What Is The Sindo and The Rest of O'Reilly's Empire Doing?

national | arts and media | feature Tuesday April 25, 2006 11:29 by Editors - Indymedia Ireland Editorial Group

Like any other Open Publishing site Indymedia attracts its fair share of trolls. For some years Indymedia users have been harrassed by an obsessed cyber-stalker going under a variety of names. This troll has abused people through the site, as well as sending intimidating and insulting personal emails to different constributors on our editorial lists (particularly to a woman who contributes to the list). This crackpot's one-person mission to allegedly monitor the (completely open!) workings of Indymedia.ie has also prompted them into going as far as using a popular blogging site to pour deliberately ill-informed abuse on Indymedia contributors including editors.

We do not know the identity of this individual. All we know is that they appear to be admired by neo-Nazis who gather on a separate internet forum of the international far-right. Some of those neo-Nazis carry links to the crackpot blog in their posting signatures. Indeed, so prominent are the links that Tony O'Reilly's Evening Herald carried a story last Wednesday describing this latest website monitoring Indymedia, as a section of the world's most notorious neo-Nazi website "the racist, right wing Stormfront." Unlike the so-called "professionals" who inhabit O'Reilly's publishing empire, we don't mistake a random signature linking to a completely different site, as evidence that both operations spring from the same social betamax. An older posting from a contributor to another far right site prompts further suspicions in asking of the self-styled Indymedia Watch "aren't these crowd neocon supporters?"

Whoever they are, we have busily ignored them for years. They are part of the white noise generated by the internet's ability to accomodate a whole array of derangement. Anyway, who visits this website for anything other than a bout of ridiculing laughter (less shared with our stalker than directed at him)? However, recently we were somewhat concerned to learn that the individual behind Indymedia Watch is offering money for personal information on people featured in media clips on Indymedia's newswire. This person is also seeking photographs and details of those active on the editorial list. Given the admiration among neo-nazis and other more "educated" right wing buffoons on the net for this blog, this is all a little sinister.

The threatening aspect was deepened when, last Sunday, another of Tony O'Reilly's newspapers, the Sunday Independent, ran an article attacking Indymedia and the left of centre Village magazine, which often picks up on articles that appear on Indymedia. This article consisted almost entirely of a cut-and-paste odyssey taken from one of the postings on our stalker's blog. The article contained such pleasant sentiments as an attack on people who care about "deprivation in knackaragua". After providing a huge dollop of publicity for our stalker's blog, the Sindo went so far as to finish their article by saying "we couldn't have put it better ourselves"!

What is the Sindo and the rest of O'Reilly's empire doing? Is it anything other than passing off the sort of abusive commentry that would be deleted from any self-respecting site as media analysis? Why are they trying to drum up publicity for a site which is linked to by far-right websites? Why are the promoting a site which is offering money for personal details of Indymedia users and then posting this on the internet? Could somebody be getting worried about the growing influence and usage of Indymedia?