Poor use of Indymedia

[machine] | 07.07.2005 19:09 | London

As one of the UK server admins, I find the quality of posts on Indymedia UK regarding the London bombing to be rather poor. This site should be about news, and not politically motivated conjecture.

It's a shame to see that most of the posts on here and for that matter the comments expressed on Indymedia's IRC network regarding the London bombing, seem to be poorly thought out politically motivated conjecture. I appreciate many Indymedia peeps may well be in Edinburgh, but I believe we should have done better. How about some fresh news preferably free of the taint of commercial media (copy-paste's of BBC articles aren't that great)?

I'm particularly sickened by attempts to connect these bombs to the political issues of the G8. Many people alledging that this will be used to forget about poverty, the environment and international relations. One guy on #g8 even suggested that someone should issue a statement claiming responsibility on behalf of MI5 as a joke. Even if it were true (and I somewhat doubt that), now is not the time for politicking. There will be plenty of time for this in the coming months.

It's only a thought, but I suspect many of those who are making politically motivated conjecture are not UK citizens. If so please understand that we may have other preoccupations at the current time.

Freedom and solidarity,
[machine]

[machine]

Comments

Hide the following 26 comments

Watch and Wait

07.07.2005 20:36

The elite will use this tragedy to dismiss the people's concerns at Edinburgh in favor of their authoritarian, corporate agendas. If you don't know that, you haven't been paying attention. If you want to help the globalists, keep censoring in the name of "sensitivity."

politically motivated conjecture by foreigners eh?

07.07.2005 20:59

so mr indymedia admin, you have decided (along the with powerful apparatus of the State) that when there are bombings there shall be no debate about why there were bombings? So you believe that when people lose their lives because of our UK president's decision to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Arabs, that we should not be allowed to make comment about the political motivation of the retaliation. then mr indymedia admin, your own politics place you at the opposite pole to those who would advocate freedom of speech. fuck your statist silence! fuck your capitulation with State Nationalism! fuck off out of your role as indymedia admin - and fuck off and get a job as a chopper in a slaughterhouse - because your bones woz made to carry out orders and your mind is cheese melt.

and no - this political conjecture was not the work of johnny foreigner, but just another white middle class thirty something male in the Home Counties, who happens to be yet another anarchist.

Pizza Delivery Man

Poor use of the Media Full Stop.

07.07.2005 21:05

I agree, but then the mainstream media has had nothing but half baked ill considered speculation and wild exaggeration, first it was six bombs, then seven, 3 buses, then 1 bus, 90 dead, etc. etc. Or perhaps that was just a symptom of the complete failure of those in charge of the emergency services to grasp what was going on.

But the most depressing thing (Apart from the tragic and pointless lost of live) however was the knee jerk reaction of work colleges to immediately blame G8 protesters! Because if they didn’t actually plant the bomb, policing them at the G8 meant the Security Services were distracted and gave the terrorist an opportunity they needed in London.

Richard

Them's the breaks..

07.07.2005 21:09

I quite agree. However, there are two problems:

Firstly, one does rather wonder what "alternative" news could have been provided today by Indy contributors, since it is hard to see what kinds of "alternative" information or sources were available.

Secondly, as long as Indymedia retains its open publishing policy, its pages will continue to be filled with "poorly thought out politically motivated conjecture". Hey, I'm all for "open publishing"; I'm just saying that them's the breaks...

Still, it could be worse: I occasionally have a read of Indymedia/Paris (where I live). The rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth rants and trading of insults and paranoid conjectures between loony-left/anarcho fundamentalists (who are several baguettes short of a boulangerie) and crypto-fascist poseur trolls (or orcs) got so bad that it led to a form of "self-censorship" a year or so ago - basically, articles are put in a "pending" section (although they can still be accessed) until "approved" by the "editors" and put in the "authorised" section. It works a little better, but it's still a hotbed of intellectual onanism (which I guess is what the French are good at anyway...)

They've got their paranoid knickers in a twist today in gai Paree, essentially accusing London's "evening paper" of being in cahoots with the authorities and the arm of the devil because it "brought forward its evening edition to midday" - irresponsible journalism, something fishy going on, etc. I had to post an explanation that the Evening Standard (rag that it is) is actually published several times a day, starting at midday, EVERY day...

artaud

just a realistic observation...

