseminated through the PR Watch journal and website as well as the Sourcewatch wiki.

Consumer Reports WebWatch, which calls itself “the internet integrity division” of the venerable watchdog group Consumers Union, says its mission is to “provide unbiased and practical research on Web site publishing and business practices; help devise guidelines for credibility; expose practices that are a cause for consumer concern; and recognize good practices.”

In its initial posts, Full Frontal Scrutiny has dealt with perennial opinion manipulators such as Big Pharma, the tobacco industry and “clean” coal producers.

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2 Responses to “Exposing Corporate Front Groups”

  1. am glad to learn that someone is doing this kind of research

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