seattle indymedia center

Boycott Seattle Indymedia

author: 2 friends...
Feb 27, 2006 20:54

Boycott Seattle Indymedia

I'm including two different editorial policies for the Seattle Indymedia - one from Portland, which is highly respected, and one from St. Louis that just had to make this difficult choice.

If Indymedia really choses to serve the gneral public than why not do a poll and find out!

portland indymedia editorial policy
Anyone can post to portland indymedia's open publishing newswire. News articles and media you upload using the publish form will appear in a couple minutes on the righthand newswire on the frontpage. In the case of heavy site traffic or large media uploads, the time may be longer.

Articles posted to the site go straight to the newswire and are not passed through an editorial board or approval process. Once articles and media are on the site, they may be hidden according to the editorial policy. The content of posts is never edited though sometimes formatting is corrected (someone forgot to check html checkbox, or made html errors etc).


portland indymedia worker drones reserve the right to hide posts that:
advocate criminal activity indicating a specific time, place and/or manner
are duplicate posts (the most recent remaining on the newswire)
are obviously libelous or slanderous
interfere with the technical functionality of the website
are intended to disrupt the site
are empty posts (no content or gibberish)
are commercial advertisements
promote racism, homophobia, sexism, or other discrimination.
are obviously incorrect or misleading, including attempts to spread dis-information
are reposted from corporate media outlets
Other posts might be composted accordingly.

For an explanation of general guidelines for the creation of feature stories (center column) see the what are features? page.

Please contact the editorial listserve to call attention to newswire articles that should/could be featured or to comment about the editorial policy.

Articles that are hidden, whether duplicate, disruptive, advertisement etc., are collected on the compost page. The compost page is linked from the bottom of the newswire on the front page.

If you wish to comment on the ideas in a particular post, use the "add a comment on this article" link at the bottom of that article. The free-wheeling discussions that take place through such comments are another interactive feature of the indymedia website.

Stories contributed to this site are free for non-profit re-use. Copyleft is a central tenet of indymedia. For more information, check out www.opencontent.org. If you don't want your story to fall under copyleft, please give your copyright conditions in the summary on the publish page.

general site guidelines:
please post news items only; post your comments after existing articles.
please post just one copy of your story. it may take a while for media to show up, so please be patient.
if you want to post multiple stories from other sites, please summarize and link them in one article rather than posting many articles one after the other which push other articles off the front page.
For more information on posting, see how-to publish

For more information on pdx indy, see the about portland indymedia page. For help with HTML see the HTML guide.

Saint Louis Policy:

Revised Newswire Posting Policy




Author


StL IMC Editors



Date Created


20 Feb 2006


More details...















We have recently adopted a new policy that we will be testing in the next several weeks. The new policy is not yet set in stone, but we feel it will be successful to adequately shape the newswire into a more desirable medium for the site's purposes. We enthusiastically welcome comments and responses to the revised posting policy. Also check out the poll on left-hand column of main page!



Contents

Introduction
Publishing policy
When May A Post Be Hidden?
Revision of this Policy




Introduction


Indymedia started in 1999 as an organizing tool for groups involved in the anti-globalization protests that found Seattle to be a battleground to expose the World Trade Organization. Protest groups were experienced enough to know that no matter what happened, the corporate media would sensationalize and limit focus to provide a very narrow and unrepresentative view of what was occurring. The reasons for the protest and any substantial analysis or criticism of the WTO would be neglected. The IMC created the open publishing Newswire so that people could exchange information quickly from anywhere in the city, and so that people across the world could immediately hear personal accounts of what was happening. The St. Louis IMC was born from the October 8th Coalition, which organized large protests to the presidential “debates” at Washington University in 2000.


The open publishing concept seemed radical and new. Dialogues could occur in this new type of public forum. Anonymity was key, because police harassment was sure to seek a way to break this mode of communication between revolutionary activists. The IMC also wanted to make sure that when they got subpoenaed, no information about individuals would be available for the courts to use.


The IMC movement is intended to highlight the stories and actions of underrepresented groups resisting oppression, and it seeks to expose the spin and hype that mainstream media puts on information. By giving everyone the tools to publish their own stories, the movement is a challenge to the ownership by a few people and corporations of “the news,” an institution that shapes so many peoples' daily conversations and perceptions of the world.


