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I cant help thinking...

Ian H | 02.05.2001 12:01

...that this site is just a load of left wing propaganda, rather than an independent view of the news. The unbelieveable bias shown in your editorial makes you as bad as anyone else. Damn, that hypocrite phrase is on the tip of my tongue again.

Ian

Ian H
- e-mail: london_ian@yahoo.com

Comments

Hide the following 38 comments

see above

02.05.2001 12:09

Define "independent" then...

tom collins
mail e-mail: tomcolluins88@hotmail.com

erm,

02.05.2001 12:12

"free of all bias", which this site definitely is not.

Ian H
mail e-mail: london_ian@yahoo.com

There is no such thing as unbiased journalism

02.05.2001 12:25

There is no such thing as unbiased journalism.
You just have to look at the corporate news to see that. However there is journalistic integrity, and the indymedia has that I think.
And "independent" means the media center doesn't belong to any corporation or company, is voluntary and organized horizontally through direct democracy and consensus.

Daniel

Daniel

lardy dar!

02.05.2001 12:30

IT IS BIG & IT IS CLEVER!!! SO THERE.

flip
mail e-mail: gnvqli13@reaseheath.ac.uk

unbiased media

02.05.2001 12:35

As this site shows the views of its contibutors whichever way they may lean and hence is unbiased, otherwise your view would not be shown. And it is ... hence .

anon

What's independent?

02.05.2001 12:37

No one is independent - but this site certainly gave good coverage from the point of view of the participants.

I'm not involved with any of the groups participating yesterday - but I felt this site gave a more detailed, more up to date and a less hysterical version of yesterday's events.

You can never get completly objective news coverage - so listen to both sides and keep an open mind

Mark

ok

02.05.2001 12:39

ok fair point, but I was talking about the editorial not the comments from all the contributors. It is good to be able to give my views on things, but I dont agree with the left wing views of the editorial staff. Sorry for any offence.

Ian H

An explanation?

02.05.2001 12:59

Perhaps any truly independant media would /seem/ left-leaning and biased just by contrast with the corporate media, simply by being a more accurate reflection of public opinion.

Another factor must be that "left-leaning" people and contributors are more likely to be attracted to a site such as this, since the right-wing are more often than not amply catered for by Murdoch et al. And as a site seems to have such a tendancy , it attracts even more from the left due to reputation.

Whichever of these you agree with (or even if you don't agree with any), I think most would agree that Indymedia does a fantastic job of challenging mainstream media propaganda.

Genoseize Therat
mail e-mail: genoseize@hotmail.com
- Homepage: http://www.genoseize.co.uk

Breaking News (and wind)

02.05.2001 13:33

Where else can you say, smug, fascist, trumped-up Dictator wanabee, Tony Blair, sucks donkey turd? In the Guardian?

Un Biased

Read their mission statement

02.05.2001 13:39

The mission statement on this website sets out very clearly where they're coming from.

Extract:

"Inherent in the mainstream corporate media is a strong bias towards Capitalism's power structures, and it is an important tool in propagating these structures around the globe. While the mainstream media conceal their manifold biases and alignments, we clearly state our position. Indymedia UK does not attempt to take an objective and impartial standpoint: Indymedia UK clearly states its subjectivity."

Read the full statement at:
 http://uk.indymedia.org/ms.php3

I agree with other here, they provided the fullest and most factual reporting of the events in the streets yesterday.

Peter J
- Homepage: http://uk.indymedia.org/ms.php3

no such thing

02.05.2001 15:21

as editorial staff...because things dont get edited here...you just post what you want and thats that. anyone who wants to contribute can freely do so. therefore you could call this pretty independent. because we dont depend on some fuckwits idea upstairs that "oh we cant publish this article, its too strong in its meaning" or cutting an article in half to get just 250 words out of it, cause there isnt more space for such and so on and so on.
mainstream media is shit, owned by companies only interrested in making money, brainwashing people and not telling the "truth"!!! if there is such a thing as truth.
cu
jojo

jojo
mail e-mail: jojo@redbricks.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.redbricks.org.uk

Bias? Give me overt bias anyday!

