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Media Activism & Independent Media

A shift in Indymedia?

by act now

Fri, Jul 9, 2004 7:05PM

DC Indymedia, which in the absence of an umbrella US Indymedia portal often serves as the de facto site individuals visit for US news, has begun to stray far away from IMC principles of unity.

IMC principles of unity describe an open newswire. Indymedia centers often have moderation policy to remove personal attacks, commercial spam copyright material, etc. But DC Indymedia has added a new twist to the mix: hiding material that editors label as "fabrication". That's right DC Indymedia editors have annointed themselves the gatekeepers of truth, hiding massive amounts of material as "fabrication", with dramatically different standards for what counts as fabrication based editors' whim.

Visit dc.indymedia.org and look at hidden articles. You'll find a disturbing and growing number of articles hidden as "fabrication"

Moreover, while editorial work is supposed to be a collaborative process, over 90% of material is hidden by a single editor (who has refused requests to step down in this role).

Let's not let this kind of abuse grow in the Indymedia network.

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§yuck

by flower

Fri, Jul 9, 2004 7:46PM

i figured this was just another crank right wing nut attacking indymedia, but it really does look like the editors there are hiding material based on their own ideas of what is true and what isn't. i guess if that's ok for their indymedia, whatever, but it's not going to start happening here is it? i'd hate for indymedia to turn into something like that. i thought imcs were supposed to be open.

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§as Jesus said

by cast the beam out of your eye

Fri, Jul 9, 2004 7:48PM

Jesus said to cast the beam out of your own eye before you start telling someone else to take the splinter out of their eye.

Now you may not respect or believe in Jesus at all but he did make a good point against hypocrisy such as yours.

Haven't you noticed that both Indybay and sfindymedia hide many posts just because they don't like the politics (often offending certain sensibilities) of some people and also allowing crass, vulgar personal attacking posts to stay up (especially those who oppose a certain ideology that many feel conflicted about)?

So before you start complaining about dc indymedia, I suggest you pay attention to what happens right here.

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§Another view

by Mike Rhodes (MikeRhodes [at] Comcast.net)

Fri, Jul 9, 2004 9:30PM

Another explanation for hiding articles is that Indymedia is under attack by the right. See http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/07/1687797.php for an example of this phenomena. Will Indymedia allow disinformation, lies, pornography, and Nazi propaganda to proliferate here? Not if I can stop it.

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§ Must be a record, only 50sec til post deleted

by Must be a record, only 50sec til post delete

Sat, Jul 10, 2004 5:22PM

Must be a record, only 50sec til post deleted

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§not analogous

by flower

Sun, Jul 11, 2004 7:28PM

i have nothing against the editors of this and other indymedia sites hiding hate material, nasty personal attacks, libelous material, and copyrighted material. that's pretty common on most indymedia sites. but the dc site really is going a step beyond what's done here. adding "fabrication" to the list of reasons and then routinely hiding material because the editors decide what counts as true and what does not (something very different than just hiding racist and troll postings) is something pretty extreme and a violation of the imc principles of unity at a high-profile indymedia site.

i don't know if public pressure will stop it or if there's some other way a site can be accountable to the rest of the network, but it really should stop.

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§jesus said?

by yo

Sun, Jul 11, 2004 10:08PM

jesus talked about shooting beams from your eyes? cool.

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§editorial policy

by .

Tue, Aug 24, 2004 9:08PM

the editorial policy re "fabrication" has been around on the dc imc for almost 4 years. it was written into the policy, in direct response to fabricated headlines and "news" completely made up from whole cloth, by zionists against Palestinians.

if you make shit up and pass it off as news, it will get taken down as "fabrication."
if you have a legit problem, write to the editorial list here:
imc-dc-editorial [at] indymedia.org

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