The Rise of Independent Media Centers

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Online Journalism Review has a thoughtful piece that looks at the intersection of mass media, democracy, and technology. The Independent Media Centers are the nodes where this all happens. It's interesting that this article is written from the point of view of the journalism profession. I wonder what bloggers would say? Or the social activists who are making the news thanks to this and similar new media. See Modern Day Muckrakers: The Rise of the Independent Media Center Movement."

Comments

from the article

[nomadic]

Like Wells, the reporters connected to the IMCs don't have any interest in unbiased reporting. But many of their articles do contain, like her work, massive amounts of research, statistics and interviews. Media, they believe, should be accessible to everyone. Journalists can and should be agents for social change.

This is the problem with the mainstream media today; exchanging one form of bias for another doesn't exactly sound like an advance.

Re:from the article

[mfb]

All journalists, and all journals, are inherently biased. No single reporter or editor can hope to compile even an approximation of "truth," in its totality, for her or his readers.

Due to its ownership, most mass media around the world has either a corporate bias (the global big-6 media monopolies are more beholden to their shareholders and advertisers than to the public interest) or government bias (totalitarian nations and state-sponsored media outlets). Even non-profit and non-commercial media outlets suffer from the whims of their donors and owners.

The philosophies behind the IMC network is that technology and the open-publishing model are expanding media-access for everyone: the poor, the under-educated, activists, advocacy groups, fringe dissidents, working people - anyone. Meanwhile, the "consensus" process allows each IMC editorial collective to put together featured content that all participants endorse and stand behind (or, at least, stand aside). This still-experimental paradigm is radically different from the hierarchical editorial structure of corporate and government media.

Re:from the article

[Xavier Shirin]

As it has always been, and probably always will be, you cannot expect to get an unbiased view from one source. In order to get any approximation of an unbiased view, you have to look at many views and determine which parts of them are truth and which parts are bias. Then you will see the larger part, but not the entire, truth.

speaking of which,

[fonebone]

this brings up another question.. it's so commonly mentioned how these great random freelancing web journalists are changing the media by bringing unbiased news, and that sort of thing. we all know about the usual indy medias, but what other independant journalists have really proved themselves to be something insightful and accurate?