one.point.zero - Colin O'Brien's scattered thoughts from Brussels, Belgium

what is the definition of ‘independent’?

Free from external control or influence. Neutral. Uncommitted.

i seriously doubt indymedia.be is neutral. the pvda has been the driving force since the begining :) nevertheless i enjoy reading the site from time to time.

imho there is no such thing as ‘unbiased’ media. even the blogosphere. but things get worse when biased media are used for political purposes. see what happens in italy and the US.

That’s what he was saying in his post.

oh really

It seems quite obvious that indymedia.be is the mouthpiece of the PTB/PVDA for some time now.  I don’t know if they were involved in it from the beginning or if they just hijacked it.

I tend to be extremley careful when I get a news coming from any IMC as I’ve read way too many consipracy theories and hatred spread through out the posts and comments published on indymedia.be…

I agree with the last post, I’ve also read a few conspiracy theories (by that I mean little supported by evidence) on Indymedia.

On the other hand there cannot be, almost by essence, any unbiased media, since there cannot be any unbiased view of the world. Thoughts and opinions are the products of circumstances and interests, not the other way round.

I don’t know about Belgian Indymedia, but Australia’s Indymedia is a dogmatic Marxist/Trotskyist organ, and censors ideologically unsound opinions.

As far as there being no unbiased media, there can be media which respects diversity of opinions and attempts to present a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is one example of this; it can be argued that the BBC is another. The problem with media owned by True Believers of any sort (be it FOXNews or Indymedia) is that their ideological ends justify, to them, the means of suppressing dissenting views (especially since dissenting views are, by definition, wrong).

I think that we may agree on the point that there can be open media which allow diverse views to be aired, but that there cannot be unbiased (or objective) media. Not simply because people’s views are the results of personnal preferences and interests but also because any media (newspapers, films, music, etc) is the expression of those who own it. And in that respect the BBC is not different from Foxnews or Solidaire (the PTB’s newspaper, if it still exists). A few years ago BBC radio tried to get rid of John Peel’s show, because he didn’t fit. I’ve tried to post mildly dissenting views on some topics on the BBC news website (they sometimes ask for users comments), none of them got published. All in all they may be less dogmatic than marxist-leninist organizations but that still doesn’t make them an open media in my view.

By that definition, isn’t everything equivalent to FOXNews?

Well, the content will be different but the process is the same yes. CNN and ZNet, NY Times and Le Monde Diplomatique, they are owned by different people and cater to a different audience. To have a truly open media you would need a media that publishes articles regardless of the view expressed or of who writes. Only the internet can technologically allow that, not traditional medias, which are only one-way communication devices. Onepointzero comes half-way to an open media since it allows users to openly comment (and disagree), but users comments are restricted to the topics chosen by Colin, who owns this blog. This is a form of censorship too (this is not meant as a pejorative comment, just a fact).

You best believe that Indymedia poses the biggest threat to commercial & censored media, and as such to the governmental propaganda spreading through them as a plague. Their servers weren’s seized by the feds for nothing.

There are more lies to be found in the mainstream nowadays than in the alternative media. It’s in our best interest to fully support the latter.

In the URL, you will observe an genuine antisemitic posting already there since twe years.

Some racists (yes!) at the belgian MRAX.be (that should fight antisemitism) still have a link towards that indymedia.be despite the fact that a judicial invertigation is ongoing aganist them.

Also the head of indymedia.be, Han Soete, a PTB-PvdA guy, is well know for wanting to bomb the jewish radio during his adolescence.

Dispite al these known facts an official belgian government organisation still provides them with funds to continue their hate-campaign!

The list of censured articles on Indymedia.be by the indymediots is bypassing the number of articles themselves. See the link in"website"

Somehow this story reminds me of my (awful) years at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). PTB activists would court students in front of auditorium, calling fascists and bourgeois anyone who didn’t fully agree with them.

Once, one of these activists told me that there were right-wing militias training in the Ardennes (mountains to the East of Belgium). I laughed and joked that the Wermacht was back again. He didn’t laughed at all! He really believed his own propaganda. Scary.