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Indymedia's Independence: From Activist Media to Free Software
Biella Coleman
The global, decentralized, grassroots network applies open source principles to reporting the news.
[continued from Indymedia's Independence: From Activist Media to Free Software, page 1]
II. MOVEMENT THROUGH TIME: THE FOUR PILLARS OF INDEPENDENCE
"What are Indymedia's long-term goals? That's a big question, one that every Indymedia organizer would likely answer in a different way." – From the IMC Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
As the FAQ states, Indymedia activists are no doubt motivated by different reasons. Despite this heterogeneity, every collective shares mailing lists, tasks, workers, a similar logo, and even a political culture- albeit not wholly unified- that has grown piecemeal through time. The first Seattle IMC produced a succinct but potent mission statement that resonated with other activists forming new IMCs:
"The Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of people under-represented in media production and content, and to illuminate and analyse local and global issues that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable society."[19]
This mission statement can be considered the kernel of a political sensibility which activists transformed into a stronger and more detailed formulation, their "Principles of Unity."[20] This codification far exceeds a marking of aspirations and political identity, but rather is the basis for practical action. For example, public archiving of mailing lists, an extensive documentation guide, and a commitment to Free and Open Source Software embodies their commitment to transparency while accessibility mandates open publishing and user-friendly software.
Yet, Indymedia beholds a more complicated political idiom. To begin to decipher this language, I find it useful to unpack one of its most ordinary terms, "independent," which is the phrase most closely associated with this movement. Unlike "freedom," the term wedded to Free Software, which beckons an association of "free agents" oriented towards securing their own expressive rights for creation and pedagogy, the "independent" of IMC calls into being a slightly different range of political sensibilities and possibilities. Social change, a broader public, mutual aid, and justice are a few components of this independence idiom. It is to four of those associations that I now turn.
Independence encompasses at least four different interarticulated evaluations – all of which are expressed in their Principles of Unity. Each of these meanings of independence also enunciate "tension points" within Indymedia, revealing one of the most fundamental and vexing roadblocks of all radical and reformist political endeavors – balancing between ideals and the pragmatics of incorporating those ideals within a context of multiple voices, cultural differences, material constraints, localized needs, and – as ironic as it may sound – other ideals. This balancing act is more difficult for Indymedia given its dually hybrid nature as it tacks between the local and global, as well as the virtual and physical.
One meaning of the word is "independence from external influence," which is clearly spelled out in their FAQ: "No corporation owns Indymedia, no government manages the organization, no single donor financed the projects, Indymedia is not the mouthpiece of any political party or organization."[21] There is an overwhelming desire to have Indymedia stand as independently as possible from the control and more subtle influences of external forces. Decision-making, content creation, and political visions must be generated from "within" and from "below." Thus far, one way Indymedia has sought to maintain this independence is through volunteerism. The bulwark of this organization primarily runs on the power of volunteer labor complemented by various charitable donations that come in the form of money, hardware, and bandwith.[22]
Yet, this commitment to keep money and other external relationships at bay has not existed as an uncontested default. It was recently challenged but informally reasserted following a contentious debate between local and global actors over the prospect of accepting money from the Ford Foundation, an American foundation whose historical politics many IMC activists find problematic.[23] In the end, a mandate from "below" prevailed, barring the infusion of millions of dollars earmarked for salaries, infrastructure, and conferences, keeping most of the Indymedia network largely separate from the channels of economic and monetary exchange.
There is an overwhelming desire to have Indymedia stand as independently as possible outside the control and subtle influence of external forces.
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One Italian activist felt that cultural differences over the role and perception of money in different societies might have played a role in this debate. He explained that Americans, who largely spearheaded the IMC initiative, are perhaps more desensitized to money as there "are many more money transfers in the USA than in some other countries."[24] He suggested Americans probably "have a more aseptic idea of money" while "in some other regions they have a deeper idea of it, which involves not only the money as a means of material exchange, but also as a vehicle of social relations." As such, accepting money from the Ford Foundation, even if there were no purported strings attached, would "have meant having a relation with Ford." One fascinating element of this analysis is less whether it can be proved than if it accurately captures unwritten cultural perceptions that enter the play of politics behind the global face of the IMC, even if there are efforts to bracket them out.[25]
The second sense of "Independent" is a commitment to guard the local autonomy of IMC centers. In this case, the potential threat is not the external world of corporations and governments, but rather an internal power imbalance emerging from the globalized facets of Indymedia. Global working groups hold a high degree of technical know-how and decision making power. Local centers can be beholden to the decisions made by tech workers in other global coordinates. Thus, one of the ironies of Indymedia is that its virtual and global modes are largely in place (one might say entirely) to make locality possible. Yet there is always a lurking danger of inadvertent global interference, domination, and obfuscation- a by-product of Indymedia's hybrid nature and the concentration of technical and tacit know-how among global actors.
