About Source Passports

A Source Passport is a public record card for an organisation that shapes what we read, watch and hear: a news outlet, a political party, a regulator, a platform, an advertising agency, a funder. It answers three questions in one place: who owns it, who pays for it, and where it publishes.

Who is behind a media outlet, a party, a platform or an agency: owners, money, channels. Paste a website address or type a name.

See all passports

Why it exists

The name on a story tells you little about who stands behind it. The facts exist, in company registers, licence files, annual reports and court records, but they are scattered across countries and languages, written in different formats, and they go out of date. Nobody has had one place to check.

Source Passports bring those facts together: the same record for every organisation, a source for every fact, a status that says whether a researcher has checked it, and a dated history of every change. Readers can check a source in seconds. Journalists, researchers, advertisers and public bodies can rely on one shared reference. Organisations get a place to show, in a standard form, who they are.

The timing is not accidental. Since August 2025, European law asks news media to publish who owns them and how much they receive in state advertising, and asks public bodies to publish what they spend on advertising with each outlet. A shared record gives everyone a common reference to point to.

What a passport shows

Every passport has a number, such as RO-M-00412-2: the country of registration, a letter for the kind of organisation (M for media, P for a party, R for a regulator, and so on), a serial number and a check digit that catches typing mistakes. The number is issued once and never changes, so a reference made today still works in ten years.

The record itself has six sections, each answering one question:

  • Who is it? Legal name, registration, country, founding year, who leads it, how to reach it.
  • Who stands behind it? Owners and their shares, the people behind the owning companies, any state ownership, the parent group.
  • Who pays? State advertising received, the mix of revenue, named funders.
  • Where does it appear? Official websites and social accounts.
  • How does it travel? Platforms, carriers and syndication partners.
  • Who is connected? Sister organisations and documented political roles of owners or executives.

Each fact carries one of five labels. Verified: a researcher checked it against the source shown. Self-declared: the organisation stated it and we have not checked it independently. Pending check: found in a public source, waiting for a researcher. Disputed: contested by the organisation or contradicted by another source. Not disclosed: nothing found yet.

The transparency level

Every passport shows a transparency level: Open, Partial, Limited or Not yet disclosed. It is not a mark of quality or trust. It measures one thing only: how much of the key information about that kind of organisation is on record. For a media outlet that means its legal identity, its owners, the people behind them, any state ownership, its money and a way to reach it. For a party or a public body it means its legal name, who leads it, how it is funded and how to reach it.

Under the level, the passport lists each disclosure and whether it is on record. The gaps are shown as plainly as the facts, because a gap is information too. An organisation that fills its gaps moves up; nothing else does.

Some facts deserve a flag of their own: state ownership, owners or executives who hold political office, state advertising received, details in dispute, owners not disclosed. They appear as short notes under the level. A flag is a fact worth knowing, not an accusation; a documented connection is not proof of influence.

How to use it

  • Search. Type a name, paste a website address or enter a passport number in the box above.
  • Check any site in one click. On the passports page, drag the "Who is behind this?" button to your bookmarks bar. While reading any website, click it and the passport opens.
  • Scan. Every passport has a QR code that organisations can print on a page, a card or a studio set. It leads to the live record.
  • Share. Each passport has a short link and a share card with its number, name and transparency level, for messaging apps, social networks and slides.
  • Build on it. The whole register is open data (see below), with an API for tools that need to look up an organisation or a website.

If it is your organisation

Claiming a passport is free and takes a few minutes: open the passport, choose "Claim this passport" and confirm your email address. A claimed passport says so, and you can complete it, correct it and keep it current. You also get three things for your website:

  • A disclosure box for your About or Imprint page: a live panel showing who owns and funds you, which stays correct because it reads from the passport. For news media it covers the disclosure that European law asks for.
  • A badge for the footer, which always shows the current status of the record.
  • A site tag one line in your site code that ties the site to the record and speeds up the claim.

Nothing about a passport can be bought. Claiming confirms who you are; it does not change what the record says. If a fact is wrong, report it from the passport and a researcher will look at the evidence; the correction is dated in the public history.

How the register is kept

Records are built from public sources: company registers, licence files, annual reports, the organisation's own pages. Software helps find material; people establish facts. Before a record that says anything about ownership, money or connections is published, the organisation is notified and has 14 days to reply.

Some details of the research layer, such as the people behind owning companies or documented political roles, are available on request rather than on the public page. Journalists, researchers and public bodies receive them free of charge; companies are offered a data licence. Every request is logged with its purpose.

Access, data and research time can be paid for; a word in a record cannot. MPMONITOR publishes every change to a record with its date, and never edits silently.

Who keeps it

MPMONITOR is a research project of the Media and Journalism Research Center (MJRC), an independent research organisation working since 2015. The register is kept by researchers; organisations do not pay to be in it and cannot pay to change it.

Passports are free to read, and claiming one is free. Payment can buy data access or research time, but never changes what a passport says.

How we verify

A register is only useful if it lasts. This is our commitment:

The Source Passports are built to outlive their keeper. Four safeguards make sure of it:

1. Open data. Every published passport is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 in a machine-readable file, rewritten daily, that anyone may copy and archives may mirror. The software that runs the register is open source. Nothing can be locked away.

2. Permanent IDs. A passport number is issued once and never reused or changed. The numbering scheme is published, so a number keeps its meaning whoever hosts the register.

3. A named successor. MJRC has designated a successor custodian, whose name will be published here once the standby agreement is signed. If MJRC can no longer keep the register, the data, the domain and the numbering pass to the successor under a standby agreement, and the public is told on this page.

4. Shared keys. More than one person, in more than one institution, holds the keys to the domain, the archive and the code, so no single failure can take the register offline.

Open data and API

Every published passport is open data under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence: anyone may copy, use and republish it with attribution, and any copy must stay open.

  • A partner tier with a key, for newsrooms, researchers and tools that need bulk export, the change feed and full version history.
  • Passport numbers follow a published scheme, RO-M-00412-2: country, series letter, serial number, check digit. A number is issued once and never reused, so references stay valid wherever the register is hosted.

The disclosure box, the badge and the QR code an organisation puts on its own website all read from the live record, so a reader sees the same facts everywhere.

Questions and corrections