| Type | State and local government reporting |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Franklin News Foundation |
| Founded | September 2009 |
| Political alignment | Conservative |
| Language | English |
| Readership | 700,000 subscribers[1] |
| Website | www |
The Center Square, formerlyWatchdog.org, is an Americanconservativenews website that features reporting on state and local governments.[2][3] It is a project of theFranklin News Foundation, an American conservative online nonprofit news organization.[2][4] The Center Square distributes its content through a newswire service.
As Watchdog.org, it broke a story about website data inaccuracies for theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that appeared to show "phantom congressional districts".[5][6]
The Center Square is a project of theFranklin News Foundation (formerly called the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity), an American conservative online nonprofit news organization.[7] TheColumbia Journalism Review in 2012 called the Franklin Center "perhaps the most ambitious conservative news organization you’ve never heard of", said its productivity was "impressive," and noted the original news reporting produced by websites it funded in 18 states at the time.[2]
The Franklin Center, a501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, received 95% of its 2011 revenue from mostly anonymous benefactors via the American nonprofitdonor-advised fundDonors Trust, which is a major source of funding for conservative groups.[4]
In 2012, Watchdog.org had sites in 18 states.[8] In 2014, the Franklin Center said it had one reporter in each of 14 state capitols and two in Nebraska and Virginia. In 2015, most of the Watchdog sites had one staff reporter in addition to accepting contributions fromcitizen journalists via a platform called Watchdog Wire.[8][9]
TheProject for Excellence in Journalism of thePew Research Center surveyed and analyzed nonprofit news organizations active on the state or national level in 2011 and again in 2013.[10][11] The studies found that the most consistently ideological of the news outlets were those that were organized in networks, specifically the conservative Watchdog network and the liberalAmerican Independent News Network.[12][10]
Watchdog.org sites scrutinized theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for evidence that it had misreported or overpaid for the number of jobs saved.[13][14][15] According to theWashington Monthly, such reports by Watchdog.org could be factual but also "thin and missing important context".[13]
Watchdog.org became known for stories about "phantom congressional districts" based on data entry errors on the stimulus website Recovery.gov.[5][13][6] In November 2009, Jim Scarantino ofWatchdog New Mexico wrote that data he found on the stimulus website showed millions of federal stimulus dollars marked for congressional districts that did not exist.[5][13][16] The national Watchdog.org site said that nationally more than $6.4 billion had gone to such "phantom" districts.[5][13][17] The reports were publicized by Republicans and conservative news outlets and think tanks,[5] andABC News claimed the story as a "network exclusive".[13] According to theAssociated Press, "Soon, the 'phantom' congressional district story became shorthand for government waste."[5] Reporting by the Associated Press concluded that mistyping ofZIP Codes on the stimulus website had caused the discrepancies; it found examples of funds that had been delivered to real districts but had been misreported on the website.[5][13] It credited Scarantino with uncovering the inaccuracies, calling it "the latest discovery of problems in the massive database of stimulus spending", while noting that "anyone with a computer can still easily find out the name of the business or agency that received the money".[5]
Watchdog.org published a series of articles that raised questions aboutGreenTech Automotive, founded by company CEOCharlie Wang. The articles focused in part on GreenTech’s reliance on a fundraising program,EB-5 visa, that had been criticized by some for its lax oversight and as being subject to abuse.[18][19][user-generated source?]
GreenTech Automotive filed an $85 millionlibel lawsuit (noting among other things the website's characterization of GreenTech's company headquarters as "a broom closet") against Watchdog.org and its parent (and a journalist for the company) in 2013.[20][21][22][23] However, in 2014 a federal judge in Mississippi dismissed GreenTech's lawsuit.[24][25][20] Wang then allegedly claimed, falsely, that Watchdog.org had paid $1.2 million in damages.[26][non-primary source needed]
GreenTech filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, stating that articles from Watchdog.org “negatively affected governmental, investor and public perception of GreenTech” and led to investigations by theSEC and theDepartment of Homeland Security.[27]
A reporter from the Montana Policy Institute confronted the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees the site, about these non-existent congressional districts on Monday afternoon. Ed Pound, Director of Communications for the board, said that the faulty information came from recipients of stimulus funds.
