For a Real Independent Journalism: criticism to the Indymedia Network.

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Sunday November 28, 2004 05:35 by cmi-santiago idnymedia de chile ((i)) www.santiago.indymedia.org

((i))

For a Real Independent Journalism: criticism to the Indymedia Network.

For a Real Independent Journalism: criticism to the Indymedia Network.
Collective Indymedia Santiago.

(Official notice from the Collective Indymedia Santiago about it’s imminent expulsion from the Indymedia Network).

Indymedia –is for all well known- was born from the anti globalization movement. That posture could have been intentionally radical at the beginning, and maybe (and just maybe) could have advocated a rupture with the existent society, but in the present time it has become into one of the many merchandise of the offers that this system purpose us inside of it’s allowed diversity.
In Chile, the country from where we formulate this criticisms, the anti globalization is supported and financed by the government (neoliberal) of turn. The anti globalization is, simplely, the expression of a economy that privilege the local before the global. On the contrary, we take this issue a little bit farther: we don't criticize the extension of the economy, but it’s own reason to be and it’s configuration.
We criticize and condemn the economy by it’s self, transformed in something that does not have an other purpose tan keep existing. We have decided we wont rip off with the existent domination, and, in the same way, we have arrived to a point that is imposible to save: we are not interested in the basic criticism to the capitalist globalization, but we are in the one focus on the capitalism as such.

We consive the sickness and problems that, in a precise historical period, afflicts the people, as a result of the capitalism. Our integration to the Indymedia’s project was motivated by that rejection to the dominant system: because we wanted, by using antagonist information, to fight this social relation, which is the guilty of the ecological, social and the everyday destruction of everyone who lives immersed in it. However, he have arrived to the point where, as we said before, we have reached an irreconcilable position with the capitalism of this society, and that attitude is recognize in us by the Indymedia Network, and as a consequence of this, it has generated fear.

From a time to now, the criticisms that as a collective we have published have disturbed a number of people and local Indymedias. Such criticisms hurts and are dangerous because of its radicalism and simpleness: they question the bases of the domination. Using an internal process the Indymedia Network has disguised a criticism to our radical position with a call to become attached to the every local Indymedia’s common rules. In the same way, they demand us to transform into technical journalists, which, by using only the objectivity, describe events without impregnate them with any opinion.

Of the precise moment in that we heard speak of independent journalism (and of Indymedia), the project interested given the difference indeed to us that this it had with the official media which is taught objective and pluralist in universities, academies and restricted institutes of the knowledge; the independent media was made up of all the opposite that is to say, of a subjectivity that now if it gave a reason of being to the journalistic activity: thinking to criticize and, consequently, to contribute to an abolition of these social relations that are imposed to us.

The independent media (for us) was always the one that left the logics of Capitalism, because to be independent it means more enough than not to receive financing of the state (in fact, if thus outside all the companies would be independent). On the contrary, always we assumed that conscience that little by little we were forging, of conception of the necessity of abolition of the social classes by means of the confrontation of them, like the independence of which the media of Indymedia spoke. We always had the sensation of which the ideological position that we shared like group, of unsavable reconciliation with the society of classes, was the true spirit who moved to the really independent press. Nevertheless, to three years of to have conformed our local nucleus of the network, we occur to account of that is not thus, of which our ant capitalist critic saves and overflows the criteria of Indymedia. And which also, to anybody in the global network of Indymedia it concerns the one that we have been several years to him of arduous operation, at the time of questioning our permanence.

We are very sad to see everyday how thousands of independent stand in an eternal cycle of an illusory independent journalism converted in something by itself. The journalism -we say it with the authority that give us the years of work- doesn't mean anything if it doesn't have a purpose, this is worthless if its not the destruction of capitalism.

Indymedia denies the independence by proposing a journalism slightly different of the one made by the mass media, where the only difference are the events that are covered by them, and regrettable, not in the way of doing that. They repeat the same logics of the official communication mass media, Indymedia tries to create political indifference and, as a result, we get the lack of interest in taking part in the war that we need to fight against the responsibles of our misery. This is how Indymedia annuls it self as a critical purpose or as an intent of independence by exalting a fake regulation turned into a religion.

Indymedia by using the diversity and pluralism as standard (that restricts any radical criticism) pretending to be different, it doesn't do anything but becoming a post modern merchandise.

We never wanted to be objective journalists, and we never will be. Our critic attitude has cost us to be threaten of our expulsion from the Indymedia Network, and it’s in concordance to the consequence with our conviction that we formulate this declaration: We do not want to inform, but contribute to the debate and to the criticism to this unjust system. We are not interested in impassionated readers to our objective columns. We are interested in their participation. And when we talk about participants we don't refer to the simplicity of free publication for everyone, but letting, by means of radical questioning of the existent, the people abandoned their passive condition and assume an active one. We want them to abandon their watching capacity and to transform into actors, but not of a simple web site, but to take control and be actors of their own lives and history.

We announce our imminent retired from the Indymedia’s project because of the incompatibility that we have with a number of common "rules" that conform the network: the Indymedia’s independency contradict oneself because is a bourgeois conception and it doesn't change at all the way of doing journalism.

In the same way we announce to the people who is interested, that this collective, which keep growing, will keep its critic and contra informative function, contributing to the labor we have done during a long time in Santiago Indymedia (previously in Chile Indymedia) now in an other site, which we will announce when it’s ready.

Hoping the present opinion would be fructiferous in the debate respect to the goals of the independent journalism, in Indymedia and any other similar project,

Collective Indymedia Santiago which is abandoning the Indymedia Network (with all its members).