Republican News · Thursday 6 February 2002

Indymedia Ireland celebrates first birthday

BY JUSTIN MORAN

This week saw the one-year anniversary of Indymedia Ireland. In that time, the Independent Media Centre has logged a staggering number of almost 27,000 postings, including news, announcements, analysis, images and political argument.

The range of its subject matter has been vast, but some of the stories dominating Indymedia these days are much the same stories that dominated it on the day it launched. Coverage of anti-war protests have been a regular feature of the site since it was launched.

The Independent Media Centre is a non-commercial, alterative source of news and information. It is used almost exclusively by groups and people that have limited access to the establishment media - republicans, socialists, environmentalists, anarchists and a variety of other groups making up what could broadly be termed the progressive left in Irish politics.

Over the year it has had some notable successes, breaking the story of Garda violence against protestors at a Reclaim the Streets demonstration and helping to make Article 133 a part of the Nice Treaty debate. It has also been providing in-depth coverage of issues such as the use of Shannon Airport by American forces and Carrickmines Castle long before either issue attracted wider media attention.

Their success is all the more impressive when it is considered that Indymedia is run on a shoestring, with contributors and editors providing their material for free. The quality of their work is often in stark contrast to the laziness of the well-paid corporate media in Ireland who don't supply the aggressive reporting Indymedia can do.

Simply because it can, however, does not mean it always does. The system is not without its flaws. Indymedia, though a national site, is very much Dublin based, a flaw often pointed to in the mainstream media. While the Centre is very eager to move out of Dublin, finding people in other towns and cities willing to help out is proving difficult.

The open nature of the forum, which permits anyone to post almost anything that is not abusive or obviously inaccurate, means a great deal of poorly written, inaccurate and sometimes downright surreal material appears on the site. Lacking a search facility, this means users can often spend a long time trying to find information that might have appeared weeks earlier. At the same time, the culture of the Centre is to avoid any and all forms of censorship if at all possible.

The comment facility is also not without its drawbacks. Every user is permitted to comment on every article, on the surface a good idea, allowing the facts to be challenged and facilitating political debate. Sadly, it often degenerates into sectarian infighting amongst representatives of one political faction or another. People, particularly non-politically active people logging on for information can find themselves suddenly reading bitter, and occasionally personal, tirades about one party or another. Too often, political debate becomes a slagging match.

Still, Indymedia has recently been attracting more and more media interest, with the Centre supplying video footage to RTÉ and serving as a point of contact for journalists too lazy to do their own research but interested in talking to people on the radical green left of Irish politics.

Recent attacks on the Centre by Sunday Independent journalist and untalented comedian Brendan O'Connor show that the site is living up to at least one principle of journalism as defined by the writer Finley Peter Dunne, to "afflict the comfortable".