Independent Media Center

The Independent Media Center (aka Indymedia or the IMC) started as a vision for a global, open network of DIY journalists and alternative media activists. The overall network is decentralized, with core collectives formed at the local level or along themes such as Print Media or Biotech. Along with contributing their own media, these core organizers maintain the IMC's open publishing infrastructure, enabling different people throughout the internet to publish their news.

Overview

The politics of Indymedia users tend toward the left wing of the political spectrum —often being of anarchist or socialist or left-leaning political inclinations. Because it aspires to operate without an overbearing editorial hierarchy and operates in a decentralized manner, the organization of Indymedia is likewise considered to aspire to be fundamentally anarchist. Its operations are conducted by dedicated activists around the world, whom though may be lacking in journalistic professionalism and corporate funding, tend to make up with enthusiasm for reporting issues of social justice and unique related events which corporate media underreports 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.

The Indymedia project was started in late November at the WTO Meeting of 1999, to cover the protests of the anti-globalization movement against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington. By 2002, there were 89 local IMCs around the world spread between 31 countries plus the West Bank and 6 continents. By January 2005, the Indymedia network has grown enormously to what is now over 160 Indymedia outlets around the world. All this expansion has left little time for developing global standards and some things common have lacked in upgrading. The country with the most IMCs is the United States with 39, followed by Canada with 11.

A current list of all IMC websites should be located in the lower-left column of every IMC website, or at least the homepage (e.g., www.indymedia.org). A graphical way to find the location of Indymedia Centers has been provided elsewhere (http://manifestor.org/john/worldkit/).

Introduction

IMCs produce print, audio, 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, breaking down the wall of separation between 'news makers' and 'news consumers'. The other model which separates news makers and news consumers reflects the majority of past and present "alternative" and "mainstream" media organisations, both of which have been historically led by relatively small, closed groups that determine content from the top of an editorial hierarchy. Some proponents of the Indymedia concept argue that IMCs are popular not because of a few well-regarded journalists and commentators, but rather because they allow the direct participation of all, encouraging users to "be the media" regardless of whether or not they are telling the truth; the assumption of such a statement is that by definition, other corporate models are assumed to be telling the truth. However, according to analysis by Noam Chomsky, Ben Badakian and many others, corporate media models as they become ever more concentrated operate more as forms of mass manipulation, 'opinion guidance', and news omission and less as a form of 'objectivity' or unbiased professionalism which allows a form of education for democratic input. Another assumption of the argument that presumes the ongoing unpopularity of IMCs "by definition", belies ever increasing web 'hits' of many Indymedia outlets, and furthermore, it belies the statitics that show corporate television watching for news is down not Indymedia adherence. In addition, corporate journalists themselves are increasingly worried and depressed about directions their model of journalism is taking them, as its coverage becomes thinner, less analytical and subservient to capitalist / corporatist ideology.

The origins of the IMCs themselves came out of protests against unprofessional biases in corporate reporting. The first IMC node, attached as it was to the Seattle anti-corporate globalization protests, was seen as a means to balance out the lack of objectivity, lack of professionalism, and lack of democratic input that the corporate media themselves had shown on topics both economic and political to do with the externalities of corporate-led globalization. Proof of this is that the original Seattle IMC, set up for the 1999 anti-corporate globalization conference protests, was seen itself as a protest against corporate media models failling in their self-proclaimed job of getting information out in an unbiased manner about the cause of protests and associated global and national externalities of neoliberal, top-down, World Bank debt servitude pressured models of globalization. Since such information about externalities of these policies were omitted in increasingly propagandic, 'salesmanship' models of reporting which eroded their claims of journalistic professionalism in much of the First World, the original Seattle IMC represented a different global media model that innately crossed and integrated news across national boundaries about externalities of the corporate-led globalization model. The international linkages from the start allowed for the input for all those left out of the dialogue of coporate led globalization.

As a result, between 1999 and 2001, IMC newswires tended to be focused on up-to-the-minute coverage of protest: from local demonstrations to summits where anti-globalization movement protests were occurring. After the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, the IMC community has been increasingly an organizing node of citizen based 9-11 research in addition to its original activist goals. Some IMCs worldwide have been repressed by governmental powers that be, in attempts to remove independent news sources that promote multiple perspectives and omitted facts on many current events. Records of this repression are covered in other sections in more detail.