02.05.2001 15:39

I'd prefer overt bias to bias hidden behind the supposed unbiased reporting of "real" journalists.

As you can see, your biased piece about bias on this site was quite happily published. Anyone can publish. Publish or be damned!

Colonel Panic

What Independent Means?

02.05.2001 17:01

"Independent" for me means free from other people excerting pressure - being able to say what you like without fear, or pressure from elsewhere.

Sheffield Mayday
mail e-mail: sheffieldmayday@disinfo.net

winging it

03.05.2001 00:20

If you want right wing views, go straight back to main stream media.

greenity hall
mail e-mail: greenity@hotmail.com

just a thought

04.05.2001 11:08

Could it just be that the majority of people who think freely and objectively about the situation we're in conclude that the present system isn't working, and that that there is a lot to be said for green and socialist ideas?

freethinker

Re: mainstream media is shit

04.05.2001 11:23

the guardian is kind of alright...

The "independent" (no relation) isn't too bad....

BTW I think we got the guardian on our side
pretty much by the end of it..

Hugh Jones

The Guardian and The Independent

04.05.2001 12:16

The Guardian and the Independent have their place, although the Guardian has the obvious advantage of an enormous squad of international jurnolists - paid jurnolists. It's wide coverage is commendable, whilst also being an effective alternative to the Murdoch goliath press.

I can't help feeling the IMC is in a competly different sphere, although as a activist news wire for activists it executes it's role effectivly as well. As for bias - i'd rather have the IMC's viewpoint that a well-paid, comfortable jurnolists "objective" opinion. Sometimes the BBC is so objective it doesn't seem to say anything at all - ITN and Sky can be anything but. Surley we are talking about the accurate reporting of facts, rather than the political standpoint the IMC makes?

elec40
mail e-mail: davedeans2001@yahoo.co.uk

Guardian

04.05.2001 12:16

The Guardian (or any other corporate media) did not report the recent >10% increase in UK defence spending, while other increases in health and education were widely publicised... When I wrote in to ask why this was so, they forwarded my question to their defence editor... he never got back to me...



Schmardian

What is independent?

04.05.2001 13:09

True - Indymedia is absolutely upfront about its inherent bias. One of the problems with the claim that the maintream media makes about being 'objective' is that it is clearly a lie. The Sun reported virtually word for word the press releases from the Ministry of Defence operation in the Falkands/Malvinas campaign (it was one of the onlyt hand-picked publications allowed access to military positions during the conflict - the Guardian was not); Murdoch recently stopped one of his Aussie publications printing articles on China's brutal regime in Tibet as his Asia-based Star TV franchise was being considered.

The claim of being 'independent' is one which has been grossly misused.

The discussion then about independent reportage then is loaded - I agree to some extent that propaganda from any side (be it pro or anti capitalism) clouds the issues and I feel that the 'truth' (whatever that may be) is often trully radical - no spin is needed when it is reported that nuclear waste trains are runnig along the train track at the bottom of your garden for example.

Ideally, the 'truth' could stand on its own being reported through non-hierarchical community news facilities but until that point there is always going to be some bias - we live in diisive times.

Dan

The Guardian sucks

04.05.2001 13:59

The Guardian has been worse than the other newspapers because by allowing fools like George Monbiot and John Vidal to use it as a platform to diss our movement it's driving a wedge between their imaginary fluffies and spikies.

That said, I still flick through it because of all the mainstream newspapers the Guardian is the least bad.

Lemming
mail e-mail: lemming@grandtheftcyber.com

Ah well

04.05.2001 14:15

Well, agreed; it has a high noise:wanker ratio. Martin Amis can shove a long literary analysis of pornography (guess what! deprived women become porn actresses!) up his self-indulgent arse. And he probably did. But there was also a very consilatory article on Quebec protest a while back, despratly begging for activists to make the trip to Canada, irrespective of the RCMP. Afaic, it's a case of filing through the bull.

