Posted on 24-1-2002

The Independent Media Movement
By Theta Pavis*

Welcome to the Independent Media Centre, in this case, the Philly
operation-headquartered for the moment at the Calvary Church in West
Philadelphia. Like all IMCs, the Philly centre uses the Net as a medium for
dissident news. The non-stop activity both on and offline attracts hundreds
of volunteers. "There is a frenetic pace which draws people in," said one
long-time IMC member. "A mix of revolutionary protests and dot-com like
caffeine-fuelled energy of technology" keeps them coming back.

The very first Independent Media Centre (IMC) sprang to life in Seattle,
during the fall of 1999. In November, the World Trade Organization and
hundreds of international delegates were preparing to come to the city. At
the same time, young activists, galvanised by years of anti-globalisation
work, were asking themselves how they could impact the meeting and get the
word out about protest marches and rallies. Part of the answer was to
create an alternative news source that would cover the demonstrations and
the issues behind them. The Seattle IMC attracted scores of media activists
who provided round-the-clock coverage of what came to be known as "the
Battle in Seattle." Members said the Web site they built got about 1.5
million hits during the WTO protests. Like everything else, the ISP
services were (and still) are donated. When the site traffic skyrocketed, a
staff person from the ISP braved the tear gas in downtown Seattle to bring
the IMC a second DSL line. (Tech members today estimate the entire network
gets about 400,000 page views a day.)

After Seattle, IMCs began to pop up around the world, from South Africa to
New York City. At current count there are more than 60 centres in 25
different countries. Some, like Seattle and New York, have permanent,
physical offices. Others, such as Philadelphia, live mostly on the Net with
meetings taking place online and in the homes of local members of editorial
collectives. This model is replicated around the world. In Barcelona, for
example, the IMC is a year old and has a core of about 20 people. "We have
needed no money until now," Carmen Hurtado wrote in an e-mail interview
from Spain. "We got a few old computers that the tech people mounted for
all to use. When the ink for the printer runs out, we collect some money
just for this, or somebody with an extra mouse might give us his."

International, bi-weekly meetings are held online, and there are scores of
different IMC e-mail lists lists.indymedia.org ranging from general
discussion, to talk of finances, translation and technical issues. When an
event occurs that requires specific attention, the attention of independent
journalists fed up with what they see as an increasingly corporate,
mainstream presscenters get busy. "The mainstream press censors its own
journalists and in Indymedia we have had cases of journalists coming to us
to publish the news they cannot publish in the publications they work for,"
said Barcelona's Hurtado. "Social organisations and related movements come
to us to publish their news because the mainstream press won't do it. They
will not publish when a demonstration is going to be held, or the agenda of
a weekend gathering to discuss social issues and alternative politics."

IMC members videotape demonstrations and meetings
www.indymedia.org/projects.php3 sometimes streaming them over the Web. Some
produce radio reports www.radiovolta.org/ while writers feed constant
updates www.indymedia.org/ to the Web and editors pull together print
publications. On the Web anyone can get published, and comments on articles
are eagerly solicited. Indymedia describes this system as "open publishing"
www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~matthewa/catk/openpub.html Not surprisingly, the
entire network runs on free software. Newswires and Press Passes Back in
Philadelphia, it's the American Correctional Association's (ACA)
www.corrections.com/aca/ annual meeting that has brought me to the IMC,
which blossomed overnight in the rented church space. The ACA is holding
their conference and trade show at the Pennsylvania Convention Centre in
Philadelphia, and members of the local IMC are attending to report on the
"prison industry." Reporters can post their articles directly to the IMC's
Web site. Well-written pieces get posted on the front page of the Web; the
collective decides what goes where. Each IMC deals with this differently;
some put the most accessed stories on top; some place stories chosen by
editors. The newswire meanwhile runs every story posted
www.phillyimc.org/newswire_newswire_1.shtml by date.