07.07.2005 21:26

OK, yeah I'm a Yank, but I have a lot of interest in the WTO/G8 too. I know of a few locals who are there with my blessing. I know now is the wrong time think about the politics behind the bombings.

Let me just relate how I saw 9/11 unfold here. First there was this period of great cooperation, mourning, shock. No one was willing to politicize the event. There were great memorials attended by both conservatives and progressives where they both expressed their desires for peace and for justice without judging each other. That was the first and the last time these two sides agreed on anything in this country in the last 50 years. Everyone has been attacking each other since.

Whatever the situation now, just keep in mind the similarities to 9/11, conspiracies aside- the bombings were political, they could be politicized to great effect in the future, they came at the perfect moment for hawks, and yes they were probably the result of the general policies of some of the G8 in the third world. If the events can be steered clear of political exploitation by either side, yet the core issues still debated without constant and sickening exploitation of the victims it might work greatly to prevent the police state mentality that developed in the US.

The Brits have some real advantages, though. They have years of experience working through huge problems in Ireland despite IRA bombing. I would say some Brits learned to keep an extraordinarily level head. Also, the UK is just smarter or at least more aware on a political level than most Americans in my opinion.

fieldlab

pearly [king] harbour

07.07.2005 21:40

I am sorry that anybody who questions the timing of these terrible attacks and just who they benefit should be assumed to be 'not english'..how mcCarthy-istic.

Of course it has to be suspicious that, at a G8 summit where there is so much visible and high profile opposition, a crisis suddenly erupts totally deflecting attention from said summit and taking the dear leader away from the fray. Indeed let us wait to see which decisions were rushed through during BLIAR's absence. I have heard that he switched sides on limiting emmissions and, having said he would back the others against Bush suddenly agreed that there should be no limits on CO2 emmissions but rather 'we' should pursue technological innovation to help reverse global warming.

We are becoming an increasingly gullible people. How terribly sad for our children and the planet they would like to inherit.

Pearly king harbour anyone?

pat

pat
mail e-mail: pat_kaek

eye on the ball

07.07.2005 22:01

I have had ambulances going past my house all day. Death is never a good thing. Especially on your front door.

Whilst it is wrong for anyone to make political mileage on this, many people seem to be taking solice and strength from jingoistic attitudes. 'We are strong British', etc. however these views can only perpetuate the violence. Maybe challenging these views is now insensitive, but even I have been 'sucked in' and as a result have suffered from myopic perspectives. Our own (Western) bombs or indirect(and deniable) support create this kind of reality for many others with undeniable frequency.

facet5

Look at the protests realistically..

07.07.2005 22:14

I think it's very treacherous morally to condone violence carried out by someone else. A person's battles are that person's alone, but you can work politically to relieve the overall situation.

A few observations about Edinburgh. A lot of people there are from the UK, and even from Edinburgh. A lot of those have traveled to other WTO events themselves. Wherever they are from, they feel the G8 events effect them, and they feel they have the right to be there and protest it. Many people feel the G8 is incredibly destructive in the third world and sometimes even in the first world. If that is true, it's impossible for me to understand how the G8 could meet without some peripheral violence. Please explain that to me. Whatever happens, it's also clear the point of the protests is not to kill or harm anyone. Anyone who thinks that does not understand anarcho-socialists very well, if some protesters can be called that. The propaganda that they would is important for the police, however. Some mostly symbolic levels of property damage and hooliganism is really nothing compared to the perceived damage from the G8 policies.

In Seattle, locally owned establishments suffered little more than lost business, and many of those owneres were actually sympathetic to some loss resulting from a freaking WTO event in their town. Some corporate establishments like Starbucks were pretty torn up. Again, robbery or physically harming people was not the point and I don't think it happened. The police are the only ones who hurt anyone there. On the other hand, the level of soccer hooliganism in the UK, which is virtually unknown in the US for any kind of event, indicates you would have to almost expect at least the same level of violence at any event where passions run high. Hell, the G8 is more important than soccer, right? And violence at soccer matches is almost every one, right? And it's even accepted or not controllable? I don't know.. you tell me, Brits. I will say everything in Seattle was cleaned up and paid for by insurance really fast.