It is still the less-bad of all the newspapers.

elec40
mail e-mail: davedeans2001@yahoo.co.uk

guardian

04.05.2001 14:29

The Guardian gives interesting and supportive coverage to protests and activism in other countries, but is dismissive of activism in UK.

johnny

Don't Diss Monbiot

04.05.2001 14:33

George Monbiot has written a wicked book called
Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain.

He may not always agree with you / us / whatever
but he's not dissing anyone.

Mr S

George Monbiot

04.05.2001 15:48

I've read Capitive State, and it's quite good. However it's politically flawed in that it fails to point out that Thatcherite neoliberalist reform is just the latest stage in a capitalist system that has been screwing us over for centuries. He also seems to fetishise social democratic structures and small businesses when they are still based on a watered-down version of the same principle of wage slavery.

He even praises Michael Meacher, who owns let me see...is it 8 houses? For fuck's sake! Even if Meacher isn't too bad for a New Labour politician (which I seriously doubt), he's part of the cabinet that unanimously decided to wage war with the people of Yugoslavia (to cite just one of their atrocities), which makes him a cold blooded murderer in my book.

I stand by my comments - Monbiot is a complete asshole, a hardline fluffy all the way. He writes absolute shit in the Guardian almost every week and has a history of condemning brave and dedicated activists who go beyond the legally sanctioned forms of protest and actually inflict some damage on the system that screws us over.

He's certainly not an anti-capitalist and *not* part of our movement. Remember when he said car workers should be laid off? Or when he continually argued for fuel tax? The guy's just a middle class green wanker who knows nothing about biocentrism and doesn't place his bleeding heart liberal reformist ideas in the wider context of class struggle.

Are you suggesting that we can destroy the capitalist system without using violent methods? Or that capitalism is OK just so long as we reform it a bit so that it's only moderately repressive and limits the rate at which it kills people and the planet?

Someone needs to get George Monbiot in the face with a custard pie at his next public appearance and tell him to piss off, same goes for John Vidal, Anita Roddick and all the middle class parasites that plague our movement.

Lemming
mail e-mail: lemming@grandtheftcyber.com

George (what-bandwagon-next) Monbiot

04.05.2001 16:04

He is dissing people aplenty. I don't know him personally so this is based only on his writing. The most resent article he wrote on Mayday typically dissed RTS, as a disfunctional group, (true sometimes) but he talked of a meeting as if he was there, when he wasn't. So it was way of the mark - irrelevant to the article, and wholely inaccurate. Maybe he wanted to point out to his new influential friends that he was in the 'know' and 'understood' these 'young' people once.
This follows comments that digging up grass won't save the world, as in last years Mayday - yes of course when an action is quoted, simplified and taken out of context it can sound silly, but the ideas behind last years action were serious attempts to avoid confrontation and show examples of alternatives. Not a raging success but an attempt none the less.
Now he has throw his lot in with Globalise Resistance (swp+others) basically because the anarchists and environmentalists are sick of his defence of the State as the cure to all our evils.
He is a journalist that plainly found the movement useful when he needed credibility, but now his books are selling well and he has a regular column he is a bit embarassed by it all, hense the stream of comments.
Up to recently i respected his research (which turns out to be done by un-credited helpers) but now i begin to wonder how accurate that is if the small parts i know are so wrong.
Anyway i am going off the subject, basically this shows that journalism is a powerful tool and has to be watched carefully, it is too easy for it to slip, easy for the new friends to influence, too easy to use to settle old scores, too easy to abuse. And shows we have to educate ourselves and not rely too much on those articulate and confident ones that tend to change course when is suits.

julie
mail e-mail: julie@ziplip.com

wankiness

05.05.2001 10:07

You're all just a bunch of self-indulgent middle class wankers who wouldn't know real struggle if it hit you on the head.
You despise the proletariat. If not, prove what you doing to reach out to ordinary working class people.
Oh, and none of you are able to spell - despite the private school educations you all undoubtedly had.

ps - my middle class wanker thesis is proved by the fact you all have so much to say about The Guardian. If you were serious about revolution rather than simply being poseurs, you'd care a lot more about what was in The Mirror.

