"‘Churnalism’ is a news article that is published as journalism, but is essentially a press release without much added." Churnalism.com is a site created by the British charity Media Standards Trust, which lets you input the text of a press release to compare it with the text of news articles in the British media. [more inside]
posted by DanCall on Feb 24, 2011 - 15 comments

The Lobbying-Media Complex. The Nation explores the pervasive influence of paid lobbyists on the media landscape. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Feb 15, 2010 - 21 comments

Ethicsgate continues: Today, the bipartisan Government Accountability Office declared that the Bush administration broke the law by paying Armstrong Williams to write favorable columns about the No Child Left Behind Act, funneling public funds to a PR firm to sift through news stories and gauge media perception of Bush policies, and financing phony TV news reports giving the President's education policies "an A-plus," creating what the GAO called "covert propaganda." [Williams et. al. previously discussed here.]
posted by digaman on Sep 30, 2005 - 59 comments

Meet Disinfopedia -- From the folks that brought us PRWatch. Started as a place to foster "public understanding of war propaganda," -- for folks to share open content and to find resources about the folks who move and shake behind the scenes: think tanks, PR firms, experts for hire, etc. It seems to me that a resource like this deserves to outlive the current info battles (I promised I wouldn't use the word Iraq -- oh, #$#@!).
posted by chandy72 on Mar 11, 2003 - 11 comments