And checking it twice

I'm not an avid mass forwarder of email. I receive and send too much in my day job to enjoy doing more than the necessary off duty. But as a public library trustee I was interested to read a forwarded list of titles that Sarah Palin, while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was supposed to have recommended for removal from the town library. The list purported to originate from the minutes of the library board. I was on the verge of forwarding it to my library director and fellow trustees, when I thought to check into its veracity. Good thing--it was bogus.

There are claims in the press that Palin had a conversation about policy regarding library books she considered inappropriate with the library director, and a claim that she subsequently tried to have the director removed, but no list has ever been unearthed, nor evidence that any particular titles were ever proposed. It is now unlikely that there ever will be a credible list, or that the other claims will ever be substantiated or disproven.

Because the entire conversation has now been overtaken by the question of who floated the bogus list and why. And why so many people were ready to accept it at face value, and whether it could be additional evidence for this or that conspiracy theory. Bad info not only drives out good, it poisons the well of further discussion and investigation. It reduces all claims to equal veracity and converts what could have been a dialog into twin streams of disconnected invective.

This is one of the great dangers of the new media landscape. We get too much of our news from sources of untraceable provenance, from "redmeat14@yahoo.com." If there is a bright side to this tawdry episode, it is that it highlights the continuing value of professional and accountable media sources--despite what you might be reading about them in mass emails.