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Independent Media Networks: Plug into Alternative Views

Interview with Toni Prug - Indymedia UK

Andreas Hirsch: The whole phenomenon of Indymedia is connected with events like Seattle in 1999. How did your entry into that thing come about?

Toni Prug: In London it was June 18th 1999 when Peoples Global Actions organised their own day of protest, which turned into a form of riot in the city of London. The media coverage for it was done by Backspace, I was at that time working at Backspace on a daily basis, so I got involved. A few months later Seattle happened and actually they used the same software that was written for June 18th by Catalyst, a group of tech-activists in Sydney.

When Indymedia was formed as a concept, it was immediately recognized by many people. We just meant it was in a good timing and in a good conceptual form. In May 2000 was the first public appearance of an Indymedia center outside the US: Indymedia UK.

Andreas Hirsch: What are the main factors that define Indymedia and the purpose of counter media? Is it about filling the informational gaps that conventional media - on purpose - leave out, or is it providing a kind of corrective layer to the conventional media, that allows people to understand what really happens, or is it to comment on conventional media?

Tony Prug: I think it is another layer, because Indymedia does not really provide what really happens, since it has its own ideology and global activism is based on a certain ideology whether people want to admit it or not. Even though I do believe that you can come quite close to the objective truth, I myself as someone involved in global activism read it as another opinion on the events. We dont want to be objective, we are both participants and reporters, we just provide tools and processes to make it easier - that is the media role. It definitely tells a lot that never makes it into the media. A good recent example is Latin America, where there was so much from Argentina, that has a very active media collective.

But for me that has very little relevance. I dont believe that any social change will be achieved through media nor that media will play a major role in it, because the basic ground work has to be laid. This is my personal opinion, I know many activists who believe in that function of media and a lot of others who are fairly realistic about it.

The networks of people that are formed around what technology enables us to do, are a long term consequence which I think is far more important. Even though I participate as volonteer now for the third year I am not concerned about the content, I am more concerned as how we internally make decisions, how we collaborate, how we let new people become part of it. Although it is a complete volonteer network, unless certain rules of participation are known - no matter how open you are-, new people are left in dark.

Andreas Hirsch: How do you maintain something like 'quality control', does that exist and how does it work, is that an issue for you?

Tony Prug: Yes, it is a big issue. It is all based on open newswire, so the only quality control is editorial collectives who pick what they like and put it in the middle. Often the result is, that even I who use it on a daily basis read things only when I am researching a certain topic and am interested in a vast array of opinions. Otherwise I rather look for something by a writer whom I know and trust. Maybe the best quality control happens, when the newswire becomes published in print.

Andreas Hirsch: Parts of the Indymedia network in different countries vary quite a lot. Is this due to different local situations, like the local media landscape, the activist scene in a country or special issues at stake?

Tony Prug: I think it is a combination of a few things, for sure also the things that you mentioned. For example in Africa it is obvious that for them it is very hard to get equipment they need for their work. Another thing is this notion of activism. In Croatia - where I come from - my grand-parents who made a revolution to overcome the Nazis and form Yugoslavia consider themselves political activists. But that is a quite different form of political activism than the western one. People there do not perceive state as an immediate evil because state delivered progress in many areas that is still unknow in the West.

Andreas Hirsch: Who is actually using the services of Indymedia over the internet? Is it journalists, other activists, who get their updates from there or is it private media consumers, who use it as an additional source of information to the conventional media?

Tony Prug: There are three distinct uses: First one is the media professionals, in May 2000 the Guardian Website ran an almost hourly update on the Indymedia website. I counted 18 references at one time. Second definitely people from similar circles. For the public at large it works only as the 'other view of the spectacle'. It does not work on a daily basis, you can tell by the numbers of viewers that come to the website. The public is there, when the big spectacle happens, so when Prague or Genova happened corporate media would quote us much more and provide links to our services. Long term it is growing, but very slowly, because we just dont have the ressources to make it as user-friendly and nice-looking as the corporate media.

Andreas Hirsch: You spoke about the need for more basic ground work, meaning political ground work.

Tony Prug: It needs political and organisational ground work, because - whatever your political stance is - without a radically different approach to human organisations, I think political change cannot be achieved.

The interview with Toni Prug was made by Andreas Hirsch in London in August 2002 for Ars Electronica Festival.

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