One member described it this way: "Some IMCs have a policy of not removing
anything, regardless of content. Some remove only commercial posts and
posts that (have) technical problems ... Most sites have a statement
whereby they remove racist, homophobic, and sexist posts." In order to get
into the newsroom, where I have come to work as a volunteer editor, I first
have to get issued an ID. Just like any newsroom, right? In this case, a
young man perched at a small wooden desk at the top of the stairs works at
a sophisticated laptop. He snaps my photo with an I-zone camera, types up
my info, and in a few moment produces a laminated ID for me, complete with
a cord for it to hang around my neck. The ID clearly identifies me as
"PRESS." IMC reporters, however, have experienced different levels of
difficulty getting officially credentialed. This varies depending on the
city they are working in.

The rise of the IMCs raises a lot of the same questions the Web has been
raising for years now: Who gets to be a journalist? Many have compared
www.media-alliance.org/mediafile/20-4/justice.html IMC members to early
muckrakers such as Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair, but a better
comparison might be found in Ida B. Wells. Born about five months before
the Emancipation Proclamation, Wells became a highly respected journalist
who spent years documenting and exposing lynchings. She was meticulous in
her reporting, travelling to the scene of race riots and murders, and
reporting her findings in black, and eventually in some white, newspapers.
But she was also an activist, sitting on the board of numerous
organisations working to better the lives of blacks and women during
Reconstruction. There was no confusion for Wells between the ideas of
rallying behind her cause and reporting on it.

Like Wells, the reporters connected to the IMCs don't have any interest in
unbiased reporting. But many of their articles do contain, like her work,
massive amounts of research, statistics and interviews. Media, they
believe, should be accessible to everyone. Journalists can and should be
agents for social change. The IMC movement attempts to deal with these
issues upfront. On the Frequently Asked Questions
process.indymedia.org/faq.php3 page off the main site, one of the queries
is: process.indymedia.org/faq.php3#activist-journalist "Are you 'activists'
or 'journalists?'" The answer: "Some would say 'activists,' some would say
'journalists,' some would say both. Each Indymedia reporter/organiser must
make this distinction for him/herself. Having a point of view does not
preclude Indymedia reporters from delivering truthful, accurate, honest news.

Most, if not all, local IMCs, have explicit policies to strongly deter
reporters from participating in direct actions while reporting for
Indymedia." Individual IMCs reflect these issues in different ways. The
tagline, for instance, on the Israeli IMC is "You Are Your Own Journalist."
In Italy, where important work was done around the G8 summit and the
subsequent raids madison.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=755 by Italian
police who beat protestors, the tagline is: "Don't Hate the Media - Become
the Media."

Bridging the Gap

While the IMC movement has some things in common with such publications as
say Mother Jones or The Progressive, members stress that they are also very
different. "With Mother Jones, there's still a level of professionalism
that they adhere to and they have resources at their disposal to strive for
this," said Susan Phillips, who helped found the Philly IMC. These kinds of
magazines, she said, are "fighting an uphill battle, that this perspective
can be just as legitimate and look just as pretty (as the mainstream
press). But the IMC is not trying to react to what the mainstream is
saying. It's an attempt to be a whole other source, guided by its own vision."

IMCs, she points out, are volunteer efforts. "The people have other lives-
they consider this their activism. People are reporting on the movements
they are active in." Another difference is that the IMCs are based on
non-hierarchical structures, which means, for example, that when the press
calls, there is no one appointed spokesperson. "The consensus model (is
used) for decisions and priorities. It's not a typical newsroom structure
.... it's a whole new kind of journalism because it is saying, 'Look, this
is our story.and we can report it just as legitimately as some outsider
can, and you can take from it what want.'" It is also a very young
movement, said Phillips, who, at 34 is "one of the oldest people" in her
local centre. The reporters also have one other thing the old time
muckrakers didn't have; the Net. "We have this medium out there where it
can just go all over the world.instead of just trying to get one little
thing in Mother Jones," said Phillips. "The self-publishing stuff is
radical and it is totally dependent on the Web," added one activist, who
gave his name as Velcrow Ripper, a documentary filmmaker who has been to
four different IMCs and was recently at the one in New York helping cover
anti-war protests. Some members get so caught up in the IMCs they end up
intending to devote their lives to it.

