Independent Media Center

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Image:Imclogo.gif The Independent Media Center (aka Indymedia or IMC) is a global network of independent journalists and alternative media. It was and remains closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticizes neoliberalism, NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.

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Overview

The Indymedia project was started in late November of 1999, to allow participants in the anti-globalization movement to report on the protests against the WTO meeting that took place in Seattle, Washington, Washington, and to act as an alternative media source. By 2002, there were 89 local IMCs around the world spread between 31 countries (plus the West Bank) and 6 continents. By January 2006, the Indymedia network had grown to what is now over 190 Indymedia outlets around the world. The country with the most IMCs is the United States with 60, followed by Italy with 15.

A graphical way to find the location of Indymedia Centers has been created in a world-wide Indymedia map.

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Introduction

Image:Indymed2.jpg IMCs produce print, audio, photo, and video journalism, but are most well known for their open publishing newswires: internet weblog sites where anyone with internet access can publish information. The content of an IMC is determined by its participants, both the users who post content, and members of the local Indymedia collective who administer the site.

The origins of IMCs themselves came out of protests against perceived biases in corporate media reporting. The first IMC node, attached as it was to the Seattle anti-corporate globalization protests, was seen by activists as an alternative news source to that of the corporate media, which they accused of only showing violence and confrontation, and portraying all protestors in a negative fashion. "Independent+Media+Center" "Independent+Media+Center" [3] [4] [5] [6]

As a result, between 1999 and 2001, IMC newswires tended to be focused on up-to-the-minute coverage of protests: from local demonstrations to summits where anti-globalization movement protests were occurring. After the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, the IMC community, like many other communities, also included a focus on these events.

Indymedia has had interactions with authorities in more than one country. For example, on October 7, 2004, several of IMC's servers based in the United Kingdom at Rackspace in London were temporarily seized pursuant to a court order, disabling about 20 IMC websites which were hosted there. Proponents of Indymedia will counter these seizures as unconstitutional or unwarranted, while authorities have cited legal concerns to explain their actions.

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Structure

Image:Indymedia Edinburgh DSC04943.JPG Local IMC collectives are expected to be open and inclusive of individuals from a variety of different local revolutionary, left-wing, anarchist, communist and other anti-capitalist stances, whether or not these have any overt political labels, so that even those without internet access can participate both in content creation and in content consumption. Editorial policies, locally chosen by any Indymedia collective, generally involve removing articles which the Indymedia editors believe promote racism, sexism, hate speech, and homophobia. They may also remove or censor articles written from right-wing or conservative perspectives, and some IMCs have editorial policies to remove articles promoting hierarchy of any kind. Policies against hierarchy entail removal of articles promoting hierarchically-run groups and political parties, left-wing as well as right-wing. While freedom of speech is valued highly by Indymedia collectives, it is rarely the overriding principle guiding editorial policy. [7]

The structure of IMCs is non-hierarchical in terms of political power relationships; however,there do exist de facto hierarchies, due either to control over physical resources (e.g. servers); access to funds; accuracy determination; the fact that certain "global" functions are needed; or simply because it makes sense to coordinate within geographically close regions, without any formal link to geographical borders.

All Indymedia collectives are expected to have a locally chosen, but thoroughly discussed, editorial policy for determining features for the center column of the local site.

The overall Indymedia network is decentralized to the extent that the local IMCs operate independently once they are authenticated into the IMC network. The process of admission into the IMC network is somewhat centralized but is relatively relaxed and transparent compared to the occasionally contentious disputes within local IMCs and has not generated a great deal of criticism. Local IMC collectives vary widely in their openness, editorial policies and tolerance of different viewpoints. Along with the centralized general core collectives formed at the local level are IMC websites operating along particular themes, such as printed media or biotechnology. Along with contributing their own media, these core organizers maintain IMC's open publishing infrastructure, enabling different people throughout the internet to publish their news. IMC editing is done by a system of layered admin which contributors apply to join for each site, by participating on open email lists and attending open meetings.

Image:Indymediavid act.jpg

As an example of different models for collective internal organizing, the DC IMC (one of the older IMCs in the network) adopted a different and more formal model of organizing as a Coop. Members pay small monthly dues (waived for any who need it to be) and put labor into a volunteer task of some sort that helps with the day-to-day needs of the coop. In contrast, other IMC local collectives are without any formally-defined membership and have minimal organizational structure.

Some IMC memberships require its members to sign a mission statement -- not every IMC has a formalized policy. Some collectives do ban members for repeated rules violations. Some feel that membership includes only those actively doing organizing or other IMC work, while some feel that it actually extends to every IMC contributor.

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Stated goals of independence

Indymedia was founded as an alternative to government and corporate-sponsored media, and seeks to facilitate people being able to publish their media as directly as possible. However, Indymedia has had struggles with issues regarding funding and freedom of speech.

