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CNN Bans Talk About Indymedia
CNN has banned the use of 'indymedia' on CNN chat groups. CNN knows that participatory, independent media is a threat to their information monopoly. Here we come!
GIVING CORPORATE MEDIA A RUN FOR ITS MONEY: Indymedia Does Its Job Well
By Aaron Schlosser
It seems as if the Cable News Network (CNN), the self-proclaimed “world leader of information delivery,” takes careful measures to protect its interests from the likes of nasty, decentralized, non-profit organizations like the Independent Media Center that are composed of regular, working people. In an almost laughably pathetic maneuver, CNN has banned the word “indymedia,” “indy media,” “1ndym3d14,” and so forth, from all discussion on its servers. Any use of the term – even when asking server operators questions about policy – will result in immediate exile.
After all, in the market of information, such an open and democratic forum like the Indymedia should be expected to be a threat to the media monopolies of the United States. And what better place to start than CNN, the American news agency most famous for censorship (the term “CNNsorship didn’t come out of nowhere, you know)? The Indymedia is a threat of monumental proportion, and a threat that could destroy the illusion of “fair and unbiased” corporate news coverage with one simple fact: it refuses to participate in the illusion.
While money-driven corporations like CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, and Fox News filter their information, the Independent Media lets it run freely. While the corporations sell their news, the Independent Media gives it away for free. While the corporations kneel beneath their advertisers, the Independent Media refuses to advertise. While the corporations herald “truth” and “hard-hitting facts,” the Independent Media treats the human mind with respect, effectively saying, “decide for yourself.”
Considering all that, it should be no surprise that CNN should feel threatened by the “competition” from Indymedia, despite the fact that a multibillion-dollar, all-powerful media conglomerate should fear competition from a non-profit, non-hierarchal, democratic, anti-capitalist organization is decidedly pathetic. Or, perhaps it just shows the weakness of marketing everything, and reducing basic communication to a commodity to be sold. By refusing to be marketed, Indymedia breaks through the illusion, and for that reason, I say again: it’s no wonder that they are scared.
Along with this article should be two images: each one shows a conversation I personally had with a server operator (if they upload correctly). In the first instance, I used the nick “indymedia,” which, surprisingly, was allowed. In the second instance, I used the nick “bobby.” As one can clearly see, I was polite, reasonable, and patient.
When the server operator felt that they could not justify their actions, however, they took the cowardly route: they banned me. For what? For asking a simple question, politely and respectfully.
If you ask me, this only further asserts that the Indymedia is doing exactly what it should be doing: giving the corporate interests a run for there money.
No pun intended.
I suggest each of you who read this to try it for yourself.
http://www.prospecthillproductions.net/
By Aaron Schlosser
It seems as if the Cable News Network (CNN), the self-proclaimed “world leader of information delivery,” takes careful measures to protect its interests from the likes of nasty, decentralized, non-profit organizations like the Independent Media Center that are composed of regular, working people. In an almost laughably pathetic maneuver, CNN has banned the word “indymedia,” “indy media,” “1ndym3d14,” and so forth, from all discussion on its servers. Any use of the term – even when asking server operators questions about policy – will result in immediate exile.
After all, in the market of information, such an open and democratic forum like the Indymedia should be expected to be a threat to the media monopolies of the United States. And what better place to start than CNN, the American news agency most famous for censorship (the term “CNNsorship didn’t come out of nowhere, you know)? The Indymedia is a threat of monumental proportion, and a threat that could destroy the illusion of “fair and unbiased” corporate news coverage with one simple fact: it refuses to participate in the illusion.
While money-driven corporations like CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, and Fox News filter their information, the Independent Media lets it run freely. While the corporations sell their news, the Independent Media gives it away for free. While the corporations kneel beneath their advertisers, the Independent Media refuses to advertise. While the corporations herald “truth” and “hard-hitting facts,” the Independent Media treats the human mind with respect, effectively saying, “decide for yourself.”
Considering all that, it should be no surprise that CNN should feel threatened by the “competition” from Indymedia, despite the fact that a multibillion-dollar, all-powerful media conglomerate should fear competition from a non-profit, non-hierarchal, democratic, anti-capitalist organization is decidedly pathetic. Or, perhaps it just shows the weakness of marketing everything, and reducing basic communication to a commodity to be sold. By refusing to be marketed, Indymedia breaks through the illusion, and for that reason, I say again: it’s no wonder that they are scared.
