San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center (IndyBay) caught violating freedom of the press
The self-acknowledged “free speech and open news center for popular news stories” turns out to have neither “free speech” nor “open news”. Post any news story that talks about Elon Musk’s epic political corruption or Google’s misogyny, Google’s failure to hire blacks, Google sex scandals and Google’s global privacy abuse and your news story is “HIDDEN” by the staff, or entirely deleted. The big Bay Area money from the venture capital coffers that feed Google/Musk have deep roots in Indy Bay’s not so “open” “volunteers.
The San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, commonly known as Indybay, is the San Francisco Bay Area branch of the Independent Media Center, an all-volunteer organization which operates a community news website, Indybay.org, and in June 2004, began publishing a free news magazine, Fault Lines.
Foundation
Indybay was established in early 2000; the domain name was registered on March 23, 2000; and by August 23, 2000, the website was online and functional.
Focus
Indybay was initially closely tied to Media Alliance, a San Francisco-based media resource and advocacy center for media workers, non-profit organizations, and social justice activists. One early Indybay project was a page exposing bad landlords. Another event that helped pull in many early Indybay volunteers was the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Conference that took place in September 2000 in San Francisco. Indybay soon broadened its coverage. Local labor struggles, forest activism in Northern California and police brutality were quickly a focus of the early site. After 2001, Indybay developed more of a focus on antiwar protests and immigration issues. In 2002 new pages were added focusing on LGBT issues, Women’s Rights, Local Electoral Issues and specific international conflicts.
Animal Liberation was added as a page a year later. In 2004 Regional Pages were added and the Central Valley became a page partly run by its own collective. Santa Cruz Independent Media Center started as its own separate site, but regionally integrated with Indybay in January 2006 as an autonomous page run by its own collective.[1] Local reporters regularly post from the South Bay, the North Bay and the North Coast.
Fault Lines
Fault Lines is a free newsmagazine published by Indybay. It is produced and distributed by an all-volunteer collective. The first issue was published in June 2004.[2]
While Indy Bay had a, once renown, standing in digital media, it has descended into a front for sting operations, corporate political censorship and bearded yuppie wanna be corporate hippie-ism.
Take, for example, multiple posts that multiple organizations placed on the calender and news postings, written by different authors and organizations regarding San Francisco City Hall meetings to discuss the continued deployment of covert Google buses in the Bay Area. All such postings were deleted, hidden or down-ranked by Indy Bay staff, many of whom are pro-Google promotional shills. Some call them “corporate shills”. Indy Bay editors state that they are only hiding and deleting “information which is not characteristic of the feelings of the over-all community”. What they fail to disclose is that the “over-all community” they refer to comprised of their personal friends and business allies.
Organizations have filed charges with the ACLU, news organizations, the California Attorney General and are preparing a civil class action against Indy Bay and Fault Lines, which will question any non-profit tax representations.