Diane Farsetta

The Center for Media and Democracy's Senior Researcher, Diane Farsetta, coordinates CMD's No Fake News campaign; co-authored CMD's three groundbreaking reports on video news releases (VNRs), "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed" and "Still Not the News: Stations Overwhelmingly Fail To Disclose VNRs," and "Know Fake News"; and authored two formal comments to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of CMD: one addressed disclosure of VNRs and audio news releases, and one addressed embedded advertisements in news programming. She also re-launched CMD's "Weekly Radio Spin," and co-produces, co-hosts and co-engineers the five-minute audio report.

Diane has been interviewed on or quoted by NPR's Morning Edition and On the Media, ABC's Good Morning America, PBS's NOW, Pacifica's Democracy Now!, the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune. Diane's reporting for CMD, which can be read here, has also been published by The Progressive and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazines, and run on the AlterNet, CommonDreams, CounterPunch and Guerrilla News Network websites. Diane has contributed chapters to Project Censored's books "Censored 2007" and "Censored 2008," and the two-volume academic review "Battleground: The Media." In addition, she contributes to WIMN's Voices, a group blog hosted by Women in Media & News.

Diane (background) interviews Helen Thomas at WORT FM

Diane received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cellular and Molecular Biology Program in 2000, having published eight original research articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She also has a background in journalism and activism. Since 2000, Diane has reported for WORT 89.9 FM, Madison's community radio station and a Pacifica Network affiliate. Her free-lance radio features and articles have run nationally on Free Speech Radio News, in Off Our Backs and Z Magazine, and via the Progressive Media Project. She has been involved with international solidarity work as a member of the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network/U.S. since 1994, establishing the first official United States-East Timor sister city relationship in 2000, and serving as ETAN's national field organizer.