From: Bernie Reilly <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2016 03:34:15 +0000

Many thanks to those on this list who responded to my post about “fake
news”  Karin Wikoff and Susan Lafferty, in particular, both make
important points about inclusiveness in preserving news. As a longtime
listener to Democracy Now, I agree on the need for a public record
that includes all voices, large and small. There are indeed serious
threats, economic and ideological, to independent journalism of all
stripes in the U.S.  Yet I argue that mainstream media outlets in
particular, like The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New
York Times, play a special role in society that serves the interests
of the academic research community in a robust and (relatively)
trustworthy record of current events.

For one, they provide the substantial financing necessary for
sustained, in-depth analysis of public issues (even if they get it
wrong now and then), and they alone subsidize costly, long-term
investigations that throw light on some dark places, like Afghanistan,
corporate boardrooms, and the halls of Congress. As an industry they
also provide the legal wherewithal to defend press freedoms in cases
like Sullivan v. NYT. (The recent bankrupting of Gawker by a libel
suit brought by a conservative businessman suggests that this should
not be taken for granted.)

Traditional media organizations have also had a certain inherent
transparency and accountability: Mastheads identify their publishers
and editorial boards, making bias detectable if not obvious; and much
of their revenue still comes from subscribers, creating public
accountability of sorts. Many too invest in maintaining their own
archives online, where retractions and acknowledgements of error
become part of the record. These established conventions set them
apart from the webmaster in Tbilisi, Georgia, whose parasitic “news”
site recycled fabricated reports on Hillary Clinton’s health. And from
most social media platforms, whose revenue streams tie them to the
interests of advertisers and sellers of personal data, rather than the
public interest. Funding models are particularly important in a time
of growing publisher reliance on private equity and “dark money.”

Ergo my belief that the academic research community has a stake in a
healthy and independent news media. While research libraries should
certainly document all viewpoints, the power of the purse creates an
opportunity for us to work with the "fact-based" media to protect the
integrity of the public record.

Bernard F. Reilly
www.CRL.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Karin Wikoff <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2016 00:21:19 +0000

The whole "fake news" narrative is one I have been watching and which
I find most concerning, though perhaps not for the reasons you might
ex[ect.

As this election season unfolded, I became more and more aware of how
skewed the reporting of the mainstream media is.  Not just a little
bias, which we all know exists, but actively steering public
perceptions in a very partisan way.  I started finding alternative
sources for news.  It's rather a pain, because one has to really check
out the sources -- one can no longer rely on the formerly reliable
news sources to be accurate.  But when you wander off the beaten path,
it's the Wild West.  There are unquestionably all kinds of fake news
sites -- but there are also alternative news sources that are
considerably better than mainstream media: Democracy Now and The Young
Turks are two examples. I keep thinking how utterly ironic it is that
we live in the information age, but have a harder time ascertaining
the accuracy of news reports than in the era of Walter Cronkite.

Yes, there are fake news sites, and they were very, very active
regarding the Presidential election, but the way the media is pushing
the narrative, I feel like it is a way to muddy the waters to
discredit the actual reliability of some alternative sources for news
which are more accurate than the mainstream media.

I am thinking of Standing Rock, as just one example -- one I have been
following since August and which has been going on since April.  I've
seen dozens of live streams, many from people I know personally who
went to the site, plus the alternative networks.  I have seen human
rights abuses on the part of law enforcement to equal Selma and
Birmingham in 1963.  And I have listened to the deafening silence of
our major news sources, some of which have tossed in a brief bit the
past few days since a young woman had part of her arm blown off this
past Sunday (and another young woman, a Native American, had her
retina detached) -- both due to police actions against unarmed water
protectors.  What's going on out there right now is one of the biggest
stories of this generation, but one must turn to alternative media to
learn anything about it.

As librarians and information professionals, it falls to us to help
patrons find the real news, to sort the reliable alternative sources
from the fake news sites, but without being sucked into a manufactured
narrative that paints all non-mainstream sources with the same muddy
brush.

Karin

Karin Wikoff
Electronic and Technical Services Librarian Ithaca College Library
953 Danby Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850

Phone: 1-607-274-1364
Fax: 1-607-274-1539
Email: [log in to unmask]