Various safeguards have been instituted to abate this potential problem, such as the creation of a liaison position to be filled at every IMC. Liaisons are points of linkage. They relay information back and forth so that local collective members are informed about global events. The liaison is empowered to only proceed with global decision making after receiving the backing of her local group. Other procedures, such as an extensive documentation project, have been implemented to mediate between the local and global facets of Indymedia. The tension between local and global currents within Indymedia may never find a final resolution, but there are continual efforts to address the potential sites of conflict that emerge from balancing two different scales of reality within the network.
Additionally, tensions between the global facet of the IMC and the autonomy of local centers reflect the disparities between the global north and the global south. Activists from the north (USA and Europe, in particular) often have more recourse to funds and technical resources, as well as more political freedom of movement. Because of the concentration of such resources in the north, there is a fear that global decision making power and the representation of the IMC to wider publics will also follow this structural divide, in favor of the north. One IMC activist feels it is imperative that "activists in wealthier countries be mindful of this divide as to not exploit their privilege but use it for the purpose of addressing this inequality. However, there exists very different opinions as to how to carry this out without imposing a neocolonial paternalism."[26]
The third meaning indexes a desire to ensure content independence. Indymedia relies heavily on the concept of open publishing, formulating itself in opposition to the content provided in the mainstream media, as well as more publicly oriented newscasters such as National Public Radio – both of which accept ads for revenue.[27] A grassroots organizer from Los Angeles explained the independence of the IMC is directed at "giving coverage to both that which is not being covered by the mainstream press and also to any censorship problems within the mainstream press."[28] A centralized decision making process about editorial matters on the national level is discouraged, in favor of a transparent, bottom-up structure that enables news to be generated by local centers without encumbrances. In the process, the prevalent assumption of full objectivity in traditional journalism is disrupted.
The following is a description of open publishing in its most ideal form:
"Open publishing means that the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions... If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site."[29]
IMC websites share a commitment to open publishing. In addition, they take a similar approach to design aesthetics, technical possibilities, and posting procedures as leading hacker news sites, like Slashdot and Kuro5hin. Such geek news sites in many respects re-visioned some fundamental assumptions about media by redrawing the tacit rules of journalistic reporting.[30] One of their most innovative contributions was to visibly blur the strict division between "consumer" and "producer" that is fundamental to traditional journalism. Indymedia takes this one step further, by collapsing the binary opposition almost entirely. News is usually "home-made" by individuals both within and outside of the collectives, and produced in a diverse form of mediums – article articles, radio, video, and photos. The makers and "consumers" of IMC news blur into the same extended community.
However, as already touched upon, Indymedia is not a cacophony of voices where everything and anything goes, even if that tendency might be valued, even idealized. Despite a radically DIY commitment to empower individuals to be and to make the news, editorial "triage" exists to meet the IMC's local and global principles of unity. Ideals of one type of independence are modified to satisfy other goals within the organization.
