Indymedia and DIY journalism

The Independent Media Center (Indymedia), as a social movement and a newscast network grew out of the anti-globalist protest during the World Trade Organization assembly in Seattle, Washington in November 1999. Since then the project evolved into a global network of independent journalists and participants operating in more than 50 countries around the world, to fulfill their main objective of criticizing neo-liberalism and globalization, and providing the news coverage strongly oppositional to (presumably biased) governmental and corporate mass media. According their website the Indymedia project involves "a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth."

It makes obvious, that emergence of such prolific independent broadcast outlet has provided the efficient platform for anybody to openly publish various political and social issues from their personal perspective. With pervasiveness of the internet and availability of mobile recording and communication devices, it is now possible for virtually anyone to immediately report directly from spot of the event. Yet beyond the obvious advantages of the new democratic broadcast platform there still are number of challenges to be addressed for the network to function comparably efficient to the mainstream media. For one, there is a strong demand for a sufficient number of well-informed and experienced journalists to contribute continuously to the network. Secondly, as the network provides the equal ability for anyone to report, there rise concerns regarding the quality of reports, fact check of information and possible moderation of the content, which creates the ethical dilemma of freedom of speech and maintenance of credibility and a level of proficiency in delivery of the content. Thirdly, apparent radicalism and reactionary policy of many alternative media is often strongly charged with certain ideological perspective which may undermine the very principle of neutral unbiased broadcasting. Finally, the notion of digital divide and the gap between people with different levels of knowledge of and access to information technology can be seen as a major obstacle in the use of the new media.
Yet despite of its limitation the idea of independent media as an alternative form of news coverage, I believe, is definitely worth the attention, as a new and constantly evolving democratic tool of distribution and access of information and oppositional opinion.