[New-imc] Questions about Open Publishing

[joanne richardson]

Greetings boud, everyone,

I wrote this message below before I got your reply. It is not that I
thought your solution about post-publishing was superfluous, but rather
that you misunderstood my point. And I don't want to ask new-imc for a
change in policy, I would like to ask for a clarification of policy and
what some of the reasons why a pre-publication hiding policy would be
considered  "unacceptable." But thanks for the suggestion that if the
point is to start a debate, it is better to forward this to imc-europe or
imc-process.

You wrote: “Nearly all IMCs have editorial policies where articles which
are racist, sexist, contain no factual type of information, are commercial
advertisements, etc. are hidden, but this happens after publication ... 
Has such a post-publication method been considered? It's true that any
sort of pre-publication hiding of articles would be unlikely to be
accepted by the network. However, any post -publication method of hiding
articles, as long as it's transparent and you have some locally agreed
upon method of doing it, is likely to be accepted.” CONCLUSION:
“imc-romania people should consider whether they would be happy to have an
editorial policy post-publication hiding of articles.”
(http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcRomaniaSummary030727Debate)

I got the sense you thought maybe I wasn’t sufficiently aware of the
difference between post and pre publication hiding, and that you thought
maybe the discussion on the imc-romania list I mentioned occurred in
ignorance of open publishing policy. It was not in ignorance but as an
attempt to question the logic of some distinctions (post and pre) which
were unclear. My message was about the context in Romania which led those
who have been active on the imc-romania list to agree about the need for
hiding racist and other unacceptable content *before* it is published on
the site, a decision that came after several unpleasant experiences – like
attempts by nationalists and racists to take over mailing lists, adopt
false names, start flame wars, and sidetrack discussions - which we could
not have foreseen when we started. My apologies if this was not clear
enough.

I think members of the new-imc list have the responsibility to give an
accurate account of variations (and disagreements) in practices and
policies among the larger IMC network for newcomers who might not be as
adequately informed as someone from the ‘inside’. I wonder if the case for
post-publication hiding was made somewhat too strongly: Indymedia’s Open
Publishing policy has been *the* issue sparking the loudest controversies
- for normalizing racist posts and damaging the reputation of the network
- both internally and from outside critics, and its endorsement seems far
from unanimous.  ChuckO’s “The Sad Decline of Indymedia”
(http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/12/08/2553147) and
Kevin Groves’ “Is Indymedia Still Relevant”
(http://www.mun.ca/muse/archive/Volume53/Issue05/feature/) both sparked
discussions on IMC lists and off.

On the front page of http://france.indymedia.org, the group who started
the project claim that they adopted open publishing in haste and without
sufficient time to consider how it would work practically in their
context, and that they have since decided by consensus to “freeze” the
open newswire column – though I’m not exactly sure what freezing it means?
IMC Germany has a moderation policy
(http://de.indymedia.org/static/moderation.shtml, translated into English
for follow up discussion by IMC Prague at
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-prague/2002-October/006071.html)
- their open publishing newswire is somewhere off the front page, and
posts that are rejected by the editorial group go to a trash archive,
which is not accessible from the site but only by email request. Last
month one of the big headlines was the adoption of a moderation policy by
the NYC IMC as a response to racist posts
(http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=65071&group=webcast):
“In the last year and a half, the NYC IMC Open Publishing Newswire has
been besieged with neo-nazi postings, and other items and commentary which
are far away from what the Newswire is meant to be: A vital space of
progressive and radical breaking news, commentary, articles, and
announcements.” They have a long list of the types of posts that may be
hidden, but it’s unclear to me if these are hidden before or after. 
During a discussion on the next 5 minutes 4 organization list, Sherrie
from IMC Seattle listed several IMC sites that are not examples of Open
Publishing – sorry I should have asked for a better clarification then
about what was different about them.

1. So I would like to know which sites don’t have an open publishing
newswire on their front page, whether there are any sites which don’t have
one at all (or have suspended its function), and whether there are any IMC
sites which have a policy of hiding problematic posts *before* they are
published rather than *after*?

2. Maybe a more important question is why the IMC network considers that
hiding a racist post after it is published is an example of Open
Publishing whereas hiding it before it is published is a violation of Open
Publishing? To me, the difference seems rhetorical at best, hypocritical
at worst. The end result is the same, you have rejected someone’s message
from the Open Publishing newswire  (though keeping it in a trash archive,
or some other folder that is still accessible on the site).  Hiding a post
(whether before or after) doesn’t seem to be an issue of censorship, since
you are preventing someone else from censoring an entire group or
violating their rights; nor is it about freedom of speech, since the
racist messages can be (and are) published in many other places than in a
publication intended for “progressive and radical breaking news,
commentary, articles, and announcements.”  I understand the “open” in open
publishing to be about transparency (making the processes, debates,
decisions, disagreements, rejections, etc visible), not necessarily about
being open to absolutely every kind of content without any principle of
selection or without any boundaries. If it were absolutely “open” in this
sense, it would not be news, it would not be a form of media, it would
just be noise. If the process whereby a post is rejected is made public
and there can be easy access to the trash archive, I honestly don’t see
what the big fuss about post vs pre publication hiding is. And actually I
exaggerated when I said the end result of post and pre publication hiding
is the same – since in both cases the result is the rejection of a racist
or otherwise unacceptable post from the newswire, but there is an
important difference if readers have seen it represented under the
Indymedia banner (even for a few minutes or a few hours), or if they find
it in the site’s trash basket.

3. I understood that as a decentralized network, global IMC respects the
decisions of local IMCs which are made consensually and in what is
considered to be in their best interest given the local context – a
context about which other IMCs don’t have first hand knowledge. So I would
like to ask for a clarification of Boud’s point – is it the case that if
IMC Romania chooses a pre-publication hiding policy we will not be allowed
to join (or banned from) the network?  One of the reasons defenders of OP
offer for IMCs tolerance of racist posts is that readers & contributors
know not to identify them with Indymedia, but, as it were, with “the other
side” who may be trying to harass or sabotage them. Indymedia might be
well known internationally, but honestly in Romania not that many people
know about it. So it is very likely that someone coming to the site for
the first time and seeing a message from Altermedia
(http://ro.altermedia.info) or the New Right (http://www.nouadreapta.org)
about the final solution to the gypsy problem or why homosexuality should
be recriminalized would identify it with the politics of the Indymedia
Romania site itself and not come back again or spread false information to
others. Maybe this is a general risk the IMC network is willing to take,
but it’s not a particular risk we want to accept. And it doesn’t seem
right to be asked to become subordinate to someone else’s principles when
they contradict our reality.

In solidarity,
Joanne