For example, in September 2002, the Ford Foundation proposed funding for an Indymedia regional meeting. This was ultimately refused because many volunteers, especially some from IMC Argentina, were uncomfortable with accepting money from the Foundation, which some believe to be linked to the CIA.

In another example, some IMCs in Europe have faced legal action or threats of legal action related to questions of libel or hate speech. They took local, autonomous decisions to temporarily suspend the site while the different activist groups reorganized to find a consensual, constructive method of dealing with these problems and to increase openness and non-authoritarian organizing methods.

These two examples illustrate the confrontations that occur between Indymedia and more classic organizations, as well as the dichotomy that exists between different IMCs, their members and their philosophies.

Many operational decisions are made by a small core of individuals holding administrator passwords, but Indymedia strives to make decisions in an open, community level. Some decision-making, collaboration and mutual aid is required at the network, or "global" level, such as maintenance of the technical resources.

In addition to email and mailing lists, meetings and real-time communication are done via the Indymedia IRC network: irc.indymedia.org. Various technical and other organizing documentation is available at the Indymedia documentation wiki: docs.indymedia.org.

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Editorial policy

Although attempts have been made to formalize editorial standards, the automonous and independent nature of Indymedia has meant that many IMCs prefer their own local policies. As a result, many deal with similar issues and complaints, particularly around the matters of distinguish between criticism and hateful comments ("hate speech"); and the criteria for selecting the issues and authors for the websites' "featured articles".

Many IMCs now routinely remove from the front page "newswire" articles copied from corporate-run or state-run press sources. This policy (where implemented) is intended by those IMCs to keep Indymedia as an independent news source, rather than a blog of articles from existing news sources.

There is generally an editorial electronic mailing list, to which questions and complaints may be directed.

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Comparison to Wikinews

The Indymedia project is comparable is some ways to Wikinews. They both allow for any person to post news, regardless of "expertise". Both organizations also allow users and contributors to retain anonymity when adding content.

Some important differences exist. Wikinews emphasizes neutrality, while Indymedia openly supports certain stated political objectives and not others.

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Reputation

Image:Indymedia sticker.jpg Indymedia has a variable reputation, both amongst its users and outside critics. Some criticize Indymedia for its radical left wing and anti-capitalist bias in their reporting and coverage. Others believe that its editorial policy on feature selection and hiding or deletion of articles is overly biased in certain topic areas, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some critics argue that since anyone can publish with little to no editorial process, unsubstantiated allegations and conspiracy theories are often published as fact, along with inaccurate articles and content that can offend.

In its favor, others argue Indymedia is a viable or preferable alternative to corporate media. Its operations are conducted by activists around the world, who, though they may be lacking in journalistic training and corporate funding, tend to make up for this with enthusiasm for reporting issues of social justice and unique related events, which in their view, the corporate media under-reports or censors. For example the Bolivian Gas War in 2003 was virtually unheard of in the US media, while it received extensive worldwide and multilingual reporting through Indymedia. Another example is the February 15, 2003 anti-war protest in many US and European cities, which received detailed coverage written by its participants.

While Indymedia has global aspirations, IMCs are currently much more prevalent in the first world, with the US and Italy having the most IMCs. In particular, there are no IMCs in any currently Communist nation, and only one in the Muslim world (in Palestine).

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Removal from Google searches

In early May 2003, after receiving numerous complaints about newswire stories that referred to the Israeli military (IDF) as "Zionazi forces" (example) or to Israelis as "Zionazis" (example), Google temporarily stopped including some IMCs in Google News searches (many non-English IMCs remained in the search). Google News described the term "Zionazi" as a "degrading, hateful slur" and refused to index San Francisco Independent Media Center (SF Indymedia) because it used it; SF Indymedia agreed that it "could be considered hate speech. "[8] This spawned a petition which sought to promise that content the Indymedia community finds offensive will be moderated from the front page as a matter of editorial policy. IMCs were still included in normal Google web searches. As of October 2004, IMC articles were restored to Google News searches.

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Online confession

On November 25, 2002, Andrew Hampton McCrae confessed on the San Francisco branch of Indymedia to having murdered Red Bluff police officer David Mobilio. [9] McCrae was arrested the following day in New Hampshire. [10] His stated motive was to "bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country", and his defence was that he had incorporated himself as a company, Proud and Insolent Youth - a reference to Peter Pan - in order to avoid charges of murder, which do not apply to corporate entities. Responses in the original discussion thread were generally although not overwhelmingly dismissive of the police; the first comment was apparently supportive of the murderer's actions, while still others claimed (with no evidence) that the murdered officer had been a child molester. [11]

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Seizure of servers by the FBI

On October 7, 2004, the FBI seized some of IMC's servers, hosted by US-based Rackspace Managed Hosting. The servers in question were located in the United Kingdom and managed by the British arm of Rackspace, but some 20 mainly European IMC websites were affected, and several unrelated websites were affected (including the website of a Linux distribution). No reasons were given at first by the FBI and Rackspace for the seizure, in particular IMC was not informed. Rackspace was banned from giving further information about the incident. See: Indymedia report.

