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]