Dorothy Kidd talks about the website, indymedia.org, and the Independent Media Centre as a “new communications commons,” and essentially putting the media back in the hands of the people, free of the standardized practices of professional mainstream media – practices that typically cripple the democratic sensibilities of a once noble and well-minded social and cultural institution – now a profit-seeking monopoly of a few powerful interests.
Individuals from various institutions and locations collaborate on the indymedia project to bring to the public a variety of neglected, dismissed and down-trodden perspectives from minority groups across the globe. The project is collaboration of sixty autonomously operated and linked websites from all over the world: it’s a globalized effort to take the media back from the corporate superpowers that dominate the information going out to the public realm and control public discourse.
It’s a do-it-yourself approach to taking back the media. The Israeli sites banner reads, “You are your own journalist,” and the Italian site’s reads, “Don’t hate the media – Become the media,” and as Kidd says basically sums up their approach to citizen journalism.
And they’re inspirational. In the hands of the right people, the communications technologies available today can empower individuals with a sense for democratic information dissemination and ultimately sway the tide of battle against globalized, corporatized news institutions.
After 9/11 the IMC featured stories on anti-war protestors both at home and abroad that the mainstream news ignored, because the mainstream news couldn’t afford to side against the administration and take a stance against what we now know was an unwinnable war supported on a bedrock of lies. I think this contrast sums up the biggest difference between mainstream media and organizations like the IMC. Independent news organizations don’t have to succumb to external pressures like advertisers when putting together a story, so they’re more capable of serving the public interest. As I said, we now know invading Iraq was not in the public interest, the unfortunate thing is that organizations like the IMC ultimately receive more attention from national security agencies than the public. Clearly they need to redefine their approach.
THE WHISKEY DIARY 