From: Don Beagle <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:37:10 +0000
Greetings,

I agree with Bernie Reilly that we in the LIS community can take the
constructive step of shoring up our support for the news sources that,
over the long haul, have proven central to our national discourse and
generally meet a high level of journalistic integrity, such as the NYT
and WaPo.

I also agree with Susan Lafferty that we a on a slippery slope if we
attempt to be independent arbiters of valid and invalid sources. For
example, the underground newspaper scene that flourished during the
war in Vietnam in retrospect (sometimes covertly edited & written by
active-duty military personnel) produced reporting that in certain
cases proved more accurate than the mainstream media; libraries would
have done a huge disservice to historians of the period had no attempt
been made to archive these. The recent campaign season made me more
fully aware of a range of titles like The Intercept, Jacobin, Baffler,
& the like; though they may dissent from narratives in the mainstream
media, they are generating some provocative & sustained discussions on
social media.

There are at least two other constructive steps I think we can take.
We can more actively stay abreast of fact-checking sites like Snopes,
FactCheck.org, & PolitiFact and more strongly urge our users to scan
them when evaluating news stories. And we can continue to move ahead
with library-sponsored critical thinking programs & projects, by more
tightly coupling them with digital literacy and information fluency
initiatives.

sincerely,
Donald Beagle