Indy Media Watch

Further to my recent article More Google Purging comes this comment:

Yes, but Indymedia publishes REAL NEWS which gets picked up by google. Not the drivel Michelle Malkin and her deranged ilk spew up as news.

Got that? Indymedia publishes "Real news".

Let's leave aside for the moment that several of the articles linked to in the lengthy comment were essentially reprints, or links to other media. That is, Indymedia didn't produce the news, merely echoed it.

Does the occasional bit of news reporting justify the bile that occupies so much of Indymedia?

I would argue no.

If you read the header of this blog, you will note my belief that an independent media is a good idea. Indymedia however has failed. I should note that NYC Indymedia is one of the better ones.

However, as the vast majority of Indymedia websites have a totally open, unmoderated newswire, there is nothing to stop anyone posting anything they like to it. In many cases, such postings could be total fabrications however be sufficiently inoffensive that they would fly under most people's "bullshit detector".

Are they therefore news?

Conventional media rely on fact checking and are subject to accountability (that is, they get sued). Indymedia shies right away from this responsibility and the consequences are visible to all.

Moreover, despite numerous comments on my last post, none of the ensuing debate has yet addressed why an Indymedia has hidden an article, but Google still accepts it as newsworthy.