Israeli army bulldozes, kills US protester (ISM Statement)(Editorial issues at Indymedia Israel)

Bryan Atinsky bryan at indymedia.org.il
Mon Mar 17 09:34:00 PST 2003


I agree Carrol,

The problems are one of system-inertia and one of practicality.

We would have to end the idea of Open Publishing in order to have an editorial process which would filter out in a fair way, these types of hateful speech. The whole system works with immediate publishing....when you click the publish button on the publish page, the articles are immediately put into the newswire.

We would have to have some form of delay mechanism which would then only show the articles in the newswire once they have been 'approved'...this may solve some of the negative aspects of the system as it stands, but it would also destroy the benefits of immediate publication, lend towards editorial abuse and go ideologically against the ideas of many in the 'Free speech uber alles' camp (mostly from America) of the Indymedia activists. About 1 1/2 years ago, when we really were inundated by right wings attacks that were almost taking over 60 or more percent of the article/comments, we actually began to really try to 'hide' many of these comments...and we were attacked by many of these 'Free speech uber alles' Indymedia people, some of who were trying to get a boycott of the Indymedia Israel site. They calmed down after several months, but we still get complaints ('we need to know our enemy' and 'you are fascists just like they are when you censor' type comments) whenever we 'hide' some of the more extreme statements.

Secondly, we are only so many people working on the editorial side of the Indymedia Israel website, and we really don't have the time to run after every comment published (which is partially what they publish this garbage for...so we expend tons of time on this useless dribble..)

Actaully if any of you out there have comments or suggestions about what to do, it could be helpful.

Bryan

----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> "Free Speech" means no state control of speech. You can't disguise lax
> editorial decisions under the heading of allowing free speech.
>
> Carrol
>



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