As the IMC has grown, users have added more news and analysis, with a strong emphasis in favour of first-hand news regarding corporations, the whole range of human rights (including social and economic rights, such as the right to housing and jobs, which are often seen as leftist human rights, as well as political rights, such as the right not to be arrested, tortured, or killed for one's political viewpoint, which are often seen as rightist human rights), and the natural environment. The coverage is often unique: for example, during the economic/political crises in Argentina during 2001 and 2002, many of the groups and individuals which helped in opposing the government used the IMC as a place to publish information regarding their activities and pictures from the protests.

On October 7, 2004, several of IMC's servers based in the United Kingdom at Rackspace in London were temporarily seized persuant to a court order, disabling about 20 IMC websites which were hosted there. It is still not definitely known which country originated the request for the seizure. (IMC) (http://indymedia.org/en/static/fbi)

Structure

Local IMC collectives are expected to be open and inclusive of individual members of a variety of different local left-wing, anarchist, Communist and other leftist activist organizations, 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 involve the censoring of articles which promote racism, sexism, and homophobia.

The structure is non-hierarchical in terms of political power relationships, though 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. Some say the existence of numerous redundant communication channels (such as publicly archived mailing lists lists.indymedia.org, wiki pages and local face-to-face meetings) makes it difficult for those at the top of these limited hierarchies to have much coercive power.

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. They also have to find ways of dealing with deliberate vandalism.

As they have grown and matured, Indymedia collectives have developed diverse methods of internal formal and informal self-governance. The general principles of non-hierarchical structure and consensus-based decision-making have resulted in an array of organizational models.

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 totally informal without any formally-defined membership and very minimal policy and organizational structures.

Some feel that membership includes only those actively doing organizing or other IMC work, while some feel that it actually extends to every IMC participant, from techies to facilitators to media-makers to users commenting on an article. That is, the concept that Indymedia is comprised of its thousands of media-makers, in addition to those doing infrastructure work such as keeping the servers online.

The Indymedia community's strive for non-hierarchical organization has caused numerous conflicts and tensions, which are perhaps more apparent to observers given the transparent nature of the IMC; that is, relative to traditional closed, hierarchical organizations where such conflict is kept private and the public spin purports a unified voice. Examples of tension in the IMC's evolution abound and can be found by browsing the public archives of the organization's mailing lists: lists.indymedia.org, or by using Google to search these archives for specific items.

In the spirit of Indymedia's participatory openness, critics (both observers and IMC participants) are encouraged to get involved and try to lend their energy to solutions. While working on a solution is not a prerequisite for submitting criticism, the atmosphere of Indymedia tends to value constructive action.

Role vis-a-vis international media networks

Indymedia is sometimes considered by its supporters to be a competitor to the large international media networks, such as CNN, News Corporation, ABC-USA or the BBC. However, it would be more accurate to say that Indymedia is an example of an open publishing news network/community. Because of its open organizing structure and its internal rules (e.g., copyleft) that no Indymedia center can become a commercial or for-profit organization, it would be impossible for an entity to buy it in a take-over bid.

Stated goals of independence

Indymedia was founded in opposition to government and corporate-sponsored media, and seeks to facilitate people being able to publish their media as directly as possible. Resistance to filters being applied to non-corporate media outlets appears has been challenging for the IMC.

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 (http://argentina.indymedia.org), 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 are just two incidents among many that further exemplified Indymedia's fundamental opposition to government and corporate-linked funding. There have been many tensions within local IMC's and within the broader Indymedia network. These are indicative of the growing pains that any large, rapidly expanding organization faces, and in particular of the anarchistic style of cooperation without restraint this is embodied in the Indymedia model.

Most substantive decisions in Indymedia are made at the community level, however constant collaboration and mutual aid is required at the network, or "global" level -- especially in the maintenance of the technical resources (e.g., servers, software, technical knowledge, etc.). Matters of finance, legal and other issues are also processed at the network level, to the extent that they affect the network.

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.

Comparison to Wikipedia

Indymedia has its own wikis for collectively creating documents such as technical handbooks. There are many similarities between Wikipedia and Indymedia, as well as differences. For instance, in Wikipedia, a contributor who finds their contribution deleted can simply re-edit, perhaps fine-tuning their writing to meet the objection of whoever deleted their post. Also, deletions are not anonymous, as they often are at Indymedia. A de facto hierarchy develops at Indymedia, where a small group of people control passwords and administrative access. Similarly, Wikipedia develops such a hierarchy through the appointment of so-called "sysops" who can delete content.