Wat Tyler

If we were working class we'd read the Mirror

05.05.2001 13:46

But the Mirror sucks!
It's almost as bad as the Sun.
The Guardian is clearly the least bad newspaper
we've got.

Why should all working class people have to read
the Mirror? The tabloids are full of propaganda
and inconsequential shite. What's wrong with
reading the Guardian if it's at least a SLIGHTLY better
alternative.

You've got to rise above your prejudices. I know
it's hard, I was REALLY surprised the first time
I met a black person who liked classical music,
for example. You really shouldn't assume that
just because someone has a crap job (and let's
face it that's pretty much the definition of
being working class) they automatically have to read
rags like the Mirror.



Apparantly, according to John Pilger, The Mirror
used to be a decent left wing paper, kind of the
working class' s very own paper which stuck
up for their interests and stuff.. that was before
rupert murdoch launched The Sun and the management
of the mirror decided to copy it in order to survive..
before the new wave of 'journalists' came in,
the ones who refer to the readers as 'punters'.

Tabloids are utter wank. Their 'news' stories tend
to focus on let me see,
The Royal Family
Posh Spice
David Beckham

um.. that's about it really.

oh yeah "Bogus" Asylum Seekers.

And semi naked girls as well.

At least the Guardian tries to be quality orientated,
at least it has a vague policy of writing the truth,
rather than making stuff up.

So what if it's a middle class paper?
If the mirror is supposed to be a working class paper
then it's a pretty fucking patronising one.

And I'm sick of people calling the middle class wankers.
Does that make me a wanker then just because I was born 'middle class'? What do you expect me to do? Quit university, get a crap job and work on my cockney / scouse / brummy accent? How FAKE would that be!

I

Mr S

Capitalism

05.05.2001 16:44

I am from Moscow and so my English is not so good. I live through the first 35 years
of my live under communism. Let me tell you that this was hard life.
My home was in block of state flats which no-one in UK can imagine how bad this was.
I was work in state factory for wage which in UK was £5 a week. Food was very bad
and no real choice was to be made in shops which mainly were owned by state.
In this country you have more rights and freedoms than I had in ussr.
You must realise that your lives without capitalism would be much less.
.

Jorg

lives much less

06.05.2001 02:01

> You must realise that your
> lives without capitalism
> would be much less.

If I were to fail the coroprate media on anything, even more than their cheerleading for the police (insofar as the BBC seemed to become a PR video company for Scotland Yard etc), it would be their failure to address the fact that the demonstrators at Mayday prompt above all the raising of *alternatives*. Which means alternatives to the gulag *and* to UKplc. Whether a capitalist EuroSuperState would be better or worse than statist Russia is not really my most pressing concern - that would be finding a way of allowing the freedoms both denied. Why choose between these two? Because they're the noisiest? And, given that there's no reason to choose, why even compare them?

SuSIE Q

oh and another thing

06.05.2001 02:47

just while I'm ranting, this made me smile - and then worry about the final panel:
 http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2001/04/30/tomo/index.html
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
placing this below in case the html isn't live 'n' sparky:
click here, d00dz!