Editorial collective members scavenge the IMC sites to purge duplicate and commercial posts, categorize articles under appropriate categories (features, local news, etc.), and if the content is deemed problematic (such as hate speech), relegate it to a different section of the site (which is still accessible to everyone). The San Francisco Bay collective offers the following explanation for this limited form of content hierarchy and partial censorship:
""SF Bay Area IMC is founded on the principle of open publishing. Reality dictates that the editorial collective will at times decide to hide posts and comments. This is not a decision that is taken lightly, however, and the editorial collective does its best refrain from hiding. Our vision for the function of the newswire, and the general framework in which all decisions to hide will be made, are as follows: The newswire is intended to be a community media resource, a space free from spam and abuse in general; and that space will not contribute to the oppression of traditionally oppressed and marginalized groups."[31]
This lengthy explanation brings us to the final interpretation of the word "independence" for Indymedia, invoking its broadest meaning, that of political transformation. The independence of this demarcated media zone is a means to achieve societal independence by giving voice and face to forms of oppression, domination, and its counterpart, dissent. Indymedia is much less about an inherent commitment to reform the "professional standards and ethics" of journalism or to enact value-free free speech ideals. It is much more about using media and grass-roots expression for the purposes of political empowerment and change. As put simply by one activist, "Indymedia is about struggling for social and economic justice."[32]
The content and precise meanings of justice are, not surprisingly, subject to endless debate. Each collective has created it's own unique landscape. The distinct political flavor of each local center depends on many factors like national political status, geopolitical location, the history and strength of activism in the area, accessibility to physical resources such as office space and computers, and other contingencies. Individual members of a collective are also motivated by different political concerns (such as militarism, colonialism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, racism, GMO agriculture, globalism, etc.) and hold a range of distinct outward political affiliations (liberal democratic, anarchist, socialist), although all are situated strongly in the left end of the spectrum.
At the beginning of this section I distinguished the "independence" of the IMC from the "freedom" of Free Software to unpack the multivalent and historically specific meanings encompassed within the term "independent." In spite of this distinction, I would like to highlight their similarities. One of the most significant political elements shared by both social movements is that of "collective autonomy." Participants in each movement have successfully built large-scale volunteer endeavors based on the right to associate and produce under legal and social terms of their own making. Free Software developers extend engineering traditions of building on the work of peers without the incentive-reward mandates of intellectual property and capitalist profit. Indymedia activists draw upon and extend the technologies and methodologies of Free Software to affirm the principles of open publishing in the hope of helping to build a more just society.
In short, freedom and independence reflect that the participants from both arenas build and direct the values and goals of their respective endeavors. They both convey a powerful political message that speaks against the "cult of experts" and profit-driven rationale that drives production in technology, culture, and news. If we take one notable definition of politics and freedom as "the freedom to decide (collectively or individually) what it is that makes life worth living" (Graeber 2001:88), then both domains of Indymedia and Free Software are intimately bound by a commitment to this political form.
[Continued on next page...]
Footnotes
[19] http://web.archive.org/web/20000816130236/seattle.indymedia.org/about.php3
[20] See http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/PrinciplesOfUnity. One of the ironies of the Principles of Unity is that they have not been officially ratified at a network wide level, as there is no process by which to make decisions which impact the entire network. However, the Principles of Unity have been informally ratified through the New Indymedia Process (NIP), which will be discussed with more detail in the next section. NIP requires agreement with these Principles of Unity, and as a result IMC's created during the last three years have effectively ratified these principles by joining the network.
[21] http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/FrequentlyAskedQuestionEn. For a recent summary of the debates and stakes surrounding these issues see http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-communication/2004-June/003185.html.
[22] On the other hand, local IMCs have accepted grant monies and no official stance has been taken on the role of grant money for the global facet of the IMC though any attempt to infuse these types of monies have been successfully blocked. The role of formal pay, NGO funding, and the general professionalization of the IMC are some of the most contentious topics of debates among IMC activists.
[23] This debate was specifically over whether to accept money from the Ford Foundation and the creation of a Tactical Media Fund. http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-finance/2003-January/001686.html
[24] Email interview May 18, 2002.
[25] As of course this activist was well aware of, many American activists did not support this initiative. He was, I think, perceptively noting that unconscious cultural perceptions do influence the ways in which activists in different parts of the role understand the nature of politics and this is a dynamic that plays into the many debates that characterize the Indymedia network.
[26] Interview April 23, 2004.
[27] Although NPR receives much of its budget from listener contributions, it also receives support from foundations as well as some money from ads which it frames not as advertising but as "sponsorship."
[28] Email Interview May 10, 2004.
[29] http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openpub.html.This page is linked to from many IMC sites, including the global FAQ.
[30] To be clear, Slashdot does not have an open editorial system, while the Kuro5hin editorial policy is more like that of Indymedia. But the hacker news sites do have similar approaches and concerns about hierarchy and trasparency as open publishing sites.
[31] http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/08/139500.php. For another typical and well fleshed out editorial policy statement see http://nyc.indymedia.org/mod/info/display/editorial_policy/index.php.
[32] Email interview May 10, 2004.
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