With respect to banning users, Wikipedia has quite an elaborate process which includes finely graded penalties, such as user-name banning and IP banning for a period of one month. Transcripts of such process are automatically posted online, as they are conducted in wiki format, and may be read by the party under sanction as well as others. At Indymedia, however, bans may be put into effect by any user with an administrator password; such bans may be discussed with other administrators, but it is also possible that the only person aware of the ban would be the person who put the ban on. Other administrators may discover the banned ip if they parse the banned ip list on the indymedia software, and they may or may not correlate that list to a list of known, authorized banned ip numbers. In practice, most such bans are perhaps mentioned, at least, and may even be discussed, but there is little if any indication that such discussions at indymedia are conducted publicly, nor is there any indication that such discussions are in any manner published. Thus, what is public at Wikipedia, and subject to full debate and dissent, is, in essence, quasi-secret at Indymedia.

Editorial policy, diverse views, and censorship

A policy was created by the US-IMC Editorial Working Group and consensed upon in August 2004 which may or may be not used in forming local editorial policies. Indeed, it is not necessary to have one at all, but, like Indymedia Colorado, to be alert to any complaints which may come in. Other IMC's encourage discussion, and may, like Arizona, feature a discussion of that issue. Not infrequently, complaints arise, typically in two areas.

Posts of a "hate-speech" nature - racist, sexist, homophobic or similarly proscribed - are at times difficult to distinguish between harshly worded criticisms which should not be deleted. Another source of complaints are deletions of posts which do not necessarily violate "hate speech" proscriptions. The UK site has acquired a reputation for such deletions, and became the target of a campaign to change that policy, as have some west coast US IMC's.

A separate issue, more consistent with purely editorial concerns, is the selection of articles for featuring in the center column of sites which have a column based format. Many of the editorial decisions are an outgrowth of the format presented to users, which vary considerably. For instance, the New York IMC has a relatively uncluttered presentation to the user, with drop down boxes for selecting topic groups. Often, the strucure of the user interface has dramatic consquences for the overall perception of fairness despite whatever purely editorial decisions are implemented.

There is generally an editorial listserv, to which questions and complaints may be directed. There is no guarantee that anyone on the listserv will respond, but often the responses are multiple and helpful.

Reputation

Indymedia has a variable reputation, both amongst its users and outside critics. Conservatives and some liberals often attack Indymedia primarily for the range ideologies it represents or perceived biases. Radical critics, some of whom are contributors, often object to process, or lack of process, in what are called "editorial" decisions by collectives but may reflect other concerns.

Others claim that since anyone can publish with little to no editorial process, opinions -- sometimes characterised by 'mainstream media' and its supporters as conspiracy theories -- often are published as fact, along with inaccurate (sometimes wildly so) articles and content that can offend (e.g., anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, racist, etc.). Other critics contend that feature selection and hiding or deletion of articles is overly biased in certain topic areas, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A response to these criticisms is, firstly, that Indymedia's existence is not confined to just the Indymedia website, and secondly, that IMC sites are vulnerable to vandalism or sabotage. Strongly rooted in diverse local groups, IMC's can take autonomous, transparent action against what they see as sabotage. One difference between Indymedia and Wikipedia is that due to its nature, Indymedia has no prohibition against POV postings and in general, criticism toward Indymedia tends to pertain to point of view issues.

On the Indymedia website, any comment can be hidden -- with record and review available only to the site administrators. Articles can also be hidden from the front page, after which they're viewable only on a "view all posts" page. This can sometimes lead to accusations of "censorship" from the author whose article has been hidden; Indymedia administrators will often point out in response, this is their method of maintaining editorial control over the front page without deleting the article all together, and that refusing to provide a platform for any and all views is not the same thing as censorship. Some Indymedia collectives rarely hide anything, while others stick to tighter editorial guidelines. At least a summary of these guidelines are available on the website.

IP banning is easy with the software used by Indymedia administrators, such as dadaImc. The original ostensible purpose of IP blocking is to block spam and commercial software which may harvest IMC posts for reposting -- or perhaps for analysis by intelligence agencies. While not common, it has on occasion been alleged that they abuse that power to exclude points of view which differ from that of administrators.

The IMCs' open newswires have generated some controversy. For example, in early May 2003, after receiving numerous complaints about newswire stories that referred to the Israeli military (IDF) as "Zionazi forces" (example (http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/11403/index.php)) or to Israeli Zionists as "Zionazis" (example (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/02/52318.html)), Google decided to stop including some IMCs in Google News searches (many non-English IMCs remained in the search). This spawned a petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/IMCgoogl/petition.html) which sought to promise that content the Indymedia community finds offensive will be removed in the future. The IMCs are still included in normal Google searches, however. As of October 2004, it appears that IMCs have now been restored to Google News searches.

There have been complaints and discussion of innumerable other posts, as has been the nature of open publishing from the early usenet to the present. Notably, however, there has been no similar outcry concerning posts of an anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab nature, by Google or any other organization.