Sadly, people opposed to this happily exploited this empowerment to do the opposite. Instead of seeking dialogue, they sought dominance. Instead of seeking solutions to fostering coexistence, diversity and communication, disruptors used hate speech and cynicism to make open discussion impossible on the Newswire. Police and government agencies published their own COINTELPRO-type slander and misinformation that discredited the forum.


For a long time, this was tolerated as the price one paid for free speech. We encouraged rebuttals to point out the racism and sexism (among other ‘ism’s), and we felt there was some value to hate speech being visible, along with deconstructions of it. Let there be debates!


Nevertheless, we have recently adopted a new policy that we will be testing in the next several weeks. The new policy is not yet set in stone, but we feel it will be successful in adequately shaping the Newswire into a more desirable medium for this site's purposes. While this decision has been hard to come to, we feel it will best resolve a recurring dilemma. Many people were alienated by some of the extremely offensive content present on the Newswire, and instead of acting as a safe space for the oppressed and minorities, the Newswire became quite the opposite. Numerous people with no interest in social justice and equality used the Newswire in a way contrary to our mission. In response, instead of letting the loudest voice, the most persistent poster, and the most offensive asshole dominate the Newswire, we will now be moderating some of the destructive material off. There are no easy or perfect solutions to moderating an open Newswire, rich with a healthy democracy of views.




Publishing policy


We have agreed on the following guidelines to help us decide what postings are appropriate and what are not. We believe that these guidelines will help to make the moderating process a clearer one for IMC volunteers, and for anyone who self-publishes. We also believe these guidelines will maintain an unencumbered, useful and open Newswire for readers worldwide.


We especially encourage individuals to publish:


Well researched, timely articles
Eyewitness accounts of progressive actions and demonstrations
Coverage of St. Louis metro area issues
Media analysis
Investigative reports exposing injustice
Stories on events affecting underrepresented groups
Media produced from within underrepresented groups
Local stories with national or global significance
Stories on people or projects working towards social and economic justice
Original, underreported stories of local, regional, national, or global importance.
Analysis and constructive critique of features and comments




When May A Post Be Hidden?


An “open publishing” system is founded, fundamentally, on trust. The editors of and participants in this project trust that other participants will use the Newswire to publish news, or, at the least, intelligent and insightful commentary. However, as StL IMC's popularity has grown, so has the abuse of our open publishing system. Some of the abuse seems to be juvenile in nature; some amounts to a deliberate attempt to destroy the project. Sadly, our own determination to keep online everything posted to the Newswire, no matter how offensive, ended up doing little to protect the Newswire's integrity.


The StL IMC editorial collective, in order to maintain the integrity of the Newswire and the media commons it creates for our community of participants, may "hide" posts to the Newswire when the content disregards the guidelines that have been put in place (see below).


We'd like to remind everyone that hidden articles are not deleted from the site. All content posted to the Newswire can be accessed through the administrative interface, and hidden posts are still kept online.


While we try to avoid hiding posts as much as possible, the following types of items will merit close scrutiny and may be hidden at our discretion:

Posts which are obviously incorrect or misleading, . This includes attempts to spread dis-information or to impersonate another individual.
Posts that contain generalized and negative assertions about any race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc.
Posts that advocate the mass physical elimination of a specific race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc, or that promotes websites that advocate the same.
Posts that treat the Newswire as a personal "bulletin board" with non-political content directed at one or another Newswire participants.
Unreadable formats (i.e. photos posted as text).
Duplicate posts (including duplicate images and other media).
Advertising of products or for-profit services.
Pornography, excepting sexually explicit satire.


On top of these criteria, we also reserve the option to delete posts if their continued presence directly impedes our ability to keep the Newswire online as a public and open forum. To preserve transparency in these editorial decisions, a list of deleted posts (minus the content) is available here.


Within the above guidelines, we welcome posts that disagree with the opinions held by the editors of this website. We also encourage visitors to the StL IMC to use the Newswire's rating function to express agreement or disagreement with specific posts.




Revision of this Policy


Every six months, the StL IMC collective will review this policy, as well as a sampling of posts hidden during the previous six months. We would also like to emphasize that if any collective member disagrees with the hiding of any post, he or she may contact the editorial listserve or request to discuss the matter at an IMC Meeting.


Drop us a line and let us know what you think, or if there is something that we’ve missed:.

imc-stlouis-editorial [at] lists.indymedia.org
editor [at] stlouis.indymedia.org

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