In September 2000, Evan Henshaw-Plath quit his corporate job and gave up
his apartment in Boston so he could travel to IMCs around the world
providing technical support. He's been on the road ever since. "I've been
working with the global IMC-tech collective which maintains most of the
dozen servers, and travelling," Henshaw-Plath said in an e-mail interview
from Germany. "I've worked with IMCs in Boston, Brazil, Argentina, Prague,
San Fancisco, New York, The Netherlands, Vermont, DC and Philly." He
describes Indymedia www.indymedia.org - the main IMC portal, as a network
or networks of media activists. "There is no core or central organization.
"To understand the role of Indymedia from a technical perspective as a Web
site you need to know that we really just play one part in a whole wave of
changes that have swept the way online news is constructed and presented.
With Indymedia, we bridge the gap between online news, activism, real work
media labs, and many non-cyber mediums."

Covering War and Peace

Sept. 11 has had varying effects on the IMCs. Jenny Arfman, a 27-year-old
volunteer at the Seattle IMC who works full-time at a small software
company, said she doesn't think Sept. 11 has changed things that much.
"Our goals are still the same. If anything, it seems like Indymedia has
become more popular and the newswire has been very active ... in a way, the
war is connected to globalisation. Yes, we're focused on Sept. 11, but the
same people responsible for war are responsible for globalisation and war
profiteering."

The IMC in New York nyc.Indymedia.org/ (where the Web site can also be read
in Spanish) has been particularly busy. Members have reported on terrorism,
on the lives of average New Yorkers in the aftermath of the attacks, on
anthrax, and on anti-war demonstrations and teach-ins. Following Sept. 11,
the New York IMC published several, 20-page newspapers (distributing about
20,000 copies each time), as well as a video. Others in Indymedia are
trying to stay on top of what America's new patriotic climate,
anti-terrorism legislation, and possible censorship could mean for the
movement. "It puts us in a vulnerable place," said Sheri Herndon, one of
the founders of the IMC movement in Seattle. "To continue to push the line
of free speech.empowering people to make up their own minds is what
Indymedia is about, and government doesn't want you to do that." Herndon
recently met with members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation www.eff.org
in San Francisco to discuss the situation. EFF is one of the groups that
provides Indymedia with pro bono legal support. The word terrorism is being
so broadly used these days, Herndon argues "it is being used to crack down
on anyone working on social justice issues."

Funding and the Future

Indymedia has always had strong links to progressive organisations
www.indymedia.org/allies.php3 and nonprofits, particularly those connected
to media (such as Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org/ Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting www.fair.org/ and Adbusters www.adbusters.org/ Those
connections can come in handy when
centres raise funds. The IMCs exist through volunteer labor. Computers and
equipment flood into the newsrooms like the one in Philly when the call
goes out. People lug their laptops and entire PCs in from home. They
scrounge for old components and cobble them together. People donate and
loan equipment. Some IMCs, such as the one in Seattle, solicit donations
seattle.indymedia.org/donate.php3 on their sites. During the Republican
National Convention-when the Philly IMC was first born-members drove to
upstate New York just to pick up a G4 that was being loaned to them by the
brother of someone who worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer. The main FAQ
page says, "Indymedia supports its entire technical structure on an
incredibly minimal budget, only a couple thousand US dollars so far."

In Sydney, for example, the IMC sydney.indymedia.org/ has grown through
countless volunteer hours, occasional donations, and grants. Members have
also brought in money by doing work for other nonprofits with similar
goals, said volunteer Ben Praccus, who also works with a volunteer arts and
media space called Octapod www.octapod.org.au/ Donations also come from
individuals. Media analyst Ed Herman, who co-authored the book
Manufacturing Consent with Noam Chomsky, gave money to the Philadelphia IMC
when it was gearing up to cover the convention and said he plans to give
more in the future.

In an e-mail interview, Herman said he considers alternative media crucial
for a democratic society. "I think the IMC movement has done very important
work in counteracting the mainstream media's gross bias in dealing with
events approved by the elite, like the political conventions and actions of
the World Trade Organization and [International Monetary Fund] IMF," he
wrote. "They have actually embarrassed the mainstream media. They have an
important potential, and I must support them because they are part of the
hope for a democratic future. If they and institutions like them don't
succeed, this society is in deeper trouble than I like to think about."


* Theta Pavis is a freelance writer, radio producer and journalism teacher
who lives in Philadelphia. theta@thetapavis.com