reader (the Second) said:The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) (formerly called the "Guest Choice Network") is a front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries. It runs media campaigns which oppose the efforts of scientists, doctors, health advocates, environmentalists and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, calling them "the Nanny Culture -- the growing fraternity of food cops, health care enforcers, anti-meat activists, and meddling bureaucrats who 'know what's best for you.' "
Over 40 percent of the group's 2005 expenditure was paid to Rick Berman's PR company, Berman & Co. for "management services. [1] As part of its operations CCF runs a series of attack websites, including "consumerfreedom.com, activistcash.com, cspiscam.com, animal-scam.com, fishscam.com, obesitymyths.com, physiciansscam.com [and] PetaKillsAnimals.com. [2]
SourceWatch (formerly Disinfopedia), is an internet site which is a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). It was created by the CMD's research director, Sheldon Rampton.
The sponsor of SourceWatch is the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a nonprofit American-based news media research group founded in 1993 by environmentalist writer and political activist John Stauber. The creator of SourceWatch, Sheldon Rampton, is CMD's research director.
In 1995, Rampton teamed with John Stauber as co-editors of PR Watch, a publication of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). They have been described as liberal, and their writings are regarded by some members of the public relations industry as one-sided and hostile. ActivistCash, a website hosted by Washington lobbyist Richard Berman, has castigated them as "self-anointed watchdogs," "scare-mongers," "reckless" and "left-leaning."Rampton and Stauber have in turn argued that the ActivistCash critique contains a number of "demonstrably false" claims.
In July 2003 Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, which argued that the Bush administration deceived the American public into supporting the war. In 2004, the two co-authored Banana Republicans, which argued that the Republican Party is turning the U.S. into a one-party state. The book argues that the far-right and its functionaries in the media, lobbying establishment and electoral system are undermining dissent and squelching pluralistic politics in the United States. In 2006 the two wrote The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq, which builds upon the arguments they posited in Weapons of Mass Deception.