A cynical view is that the G8 brought a lot of money to Edinburgh, right? The only way to make corporations or municipalities reconsider participating or at least how they participate in the G8 is to make it less profitable.

fieldlab

Response from a Londoner

08.07.2005 00:25

@Greyfriars Bobby: Personally, I don't believe in censorship. I haven't hidden anything myself and I don't intend to. My post was merely to encourage better writing on the site. Ironically, I myself have been censored, despite the fact that I am within the movement.

@Pizza Delivery Man: As a Londoner, I feel attempts by certain quarters to hijack the worst day in London's recent history for their own ends is at least cynical and at most sick. There will be time for politics tomorrow. I've refrained from posting my politics here because that isn't news, which is what I believe Indymedia should be striving for. I don't actually have a problem with people posting op-ed's, as long as they are well written and backed by cold hard fact. Something that's been missing in many. I donate bandwidth and servers to Indymedia precisely because I believe in free speach. It may surprise you to hear this, but I don't even have access to the content management system.

My call would be for the web dudes to refrain from hiding any post, but also for people to at least think before they post, and present evidence to support their opinion.

[machine]

Think before you pass judgment since I'm sure you hate when it's done to you

08.07.2005 01:53

Instead of writing about how now is hardly the time for politicking but... why don't you just say what you really know? Basically the same as everyone else. No one knows for sure what the "elite" will do. What this should show everyone, liberal and conservative alike, is that yes, the same people who bombed the twin towers, who have bombed embassies and other buildings of various importance may have bombed those places for reasons of anger towards establishment and "the man", but today the tube was bombed, and those were regular joe schmoes going to work in one of the most populated cities on the planet. Now, they laugh at us, and by us I mean the non-fundamentalist world, and say "look, you're all in danger". No longer is it just the "elite" or the "corporations". No longer is it just the "government figure heads" or "big whigs in their big offices making big money for doing no work and pilfering from the little guys". It's you and me and everyone in between. Maybe instead of talking about how the elite may or may not use this to their advantage, this is an opportunity for EVERYONE, elite or not, to come together and say, to hell with our politics, and throw them out the window all together. We're all human. Why, even when you're trying to be open minded, do people not see that?

Kathleen

Who can make sense of out of what is senseless?

08.07.2005 03:57

Politics be damned! What has happened in London IS awful, whoever is responsible, and, in the end, whatever the response is going to be, will be the response that in some sense will happen. By this I mean, there will be political theories, conspiracy theories, this group did it, that group did it, it was done to deflect concern at G8, and on and on! Lady Diana springs to mind, and the Twin Towers. So much information available sadly means the possibility for disinformation is also that much higher, and from any and all quarters.

My view, and I don't know many others views as yet, is that somehow, we were all expecting this to happen, almost waiting for it to happen, it was a case of when rather than if. How many people in Iraq are dying daily, isn't it about 30-40 now? The terrorism in the West, on a micro scale, reflects the terror and poverty in the rest of the world. And, as poor generally innocents get it there, the same story could be applied here. ALL terror is horrible, and it is generally ordinary people who suffer.

Curious

Don't Believe The Hype - Indymedia: News or Just Another Message Board?

08.07.2005 08:46

The posts on this subject have less to do with "news" and more to do with the "reporters" personal feelings. I always thought that "news" at its best was objective and intelligent, not subjective and personal.

Des Nulty

We should discuss the bombings and politics

08.07.2005 10:53

I disagree with the main argument of the original article. Political ideas are very important. We should discuss the political implications of what has happened. The G8 certainly will.

proletarian who reads the internet

The News

08.07.2005 11:03

Reporting the news requires detatchment, insofar as is possible. It requires correspondents to clearly distinguish facts from supposition, to report as accuratley as possible. Now of course the mainstream media does so to varying degrees; none of us should rely on the Sun or Mail, and certain papers have editorial positions that must be borne in mind.

