Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that I just spoke with Rick Karr, "cultural correspondent" for NPR, the United States' public radio network. He wrote to Indymedia yesterday morning -- can't remember if he just wrote to general@indymedia.org or to imc-editorial@indymedia.org as well -- saying he is doing a piece on the CNN/Palestinian footage rumor and wanted to talk with someone at Indymedia about it. I responded saying Indymedia may not be the best group to interview because we didn't originate the rumor nor did any Indymedia sites put it in their features column. I also mentioned the thing I find most interesting about this whole episode, that people were so inclined to believe that CNN would fake Palestinian footage in the first place due to CNN's lack of credibility among many people in the world, especially in times of (overt) U.S. war. He wrote back asking if someone from Indymedia would still be willing to be interviewed because that was an imporatant point and he wanted to make sure it got into his piece. I'm not one who always likes to do intereviews so I e-mailed the general-discussion list asking if anyone else would be interested. Only Sharpie expressed interest but the deadline was too soon for me to get his phone number. So, I just did the interview.

A few times over the last several months I and others have written to several Indymedia lists asking for volunteers who will be willing to field interviews when people write to Indymedia asking to speak with someone. When a request comes in through imc-editorial or general@indymedia.org, if it is a non-U.S. request someone who is answering those e-mails at the moment usually passes it along to someone from the IMC in that area -- for example, Brazilian press inquiries go to IMC-Brazil, requests from the UK go to IMC-UK, etc. For U.S. press requests we've been a bit more lax, inconsistently posting the request at imc-process, on imc-editorial or imc-global to see if anyone wants to answer. Since much of the discussion about this CNN footage issue happened on imc-editorial I was surprised that no one else from imc-editorial responded to the initial request, but now I can't find Rick Karr's e-mail to imc-editorial so there's the possibility he just sent it to general@indymedia.org, which reaches fewer people. We don't have a real process for deciding who is going to grant interviews when asked, nor do we have one e-mail list through which we can put all those requests so they'll reach everyone who is willing to be interviewed. Please, if you're interested in fielding interviews let people on the general-discussion@indymedia.org list know, because often requests come through the general@indymedia.org mailbox and, especially when there's a close deadline, finding someone who isn't on that list to paricipate isn't always the easiest thing to do.

As for the interview itself, I started off by very consciously presenting myself not as a spokesperson for Indymedia but as one of the many volunteers who participates in the network, as I've also done the other couple times I've been interviewed in relation to Indymedia. I explained Indymedia's open publishing system and outlined how it empowers people to "be the media." We talked about why people were so inclined to believe the footage was false and I said what I had said above, adding that people, as human beings, may not have wanted to believe that other human beings could be celebrating at what happened on September 11 so they felt better to believe CNN had faked the footage. I also suggested that CNN's showing of that footage again and again (and again), whether or not it came from 9-11, clearly suggested the network wanted to project that Palestinians as a whole rejoiced when they heard Americans had died. Why did CNN broadcast only this footage and not footage of Palestinians who mourned the human tragedy, just as they wish people around the world would mourn the deaths of their family members in their struggles against Israel? Did they go out looking for footage of celebraing Palestinians? Even if a video crew just *happened* to be driving by a group of celebrating Palestinians on 9-11 and took the images for purely informational purposes (something that people are questioning now that more of the footage shot on that day by that crew has been broadcast), why did CNN not very consciously and truthfully indicate that this was the minority of Palestinians and, knowing that, still insist on broadcasting this footage again and again? Most importantly, why did CNN not provide any context for why anyone would rejoice at the United States' being attacked? The lack of context CNN presented for why anyone would rejoice at an attack on America, especially in the first few days after 9-11, angered and continues to anger (and critically underinform) a lot of people. When they saw the rumor that the footage was false, many people said, "A-HA! I knew it!" Anyway, those were some of the many points I touched upon in the interview. We'll see how it turns out.

Thanks, and again, I hope the interview turned out well,

Jay

I'm hoping the interview went well also. It sounds like our accidental spokesperson handled himself well, considering his reticence.

A lot of questions arise from this incident.

Primary for me is the question of why when we are faced with a microphone do we feel compelled to speak or to act in such a way as the sacred duty of the reporter would not be impinged. Isn't it amazing that a reporter (or someone posing as a reporter) automatically moves us to a position of complicity? Especially considering that we have no idea if the reporter will use the audio he captured, and if he does what context he might present it. Why do we have this attitude? Why is it we rarely approach such circumstances from a place of power? If we have information the reporter wants why can't we dictate the circumstances? "Come to a meeting - talk to the collective - no, we can't produce a statement according to your deadline".

If we believe that NPR is likely to be a good opportunity to 'spread the word' we must also be cognizant that our complicity with their methodology renders us 'mediated', while what we are more about is being direct.

Then there is the ever-present question of who can speak for a collective? I am not criticizing the person who presented himself above as a member of (and representative of) the collective. I think he did a fine job. I only want to call into question the concept of allowing ourselves to be represented by the media when we know their ultimate presentation is beyond our control. If individuals want to talk with the media that would be an individual choice, and I would have nothing to say about individual choices.

I am beginning to suspect that as an organization we should shy away trying to represent ourselves to the media. I know we don't have a policy on this, and I know that the issue is bound to be contentious, but it remains something we need to talk about. I repeat that, from my perspective, our complicity with mainstream media contradicts our very mission. Corporate media is not easily capable of grasping the complexity of our media model (and have every right to be alarmed by it if they did understand it - after all we call into question their presumed legitimacy!). Let the work of the IMC speak for itself and lets resist the attempts of the mainstream media to use our own sound bites to characterize us in the limited way they are so adept at. Instead when a reporter says he or she wants to do a story on the IMC we should say "great, why don't you post it to the IMC when you are done".