The seized servers were returned on October 13.

An October 8 press statement by Rackspace stated that the company had been forced to comply with a court order under the procedures laid out by the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which governs international police co-operation on "international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering". The investigation that led to the court order was said to have arisen outside of the U.S. Rackspace stated that they were prohibited on giving further detail.

AFP reported FBI spokesman Joe Parris, who said the incident was not an FBI operation, but that the subpoena had been issued at the request of the Italian and the Swiss governments. Again, no further details on specific allegations were given. UK involvement was denied in an answer given to a parliamentary question posed by Richard Allan, Liberal Democrat MP. [12]

Indymedia pointed out that they were not contacted by the FBI and that no specific information was released on the reasons of seizing the servers. Indymedia also sees the incident in the context of "numerous attacks on independent media by the US Federal Government", including a subpoena to obtain IP logs from Indymedia at the occasion of the Republican National Conference, the shut-down of several community radio stations in the US by the FCC, and a request by the FBI to remove a post on Nantes IMC containing a photograph of alleged undercover Swiss police. [13]

The move has also been condemned by the International Federation of Journalists, who stated that "The way this has been done smacks more of intimidation of legitimate journalistic inquiry than crime-busting" and called for an investigation [14]. It has also been criticised by European civil liberties organisation Statewatch [15] and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) [16].

In Italy, the federal prosecutor of Bologna Marina Plazzi confirmed that an investigation against Indymedia had been opened because of suspected "support of terrorism", in the context of Italian troops in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. The Italian minister of justice, Roberto Castelli, has refused further details. In November 2003, 17 members of parliament belonging to the extreme right wing, self-described "post-fascist" Alleanza Nazionale (AN), including Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, had demanded that Indymedia be shut down. A senior AN member and government official had announced the co-operation with US authorities (AN is a member of the Italian coalition government), and AN spokesman Mario Landolfi welcomed the FBI's seizure of the Indymedia servers. Left-wing Italian politicians denounced the move and called for an investigation. [17]

In more recent news, an Indymedia server was seized in the UK. This time it was the Bristol Indymedia server, which came to police attention when an anonymous post made on June 17 suggested an "action" against a freight train carrying new cars as part of a protest against cars and climate change in the run up to that year's Genoa G8 summit. [18] The police claimed that the poster broke the law by "incitement to criminal damage", and sought access logs from the server operators; later, it was claimed a member of the Bristol Indymedia group was arrested for incitement [19]. However, it is suggested that the members was merely "helping with enquiries" as opposed to being arrested.

Despite being warned by lawyers that the servers were "journalistic equipment" and subject to special laws [20], the police proceeded with the seizure. Indymedia is being supported in this matter by the National Union of Journalists, Liberty and Privacy International, along with others.

Some (but not all) of the legal documents relating to the confiscation of the servers were unsealed by a Texas district court [21] in August 2005, following legal action by the Electronic Frontier Foundation [22].

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Assaults on Indymedia journalists

In July, 2001 at the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Indymedia journalists and others were assaulted at the Diaz school. In an ongoing trial, twenty-nine Italian police officers were indicted for grievous bodily harm, planting evidence and wrongful arrest during a night-time raid on the Diaz School, where Indymedia had set up a temporary journalism center and radio station. A further 45 state officials, including police officers, prison guards and doctors, were charged with physically and mentally abusing demonstrators and journalists held in a detention centre in the nearby town of Bolzaneto. Video evidence from Indymedia and from the video activist group Undercurrents, is being used as key evidence for the prosecution.

On June 1, 2003, Indymedia journalist Guy Smallman was seriously injured by a police grenade [23] [24] in Geneva. He was covering protests in the city against the 29th G8 summit summit in nearby Evian for Indymedia and Image Sans Frontière.

On June 9, 2003, Alejandro Goldín, a photographer for Indymedia Argentina was assaulted by Federal Police officers while covering an incident between police and factory workers at the Brukman textile factory in Buenos Aires [25]. Although Goldín identified himself as press and showed his credentials, police tried to smash his equipment. Goldín was beaten on the head with a shotgun, shoved to the ground and kicked repeatedly by officers.

On June 20, 2005, Ernesto Torres, a journalist with Indymedia Rosario and Free Air Community Radio, was assaulted [26] by members of the pro-government group Movimiento Barrios de Pie, while covering a march in opposition to the regime of the Argentinian president Néstor Kirchner.

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See also

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For an alternative approach see:

  • CommonTimes Be the editor at CommonTimes, select the most important stories and share your views
  • Wikinews
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External links

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