However the most recent correspondents to Indymedia are right; there has been little meaningful attempt to report the news in a real sense, rather a huge slanging match between various parties. Its more suited to a discussion forum or a slanging match in the student union.

I'm all for free speech unless its inciting racist, religious, or sexist behaviour (well that's at least some of the earlier postings out then) but guys, you have to think before you open your gobs. Say something meaningful and coherent, or shut up.

Paranoid Pete

Politics necessary in order to ACT

08.07.2005 11:10

I always thought Indymedia is, above all, about MAKING news. If the UK antiwar movement wants to achieve something similar to what we did here in Spain a year ago, you have to act quickly and not let Blair convince too many people that their only option is "closing ranks" - around him of all people. That means you will HAVE TO talk politics in order to coordinate your efforts effectively.
Good luck.

Tom
mail e-mail: th_fr@gmx.net

Poor use? Or poor tool? A bad workman writes

08.07.2005 12:35

Dare I say it, but maybe this is not a case of poor use of indymedia, but a case of a fundamental flaw in the system. I've been dropping in on the site on a casual basis for about two years now, but it's only in the last week that I've been really following it closely. I suspect that for a lot of the general public this is the first time they've seen the site, and if they get a bad impression, it will be the last time too. Obviously it's too late to revamp the site for the G8 protests, but there are a few things that have come to my notice which should perhaps be borne in mind.

I understand that the site is run voluntarily, and decisions are made by commitee etc, so what I say here probably will take a long time to take effect, if it ever does, but may I make a few suggestions:

1) Items posted on the newswire should be *news*. In the past week I've seen: links to opinion pieces from various newspapers (including a deeply ironic article in the guardian by a pair of dissent activists who called MPH 'embedded' - 'Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle... what did you say? Well, that's not very polite, is it?'); idle speculation about who was behind the bombings in London; postings from freelance photographers hoping to sell their images of the protests (some of which were only viewable at thumbnail size and had digital watermarks so they couldn't be clearly viewed). I don't think that it's the business of the administrators to decide what counts as news however. How about a better peer-reviewing system. It strikes me that various forums and groups I'm part of are better at this than indymedia. It would be easy to have a 'rate this thread' option. Why not have a separate newswire equivalent for opinion pieces?

2) Comments about the factual content of articles ought to be separated from comments about the analysis. For example, there was a piece posted which called the US consulate an 'embassy', and princes street, 'princess street'. A respondent pointed this out and then went on to say that this proved that indymedia is full of 'kevin the teenager types'. It would make a lot more sense if points of fact could be registered a la wikipedia, and then amended. There's no need to delete the original post but it could be archived. This would get rid of embarassing mistakes without descending into petty wranglings.

3) This will be more controversial I'm sure, but I think anonymity is a problem. It's too easy for anybody to log in and post rubbish. Take this thread for example. I was misled by the first poster calling themselves 'admin'. In fact what they said was strictly speaking true, but not at all in the sense I read it. As he goes on to say later, 'I donate bandwidth and servers to Indymedia ...It may surprise you to hear this, but I don't even have access to the content management system.' Yes it did surprise me, because I'm sure that's what posting as 'As one of the UK server admins' was meant to imply.

At the moment the solution to anonymous posters that seems to be that the moderators have final say on what goes up. I think it would be a lot more sensible if people had to register for the site, but once they have done, they can post what they like. Perhaps there should be a waiting period, in which they have to log on and read the site for say five hours/days before they need to post? This would stop people who'd only just heard of the site in the middle of a big protest, like this week, from logging on hastily and posting before they understand what the site is about. On the other hand, I understand that there are some (although actually very few) situations where posting the facts about what happened could get somebody in legal trouble. In that case, keep anonymity. But let signing up remain an option, then people will know when articles are likely to be reliable. By making people declare themselves, you can build up links between articles posted by a particular individual/group, and people will gradually get to know who can be trusted. If you took the thread rating idea, mentioned above, you could also build up scores for whose posts are generally approved. This is similar to what happens on ebay, where people can establish a reputation as being reliable, but only if they put the hours in. Finally, a la myspace, you could build networks between users, with people leaving testimonials on each other's profiles, so that people can gauge how well-respected people are. This would also help with point 4:

4) Bias. I don't read indymedia because I think that independent means objective. I read it because ideologically, I believe that a bias against big government and corporate power is in my interests. If people's profiles were networked, and there were profiles for political groups, etc., these groups could approve or deny whether the poster was affiliated with them or not. This would show whether they were genuinely activists or just stirring things up, posting outrageous things to make indymedia look stupid.

