Arizona Indymedia’s Editorial Policy: please comment : AZ IMC

Arizona Indymedia, like IMCs across the world, has a growing problem of racist, hateful posts and comments being put onto the open newswire. In particular, stories about migrants crossing the U.S./Mexico border (example: http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/25182.php ) and about issues regarding Israel, Palestine and the Middle East draw a large amount of hate speech. In general, articles about racism and hate generate lots of racist and hateful responses.

As is custom with all Indymedias, AZ IMC does not censor articles or comments unless they are explicitly racist, hateful or violent.

Here is what our Editorial Policy says: Any post containing blatantly racist or violent material, or posts that are duplicates, will be hidden. We try to not censure, but we also want to maintain a site that is respectful and promotes useful dialogue. ( http://arizona.indymedia.org/process/openpub.php )

There have been many comments, both on the newswire and on AZ IMC’s listservs, condemning the site’s moderators for not hiding or deleting the variety of racist and hateful posts.

Since volunteers moderate the site, it is hard to expect them to always read everything posted to the site. We do have a system in place where people can email the editorial collective and report a story or comment that seems to violate our editorial policy ( imc-arizona-edit@lists.indymedia.org ). We are usually able to respond to these requests in a timely manner.

The real question comes in about which stories and comments to censor out of the site. Arguments can be made on both sides. Here are a few:

Pro-censorship:
- People posting racists/hateful comments are usually cops, feds or trolls (people who just sit in front of their computer all day and spew venom). They are merely provocateurs, and we don’t need to provide a free home for their rants.
- Hate groups already have their own web sites, if you want to read their stuff, go to their site, but keep it off Indymedia.
- People will be intimidated by these kinds of comments and may decide to stop using Indymedia. This is exactly what these (racist, hateful, troll, fed) people want. We need to censor them out and maintain a safe place for our ideas and stories.

Anti-censorship
- Free speech is free speech. If we start censoring everything just because we don’t like it, then what makes us any different from corporate media?
- Who has the authority to say whether or not a post has crossed the line? It’s better to not censure than to get into a position where we have to censure anything that offends anyone.
- People just need to realize that Indymeidas are going to have those kinds of comments, and just learn to ignore them.

Some people have commented that they’ve stopped reading AZ IMC because of the presence of hate speech. This is indeed unfortunate. Indymedia should be an empowering aspect of the movement, not an alienating one.

So we are asking you for your comments, ideas and suggestions on what to do to make Arizona Indymedia better. Please feel free to reply to this post, or send comments to the editorial listserv at imc-arizona-edit@lists.indymedia.org .

Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you!

AZ IMC Editorial Collective