SuSIE Q

middle class wankers

06.05.2001 11:58

lemming and julie - slag off monboit for his middle class (band wagon jumping), i dont think he is any bandwagon jumper as he has been involved with issues since 1983/84- as for being middle class so fucking what- am i included or excluded as i am from north of newcastle? a place fucked by capitilsm?- is our movement to filter out genuine people because of their class? - U slag him for saying fuel tax should go up, i take it u dont agree? As a enviromentalist i agree fully - car use is a luxery and cars should be driven off the road(excuse the pun). by heavily taxing the ones who can afford to run cars(yes i know only the rich will be able to afford it)we could build a better public transport system and encourage more cycalists as the roads will be less conjested and therfore more safe, and at the same time withdrawing billions of pounds going into multinational car manufactuers and our good friends at shell/bp et al. Not sure who said we should show solidarity to the fuel protesters - but for enviromental reasons alone i cannot agree,and then when u look at who was behind the protests land owners/haulage firms does this not stink of helping the enmey? the haulage firms were used to smash the workers in the miners strike by scabbing through the picket lines the very same bastards that were advocating the rolling road blocks etc. The same people who are members of the country side alliance, who in turn are the same bastards who are involved in blood sports and dishing out beatings (and killings) to hunt sabotuers. Surport these? I live in a x Mining area(no longer a communinty) so i know what these bastards have done,We need to unite and fight agaisnt the capatilst state. As many activists who remember the 80's will testify divisions wreck movements.We must Respect one another, monbiot was right to declare we should stand up agaisnt the ones advocating violence, do u want to see our movement grow? Do we REALLY want to change the world or go underground as one writer has suggested, belive me i have been involved with this good fight now for 17 years and feel it has never been as mainstream as it is now - alienating the genral public through violence/class snobery will make us nose dive back underground again, where we can carrying on our bickering and back stabbing whislt the m.n.c's,and the ruling classes continue to use and abuse our world and its inhabitants. Concentrate on the real enemy/ anarchy/peace and freedom.....for all

Joe

Right wing content in IMC

06.05.2001 15:42

There is an occasional appearance of what I would call "right-wing" opinion on IMC. It usually takes the form of ultra-right, anti-government conspiracy theories. One bunch that springs to mind is the articles that appeared here just after Bush was "elected", declaring that the whole thing was a vast CIA conspiracy. It was linked to a site that had lots of other cartoonishly paranoid conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group etc. While this may be (in my opinion) right-wing inspired, all-states-are-a-conpiracy nonsense, it is not allied to any corporate news agenda, and is therefore entirely suitable for publishing on an independent news site. Especially as we don't have a resident cartoonist like the Guardian. :-)

Ref the Russian who wrote:
> You must realise that your
> lives without capitalism
> would be much less.

I think you mean "without the freedom you have here your lives would be much less". I can think of more than one capitalist state where life is pretty awful indeed, especially for certain groups. Life could be much better everywhere without oppressive state apparatus, but communist regimes do not retain a historic monopoly on oppression.

Jon

left or right is not an issue

07.05.2001 12:41

Rather sad to read some of the comments mailed into you.
left and right are good for telling you which hand is which.
As a modern establishment term to calculate political standing or beliefs they mean nothing to me .
I stand on the left when i go down the escalaters to allow people to pass me on the right or is it left ?? perhaps i should stand in the middle .
Great britain is a christian country like most of the western world the society is based on a fantastic fairy tale, I won't go into details about who exactly wrote this tale and needless to mention the millions of innocent folk who were tortured and murdered in horrific circumstances for reasons
known only to big G
The catholic church is still alive and kicking and so are it's offsprings the Mafia and the P2 .
The same fairy story has been adapated for the folk who have been 'chosen' to be muslims and at some stage we can expect a christian / muslim war financed no doubt by rothschild and co. So to put it straight the moral values of UK society are based on the christian religion and also 2000 years of wars
and inhuman behaviour by the noble gentlemen and their ladies
who have used the population of the country as cannon fodder and factory slaves .. of course we are led to believe that those were the bad old days and things like that couldn't happen again but the level of misery is growing while a small elite amass vast fortunes the rest live in shit, bosnia was very close and it could happen anywhere ..
let's look forward to some more protest this year . bilderberger in sweden in June should be interesting .
G8 in Genova will be a tough one . The city authorites are planning to close the city centre one month before the event .