5) My final problem is - I'm sure this isn't really an item for *news*wire, but where else can I put it where it can be read by anyone who's interested? There doesn't seem to be an appropriate place for criticisms/suggestions about the running of the site (excluding mailing lists, but then, if I want to sign up to mailing lists, why not sign up to an indymedia mailing list, and be done with the site altogether...?)

Ben

Political commentary started at the top

08.07.2005 12:58

I would like to note that the first one I heard to turn this tragedy into a political statement was Blair. To denounce posters on this website while ignoring the highly charged political statements of your Prime Minister seems, at the very least, hypocritical.

Kelly Logan
mail e-mail: kellylogan4peace@yahoo.com

Another explanation of what I'm concerned about

08.07.2005 15:17

@pat: I'd agree that labeling people "unenglish" would be very McCarthy like, however this wasn't quite what I meant. What I was trying to communicate is the fact that with contributors who do not reside in the United Kingdom, it is less likely that they will know people who have been affected by this, however rather than acknowledge that they are not bringing new news to the table, they simply contribute unconfirmed gossip which doesn't improve the quality of the site that Indymedia can then present. Of course, if they don't have people who have been affected, they're also less likely to appreciate the damage their speculation can do.

[machine]

response from New York

08.07.2005 18:21

I think we have to discuss the political implications of the attack. Innocent people, city dwellers riding the buses and subways, have been murdered, most likely by religious fascists. And we know that the imperialists who dominate the world will use the attacks to promote their agenda--such as the idea that stopping the war in Iraq now would be "yielding to terrorism."
Like a woman in a black neighborhood in Philadelphia told me last year, before the US election: "Bin Laden was the one that did 9/11. Why are they attacking Iraq?"
That said, far too many of the posts I saw on this site yesterday were conspiracy-theory rubbish, much of it anti-Jewish. People believe all kinds of stupid shit in this world! (one of the reasons New York Indymedia deletes posts now is to keep our site from being flooded by this kind of crap.)
We're in a bad place right now, trapped between the plutocratic, militaristic Mammonite Christian fanatics and the Islamic-fascist fanatics. Both love to kill civilians, either in pursuit of world domination or just to fuck shit up for the other side.
I've always seen "terrorism" as kind of a Newspeak word. If it means killing civilians for a military/political purpose, every country that's fought a war in the last 100 years is "terrorist." If it means killing civilians for a military/political purpose without being part of a state military force, most major powers have still supported it. I think the Bush administration's definition of it is "any kind of political violence by people we don't like."

subway rider

The great enemies of democracy (<- ????? who ?)

08.07.2005 23:01

I don't know what's the format of International, UK Media, there is a important thing about this attack.
All media in my country (Italy) try to set question as parallel between two way of society, living.
It's not real, i hope people can looks around in the world we are in, this is not a problem about islam, or about their way of living.
It could be obvious to say that, but it could be not too because all is ever as it appears.
This is a bad, unright and a wildness answer for Iraq War.
Don't get confusion by common messages, we're living a time where the most important people of the world are able to decide for us.
It could be a war of powers while our leaders try to set up it such as war of society system.
An easy way it could be to find stupidly our enemies in Islam, foreigner enemies are easy to find without knowledge about him and about this real situation.

How can we stop war violence of governaments in the name of freedom ?

What's freedom ? It's not possible to live in a immersion of fake news where conception of freedom, peace is not definifed completly.

(I hope my written it's easy to understand, bye)

Riccardo

Riccardo

The enemies of democracy <--- who?

