Indy Media Watch

They didn't approve in the UK either when someone posted this

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/07/345937.html

As a point of interest the post also mentions the now famous (in the UK at least!) IMC monitoring team. This was set up by some students at Bristol University who decided to show everybody how many posts and comments on the UK site were being removed (the claim is that posts and comments are only ever 'hidden'). The monitoring team site was the subject of a number of cyber attacks to try and take it down but without success. What really hacks off the Indymedia UK people is that a member of the IMC Monitoring team is an active IM UK insider so he has passwords and full code access. When the url of the site is posted to IM UK they always edit it or remove it so that readers don't get to see it. In late June it was shown that HALF of all the posts to Indymedia UK were being removed and nearly a THIRD of comments.

The Monitoring Team site is down at the moment but will be back up after the holidays when the students return to University.
 

Or here's a fun way to draw attention to Indymedia sites that make an obsession of unilaterally demonizing Israel:

Go here

Articles single-mindedly attacking Israel are in Red. Articles that draw criticism to Hezbollah, Syria, etc. are in green. You'll note that red takes up about half the site. There is no green.

Not sure how long they'll keep up the image, as the site's editors have been deleting (not even just hiding) the material.
 

The IMC monitoring people continue to be a real thorn in the side of the British Indymedia site. They have exposed a very dangerous policy used by the small clique that control the site, the editing of posts and comments ! In short they alter posts and reports made by others to fit in with the IM-UK view.

The policy of what gets on the Indymedia UK site is controlled by a small unelected elite called the Editorial Board, they control everything and attempts to join it as always rejected. These was an attempt to start an Indymedia GB site in competion but the Editorial Board squashed it flat.
 

You know, there's no reason you need to get anyone's approval to start a competing indymedia site. The software used to run indymedia sites is open source and available for download.

The only thing requiring permission is being formally added to the Indymedia network, and that only has the advantage of getting to participate in global decision making (there's hardly any of that anyway) and feeding into the global indymedia site's feature section (and the global indymedia site gets less attention than many community-centered sites).