A California man once confessed to having murdered a police officer on www.indybay.org. His motive was to "bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country." The apparent reaction from readers was for the first comment posted apparently in support of the murderer's actions. Other comments followed condemning or condoning the murder, while still others claimed (with no evidence provided) that the murdered officer had been a child molester.[3] (http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/11/1545326_comment.php) However, since there's no authentication of who is posting a comment on Indymedia (e.g. login ID and password), there's no way of knowing whether or not the comments praising the murder were posted by the article's author himself, or whether some of the more offensive comments were deliberately posted as a form of vandalism. Furthermore, the author might have been trying to act as an agent provocateur, trying to assosiciate Indymedia supporters with violence. Anonymity of authorship is thus a two-edged sword on Indymedia, usable for both good and bad.

Blind spots do exist in Indymedia. To date Indymedia lacks representation from any currently Communist nation, and from most countries dominated by Islam.

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 (http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml).

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.

Many observers have remarked that it is highly unusual for a US agency to act on behalf of Italian and Swiss authorities in the UK. The legality of a US agency seizing servers physically located in the UK has been questioned. Any UK involvement was denied in an answer given to a parliamentary question posed by Richard Allan, Liberal Democrat MP. [4] (http://www.richardallan.org.uk/index.php?m=200410)

Indymedia has condemned the fact 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. [5] (http://indymedia.org/en/static/fbi)

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 [6] (http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Index=2734&Language=EN). It has also been criticised by European civil liberties organisation Statewatch [7] (http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/oct/04uk-usa-indymedia.htm) and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) [8] (http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/61789/?PHPSESSID=03df420baf331a8e660097d631a96796).

Several commentators have speculated on the possible justifications. One early theory was that it had to be understood in the context of a September 2004 post to Nantes Indymedia, featuring the photographs and details of two Swiss undercover policemen. The men had allegedly acted as agent provocateur at the 2003 G8 riots in Geneva, and allegedly continued to collect information on Swiss activists. Nantes Indymedia stated that they removed some of the pictures as a result of pressure from the FBI, but later put them back in a version masking their face. (A cached version of the original page is available here (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:EWMWT-NGfvMJ:nantes.indymedia.org/article.php3%3Fid_article%3D3910+&hl=en), note that the pictures have been removed, but they are available here (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/mtoups/nantes/copsinnantes.htm).) Daniel Zapelli, senior federal prosecutor of the canton of Geneva, confirmed that an investigation had been opened against Indymedia. The Italian newspaper Il Manifesto reported that Marc Olderlin, the attorney of the two Swiss policemen, acknowledged contacts between Swiss authorities and the FBI but denied that the seizure of servers had been requested.[9] (http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/112083.shtml)

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. [10] (http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/112083.shtml)

Recent developments

In April of 2005, Arizona Indymedia became central to monitoring, discussing and organizing a response to the Minuteman Project, which purported to create a neighborhood watch on the US-Mexico border.

Indymedia came under increasing pressure for policies of deletion and IP blocking, which critics contend amount to censorship. That debate included left wing as well as conservative critics, and often centered around controversial topics such as Israel, Palestine, anti-semitism and racism.

In May of 2005, several IMC sites were hacked. Users were redirected to a site entitled g00ns.com, where an adversarial message mocked them about the hacking incident.

See also

• Wikipedia:Guide for Indymedia authors
• List of IMCs

External links

• Homepage (http://www.indymedia.org/)
• First ever Indymedia post, made November 24, 1999 (http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/1999/11/2.shtml)
• On open publishing (http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openpub.html)
• Frequently Asked Questions (http://process.indymedia.org/faq.php3)
• Organizing principles (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/NewImcHowTo)
• Indymedia Documentation Project (http://docs.indymedia.org/) (wiki)
• Indymedia IRC (http://irc.indymedia.org/) (chat, help, online meetings)
• Indymedia listservs (http://lists.indymedia.org/) (mailing lists)
• MIR Indymedia publishing software (http://mir.indymedia.org/)
• SF-ACTIVE Indymedia publishing software (http://sfactive.indymedia.org/)
• Cyprus admits CIA campaign against Indymedia (http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/156324.php)
• FBI seizes two Indymedia servers (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html?oneclick=true) (Sydney Morning Herald; cost-free registration req'd)
• Indymedia Watch (http://indymediawatch.blogspot.com/)

de:Indymedia eo:Indymedia es:Indymedia fr:Indymédia he:אינדימדיה it:Independent Media Center nl:Indymedia pl:Indymedia pt:Centro de Mídia Independente sv:Indymedia