08.07.2005 23:03

Riccardo
mail e-mail: gonius@katamail.com

Unfortunately conjecture is necessary to get at the truth

10.07.2005 09:23

I understand why many people find it unseemly that people start to postulate theories about attrocities like this so soon after they happen, but I don't see how we can avoid it if we want the truth to be known.

The pattern of mainstream news reporting for this kind of events tends to consist of a couple of days of relatively unfocused reporting until a clear story becomes established, at which point details extraneous to that story are gradually dropped until they fade from public memory. For instance how many people now remember the collapse of WTC-7 on the afternoon of 11 September 2001, despite the fact that it was very clearly reported on the television news that day?

The trouble is that the journalists are so desperate for a coherent story that they will latch onto whatever they can find and stick with it, even if the evidence turns out to be not as strong as it at first appeared. For example 19 individuals were named as the 9-11 hijackers and, despite the fact that a good number of them were soon proven to be still alive and well some time after September 11, there names still appeared in the official 9-11 report. Yet many people still fail to find that odd. And because they fail to find it odd they are unable to come to the obvious conclusion that the source of the 19 names, i.e. the U.S. government, cannot be trusted in this matter. I believe that a circular logic applies here: The list naming the 19 hijackers is correct. Therefore the government that provided that list tells the truth. Therefore the list it provided naming 19 hijackers is correct. Once the loop is established it is very hard to move beyond it.

Therefore it is best to nip this kind of closed thinking in the bud before it starts, to make dissenting stories available before people, desperate for meaning, internalise the official one as unquestionable truth. This is what happened in Genoa a few years ago. Quick action by indymedia activists brought the police attrocities to light and the official lies therefore failed to gain credibility. For once, at least some of the truth became public knowledge. In other words, you have to act quickly and therefore, if you don't yet know what is really going on, speculation is often more valuable than meek silence.

Robert Something

Not convinced

10.07.2005 11:14

"Therefore it is best to nip this kind of closed thinking in the bud before it starts, to make dissenting stories available before people, desperate for meaning, internalise the official one as unquestionable truth."

As far as the facts go, yes. But this is the *news*wire, not the speculation wire.

skeptic

With Robert, and then some!

10.07.2005 18:21

Facts don't exist apart from selection and interpretation, and the selection and interpretation of facts is determined by interests -- especially the interests of classes and factions thereof.

One can ask, for example, why media in places far from London have devoted more coverage to the relatively miniscule number of deaths there than to the tens of thousands of people who died that day (as every day) as a result of the normal functioning of capitalist imperialism.

Our job should be not only to cast doubt, where reasonable, on the ruling-class version of events like the London bombings, but to put those events in a context that emphasizes the far greater criminality of the rulers than of those they denounce as "terrorists".

Aaron Aarons
mail e-mail: indyuk@aarons.fastmailDELETE-UPPER-CASE.fm
Homepage: http://kpfa.aarons.fastmail.fm

Nah, still don't buy it

10.07.2005 23:08

"One can ask, for example, why media in places far from London have devoted more coverage to the relatively miniscule number of deaths there than to the tens of thousands of people who died that day (as every day) as a result of the normal functioning of capitalist imperialism.

Our job should be not only to cast doubt, where reasonable, on the ruling-class version of events like the London bombings, but to put those events in a context that emphasizes the far greater criminality of the rulers than of those they denounce as "terrorists""

So why not post a *news* article about the tens of thousands of people who died...? Those are indisputable facts... What benefit is there in reinterpretting the events over which the ruling class already have a monopoly of coverage anyway? You're just playing along with the "selection" that they've set...

orang hutan

Indymedia - a training ground for middle class careerists?

12.07.2005 20:08

Can Indymedia please spare us the 'our thoughts are with the victims' formula? Nothing against the sentiment, but why the need to express it in such a banal and predictable form. And in the same insincere idiom as the mainstream media. Has the fatal ideology of 'responsible journalism' infected Indymedia? What next, 'balanced' coverage of multinationals and support for the views of Prince Charles?

Indymedia, give us a break. None of us give a fuck about the opinion of the 'Kollective'. We just want a forum for postings, without censorship or 'moderators'. Stop aping the tactics of our class enemies and give up the pretence of 'professionalism'.