Indybay "Police car on fire" report: apology, clarification, and further discussion

Indybay's Coverage

Indybay's live coverage of the "West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization" was threefold: breaking news on Indybay's home page, Enemy Combatant Radio (ECR) live radio coverage, and a Txtmob service for up-to-the-minute updates via cell phone text messages.

After the live coverage, once things in the streets calmed, reflections on the demonstrations themselves began to be openly discussed live on ECR. Some of those comments were transcribed into the now-archived breaking news item dated "Jul. 8th 11:23pm." The discussion on the protest itself continues on various Indybay posts related to the protest.

This specific post has been published in the interest of promoting transparency and furthering discussion regarding breaking news coverage.

Apology, With Caveat

I was the one handling the Indybay "control room" and I posted the breaking news to the web and the Txtmob messages to cell phones that night. I sincerely apologize to everyone who received that text message about "Police car on fire" or was made aware of a police car being on fire as a direct result of that specific text message and any confusion that might have caused at the time. While it is understandable that someone on the street might have assumed the car was on fire when they saw smoke bellowing from underneath it, the report I put out of a car being on fire was inaccurate, and for that I am truely sorry. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had not chosen to send that message, especially with the note of "confirmed by two callers." The report was contradicted within an hour by a participant who spoke on ECR and was at that point immediately updated on the web site, but it was too late for those who had already received the erroneous report on their cell phones.

That said, I take absolutely no responsibility for any mainstream news coverage or police reports since the protest that said or continue to say that a car was ever on fire that night. In the heat of the moment, it is understandable, although regretable, that with limited sourcing misinformation might arise. But, within an hour, ECR and Indybay on our home page presented information to the public which contradicted the earlier report. The police were there at the time and know full-well there was no fire, and certainly they could not justify lieing about it based on the evidence of a single cell phone text message. The mainstream media had plenty of time to historically assess the occurances for themselves. (And obviously they have other sources than Indybay as they continue to report about a "mattress" under the police car which is to be found no where within these pages.) Before the sun rose the next day, there was documentary evidence on Indybay which clearly showed the car not to have been on fire. We know that the corporate media were watching our site during and since the protest. It is safe to assume the police have been watching as well.

Actual Message(s) and Archives

Indybay has posted a permanent archive of our live coverage that night. Note that the while many of the Txtmob messages sent that night coincide with the first sentence or so of the website breaking news, the breaking news included far more entries and information than the text messages did. Anyone who wants to is welcome to listen to ECR's broadcast and read the website's "breaking news" for themselves. There is also a US Indymedia archive of their live coverage of the "West Coast" event. [Note that the original US Indymedia item for 10:35PM read something about the car being on fire being confirmed. That item was deleted later as it became apparent it was erroneous.]

A peek into the relevent Indybay txtmob log reveals the following. The first part is the Indybay "breaking news" featured on our home page and the second part is the text of the txtmob message.

The sentence that follows "Txt msg sent" is the actual text message that went out to those who had signed up to receive the service Friday night. Note that the first time listed there — 11:44pm — is actually the last time the breaking news piece on the web was edited and is unrelated to the time the text message was sent. The web version was first amended between 11:23 and 11:44pm with the information contradicting "fire" report.

This is what the Indybay txtmsg should have said, if it was run at all:

A minimally more accurate report from the streets perhaps would have led to this message:

No one ever actually saw fire, just smoke. Even the next day on various mainstream television news broadcasts, photos such as this one were shown while corporate reporters described a police car having been on fire during the protest. (As for the massive ripping and broadcast of Indymedia coverage on corporate media outlets — much of it uncredited, mistakenly credited, and virtually all of which happened without consent of photographers and/or Indymedia — that is a matter for another post.)

Where did the information come from?

The report of the police car on fire did not originate through Indybay or ECR, although we did mistakenly relay it as a valid report. We have pieced together that the text message that was "confirmed by two callers" was, in fact, "confirmed" by someone on an internal Indymedia online chat forum in Dallas, who spoke with one caller. That caller was an IMCista from San Diego who was on the streets of S.F. and had called someone at Free Radio Dallas and US Indymedia. The person who received the call then typed into the online chat that the earlier internal report of a car on fire was "CONFIRMED!!", several times saying that he had "confirmed" a cop car was on fire. The report then made it into the live web coverage on the front page of US Indymedia and shortly thereafter into ECR's broadcast.

In turn, I mistook the repeated messages on the chat forum, the live coverage on US Indymedia, and the report on ECR to be from at least two different sources when all were from a single person. I then sent the erroneous Txtmob message. Again, I apologize to everyone who received it or heard of it at the time.

Where did we go from here?

This has been a learning experience for all involved in the fast-paced breaking news cycle, from participants calling in reports from the street to Indymedia volunteers sitting in front of computers. Sometimes the full picture of events like these do not become apparent until people start posting their individual stories on our website. There is an inherent risk in covering breaking news as it happens, as our evolving experience with such events shows (our first Txtmob was for the comMUNIty Mutiny Reclaim the Streets in S.F. on April 2nd, which was much easier to cover with one coherent group in the streets). We still feel the value of reporting to people on the streets is worth it. While at least one inaccurate report slipped through contributing to some erroneous scuttlebutt, no real harm came of it. If we learn from what we did right and what we did wrong, we can only do it better in the future.

Overall, Indybay is proud of our efforts to provide immediate reports to people on the streets and at home, however imperfect. We greatly appreciate the help we received from our volunteer staff reporters and those of the many participants who all called in to report actions as they were happening. We greatly appreciate those who later posted their reports, photos, and video to the site. And we appreciate those who contribute constructive comments to our various threads.

Especially from those who followed our live coverage as it happened Friday night, on our website, ECR, and the Txtmob, we are interested in your thoughts. Let us know what you think we did right. Let us know what you think we could have done better. Let us know how you think we might improve our breaking news services during such events.