Along with this article should be two images: each one shows a conversation I personally had with a server operator (if they upload correctly). In the first instance, I used the nick “indymedia,” which, surprisingly, was allowed. In the second instance, I used the nick “bobby.” As one can clearly see, I was polite, reasonable, and patient.
When the server operator felt that they could not justify their actions, however, they took the cowardly route: they banned me. For what? For asking a simple question, politely and respectfully.
If you ask me, this only further asserts that the Indymedia is doing exactly what it should be doing: giving the corporate interests a run for there money.
No pun intended.
I suggest each of you who read this to try it for yourself.
http://www.prospecthillproductions.net/
For more information:
http://chat.cnn.com/
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By Abe de Vries
(Author of ''U.S. Army Psyops Specialists worked for CNN," at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/devries/psyops.htm )
From Trouw, 21 February, 2000
Translated by Emperor's Clothes
"Not only do the PsyOps people want to spread handpicked 'information' and keep other news quiet, the army also wants to control the Internet, to wage electronic warfare against disobedient media, and to control commercial satellites." - Abe de Vries, Trouw, 2/21/00
BELGRADE - In the first two weeks of the war in Kosovo, CNN produced thirty articles for the Internet. An average CNN article had seven mentions of NATO politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, NATO spokesmen like Jamie Shea and David Wilby or other NATO officials.
Words like refugees, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and expulsions were used nine times on the average. But apparently the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (0.2 mentions) and the Yugoslav civilian victims (0.3 mentions) didn't exist for CNN.
Concentration on one central message is a favorite technique in audiovisual mass media, but it is also important with military personnel trying to win a war using 'Psychological Operations' (PsyOps). A media organization may be interested in the maximum number of viewers and a state may have special goals; these two can share an interest in simplification and mystifying. The news that CNN employed PsyOps specialists really leaves only one question to be answered: Did the military learn from the TV people how to hold viewers' attention? Or did the PsyOps people teach CNN how to help the U.S. government garner political support?
No doubt, CNN will soon declare that the military (of course) didn't influence their news. However, this whole thing looks very bad and appearances count in these matters.
Colonel Christopher St. John is Commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group. In a military symposium on Special Operations on that was held behind closed doors in Arlington Virginia in early February, Col. St. John said the cooperation with CNN was a textbook example of the kind of ties the American army wants to have with the media.
According to a report in the latest edition of the French magazine "Intelligence Newsletter" the Kosovo experience was the focus at this symposium. In the Kosovo crisis there was no military censorship of the kind that existed during the Gulf war. This time NATO tried to use more subtle methods to regulate the flow of information. The U.S. Army leadership seems to have concluded that new and more aggressive measures in Psychological warfare are needed. Not only do the PsyOps people want to spread handpicked 'information' and keep other news quiet, the army also wants to control the Internet, to wage electronic warfare against disobedient media, and to control commercial satellites.
NATO's message in the Kosovo war was simple. That's how it's done in PsyOps. NATO's line was: it had had to confront Serbian troops who committed genocide, that it only waged war to allow the return of Albanian refugees, that when it bombed Yugoslavia it was very careful to avoid 'collateral damage'. Mass media like CNN took this message at face value and avoided disturbing questions.
The war in Kosovo was far less bloody than the one in Bosnia; many Albanians fled Kosovo from fear of bombings or on orders of the KLA; NATO killed more than 500 innocent Yugoslav civilians in 'accidents'; by using imprecise and outdated cluster bombs NATO has, according to many experts in international law, violated the Geneva Conventions - but all of that, it seems, was not, or not really, worth mentioning.
Still, the PsyOps people in Arlington were not completely satisfied. In their opinion, too much information about the unplanned results of the bombings has come to the surface. Rear-admiral Thomas Steffens of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) reportedly would like to have the capacity to bring down an 'informational cone of silence' over areas where special operations are in place. What that can mean in reality was shown by the bombing of the Serbian state television RTS in Belgrade. At least fourteen people died [in that NATO attack].
Another high-ranking officer of SOCOM, Colonel Romeo Morrissey, said in his review that NATO should have taken out the Serbian radio station B-92. The B-92 coverage of the bombings did not correspond with the information NATO brought out on its press shows in Brussels. Journalists who regularly logged in on the internet site of B-92 succeeded, bit by bit, in undermining NATO's message. And that is something PsyOps people don't like.
PsyOps people love CNN.