Yet more evidence of a controlled media.

Diogenes

I think I can help field this one for you SfK, before I became a corporate media shill, I helped found the irish chapter of indymedia.

Here's the Irish chapter's editorial guidelines

1. Comments, not news. If there is a recently published story on the same topic as, or one closely related to your post, then it should be published as a comment on the existing story. Comments belong with the story being discussed - to have your say in response to a story on the site, use the "add your comments" link at the bottom of each story
2. Duplicate posts. Make sure you've read the newswire and that the story doesn't appear there already. Also make sure that you haven't posted the same comment on multiple stories
3. Infactual or obviously false posts. The onus is on the author to check and confirm facts - if a clear factual error is brought to our attention it will be removed.
4. Libelous or slanderous posts. Choose your language carefully. Do not make allegations against named individuals unless you can substantiate them. Posts which contain personal abuse against named individuals, rather than against their arguments or their political affiliation, will be removed without delay, particularly if those individuals are not public figures. 'Play the ball, not the player'.
5. Discriminatory or hateful posts. Posts that contain explicitly racist, sexist or homophobic views will be removed. We don't oppose free speech for people with hateful views, we're just not going to provide them with a platform for distributing those views.
6. Advertising or other inappropriate content. Advertising of commercial products or services, particularly when they are sold on a for-profit basis.
7. Cross-posting to multiple IMCs. Posts that are available elsewhere on the Indymedia network (on at least two other IMCs) shall be deleted, although in cases where the article is particularly relevant to Irish readers, it may be allowed to remain at the discretion of the editorial collective.
8. Articles or Comments which have no News Content. Although we aim to have a broad tolerance for all types of news postings, there are limits. In particular, the following types of article are not considered to be news:
* Incomprehensible 'gobbledygook' postings
* Asking of questions - particular or general questions without any other content - e.g. this type of thing: "Anyone know when X is on?" or "What do you think of YYY policy on ZZZZ?"
* Articles or comment which consist entirely of unsubstantiated opinions or personal musings without any supporting evidence or other content. For example : 'I think Fianna Fail are criminals'
* Bulletin Board Chat (BB chat). Indymedia aims to be a news service. It is not a bulletin board for chit chatting. There are plenty of other sites for that.
* Petitions
9. Impersonation. Articles or comments which impersonate other indymedia users by adoption of their names or regular pseudonyms
10. Fascists. All content expressing fascist views or written by active fascists, or expressing revisionist / holocaust denial positions, or linking to a fascist site. We will not provide a platform for fascist recruitment
11. Trolling. Comments which consist entirely of abuse towards any group, individual, or article without attempting to situate this in the context of the particular article or debate arising out of that article. So for example, a comment which simply says: "the Popular Front of Judea are ****" will be deleted, while a comment that says: "The fact that the PFJ have refused this offer of an alliance shows them to be hypocritical **** in the light of what they have said before", might remain
12. Continuing debates across multiple articles. Indymedia is not a bulletin board. All comments should directly relate to the article or preceding comments. Users should refrain from constantly bringing up points from previous threads, unless they have a close relevance to the new article. Users should also note that repetitive demands of another user to answer a particular question or point is a reason for deletion especially when it occurs across multiple threads.
13. Persistent Abuse. Users who persistently refuse to abide by IMC policy are liable to have any and all of their contributions removed
14. Copy and Pastes. Posts that are already publicly available elsewhere on the Internet.
We realise, however, that there can sometimes by a strong case for articles published elsewhere to be brought to the attention of Indymedia readers. In these cases, contributors should provide the link to the the piece, write an original introduction, highlighting the article's relevance to Irish Indymedia readers and publish it under the Other Press category.
15. Comments on editorial policy. Users can appeal for or against deletions by contacting the editors using the 'Contact Us' link at the top of the front page. Editorial actions are debated on the editorial list and users can join the list and join in the frequent debates on deletions there. Commentary on IMC Ireland editorial policy on the newswire will be removed
16. Comments that refer to Deleted Posts. Comments referring to something that a user can't see as it has been deleted will also be removed.

Note the bit in bold on guideline 3. Indymedia will allow anyone to publish anything, anything you want, and it will remain on the website unless someone points out the factual error, or libel or slander.

Indymedia freely admits that it doesn't fact check, verify sources, confirm quotations or even spell check articles the publishes. Things I can assure you all the media organisations you mentioned try to do with varying degrees of success.

a google search on merkin, shows this article comes third

A check on the Melbourne Indymedia website shows us

Open publishing has been suspended on Melbourne Indymedia as numbers in our editorial collective are insufficient to manage the site effectively and responsibly. We realise that MIM has played a vital role in reporting activist news from Melbourne, around Australia and internationally. To this end the present collective will be assessing options for how best to provide an activist news service in the future. If you wish to get involved, please

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/

Shows that it actively shut itself down nearly two years ago because it lacked the volunteer staff it compliment basic editorial duties (deleting spam, racist material) never mind actually fact checking whats published on the site.

So basically I'm saying the story sounds like a bull**** conspiracy theory that appeared on a understaffed volunteer news site, and suggesting that because the "mainstream media" didn't cover it there "like must be a cover up man" and not "for ****s sake indymedia as a source".

Like I said I helped found an indymedia many years ago, and left because I saw how utterly useless it was as a journalist organism.

0/10 SkG.

Sofa_King Good

10/10 for the rebuttal.

Here is a page with a timeline and multiple links from various Filipino sources:
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_meiring_1

Sofa_King Good

And admittedly an FT article.

Sofa_King Good

King Mob wrote: »

So how do you know that Indymedia are right?

lack of libel case maybe

robtri

Sofa_King Good wrote: »

Sooooo. That'd be a 0 then. Anyone hazard a guess?

yeah, nobody was interested in taking up the story.....
there are millions of stories that go untold everyday..... doesn't make it a conspiracy.....

robtri

Sofa_King Good wrote: »

lack of libel case maybe

have you any evidence to back up this statement up....
maybe some statistics ??????

Sofa_King Good

robtri wrote: »

maybe some statistics ??????

Sure. Number of libel cases 0

Diogenes

Sofa_King Good wrote: »

Sure. Number of libel cases 0

Why would he sue? Okay consider this the sheer volume of libellous and comments that float around the web about Rumsfeld or say Cheney (and I'm not saying that many of them aren't true). Why aren't Rummy and Cheney running around and suing every poster on every AtS style website, every Alex Jones type show, every Reense.com piece. Why because these are small worthless insignificant bodies with delusionals of grandeur that no one of any real note gives a rats ass about. So why bother?

Supposing this guy did take Melbourne Indymedia to court, sued for libel and won. What would he win? Melbourne Indymedia is volunteer run website, staffed anonymously, with pretty much next to no resources. So suppose he wins, and the judge orders Melbourne Indymedia to pay damages plus his legal expenses. They're just going to to shrug their shoulders and say "sorry we can't pay, we don't have any cash". He can try and spend years trying to recoup the money from the group and may never succeed. It's a heap of expense time and hassle for the guy, with very little chance of sort of reward. And for what some ****ty little article on a defunct website?

SfG do you even think these things through before you type 'em?