They are issuing all residents with passes to get into the centre with the veiw to keeping the demonstration out.
I already have a pass !!

luther blissett .. is everywhere ..and everyone

Luther blissett
mail e-mail: luther_blissett@wot4.net

RE Bilderburg comment

09.05.2001 10:56

I think it is a shame when people call all those who are concerned about the Bilderburg Group right-wingers. I am a lefty and I have concerns that this group of corporate leaders and politicians does meet every year in secret. It is well documented that they do. It seems bizarre to me that people will happily protest outside the WEF meetings or the G8 meetings, and yet at every mention of the Bilderburg Group they turn the other way.

PS One the most detailed analysis of the Bilderburg Group is actually by a Marxist Sociologist.

munkle
mail e-mail: munkle55@hotmail.com

BIASED CORPORATE MEDIA OR BIASED INDYMEDIA?

09.05.2001 13:23

I presume it is OK to be "biased" as long as your are being "biased" in relation to a subject that you feel is being "biased" against you. For example your clear "bias" opinions in relation to "the corporate media" is OK I presume as you think they were being "biased" against you. No hypocrisy at all!

BIAS BUSTER
mail e-mail: BOTH_AS_BAD_AS_EACH_OTHER@BIASED.COM
- Homepage: www.anti_capatalists.r.generally.hypocrites.co.uk

Let's lose Monbiot and Klein!

09.05.2001 16:30

People like George Monbiot and Naomi Klein can provide some useful information. But their political
prescriptions are complete dead ends. Their solution to the world's problems is just more state control of multinational corporations. In other words, although they are loathe to admit it, they just want a return to the government intervention of the '50s and '60s.

This is completely impossible. Any attempts by one country to return to genuine full-employment, decent welfare etc. would make that economy uncompetitive. Even worse than that for the capitalists, it would encourage workers to demand more, as they did in mass rebellions of the '60s and '70s. This would then again begin to build a movement that could really threaten their whole system.

Consequently capitalism will never accept such a policy again. In fact the only role people like Monbiot and Klein have, is to build illusions that reforming capitalism is possible and that
the main problem with it is just 'unaccountable' corporations or 'globalisation'. The best they could ever do is to get into government to give an 'anti-capitalist' face to the same old vicious capitalist policies. This is not as unlikely as it seems. Most of the present Government are ex-lefties (some like Livingstone and Gus MacDonald are ex-Trotskyists - well to the left of Monbiot or Klein!).

Whatever we do in the future we must make it completely clear that the direct action movement is not just against 'unfair' trade or even the Bilderburg group but is against the whole system in which money controls our lives. The sooner we do this the sooner we can lose people like Monbiot and Klein and everyone who is trying to build cushy careers on the back of a movement that wants to abolish all 'careers', cushy and otherwise, and replace them with living!


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Much better writing than that of Monbiot and Klein on Globalisation (and revolution) can be found at:





Sylvia
- Homepage: http://www.freespeech.org/mayday2k/readings.htm

Independent?

12.06.2001 12:14

What is meant by 'independent' is that it is free from the corporate censorship that occurs in most other media outlets through their dependency of advertising revenue and free from state/mainstream-society 'censorship' eg. BBC.

Indymedia is run for non-profit and the editorial content is a result of that. Interesting that most people see it as being left wing - might be more to do with the sort of news coverage they are used to reading !

Al
mail e-mail: dont.think@so

moderate alternative news

21.07.2001 13:22

While it may not be totally unbiased, I suggest you take a look at The Urban Monk at  http://urbanmonk.blogspot.com .

The site is halfway between mainsteam and alternative in that it counterspins and moderates many common views and develops opinions unseen in other media.

But in the end again, it's up to you to think for yourself.

The Urban Monk
mail e-mail: -
- Homepage: http://urbanmonk.blogspot.com