Wow. Are we looking at censorship? In Jefferson County, the 4th largest in Colorado, Commissioner Don Rosier said he was “shocked and appalled” by postings on the library’s Twitter account, which he said supported a “one-sided political view.” What were the nature of those offending tweets?
The head of the Jefferson County Public Library this month deleted a series of tweets from the library’s Twitter account after a county commissioner complained they were politically biased.
That has people in the county talking about the role of libraries as repositories of free expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas — and whether that mission could be jeopardized by the specter of online censorship.
The offending tweets, which were mostly posted in January, included a message promoting the library’s databases titled “Facts are facts”; a picture of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton behind the phrase “I Believe in Science!” posted on Inauguration Day; links to information about refugees featuring women in Muslim dress; and images of birth control methods linking to information on “women’s health care reform.”
Side note: Don Rosier considers himself a “social conservative.” He described himself as such on a Facebook page he launched for an unsuccessful U.S. Senate run last year.
Pam Nissler, the library’s executive director, made the decision to take down the tweets. She admits that in hindsight, “it might not have been a bad idea” to more closely examine each tweet to see if some met the test of impartiality and deserved to remain on the library’s Twitter feed.
Clik here to view.
“I can see where the perception that these were politically slanted can be drawn,” Nissler said.
In an e-mail to The Denver Post this week, Nissler said it is the “library’s obligation to provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues, and to be a neutral, reliable source.”
“That is foundational to our mission and it is not an obligation that we take lightly,” Nissler wrote. “We would never want to be perceived as taking sides, or promoting a particular point of view. In this case, I felt that our postings created the perception of bias and I removed them.”
She said Rosier didn’t order her to remove the tweets and said neither her job nor the library’s $39 million budget was threatened by county leaders.
James LaRue, director of the Chicago-based American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said he wouldn’t have deleted the tweets.
“I think she would have been right to leave them there,” he said. “I did not find anything objectionable to them — there is nothing there but information pointing to library resources.”
When tweets connecting citizens to facts and resources are recalled at public libraries because they may be perceived as being biased, where does that leave us? At the mercy of alternative facts and alternative resources (like coat hangers)?
These are the little brush fires being set in cities and counties that threaten the very core of our democracy. When they are allowed to burn without a fight, we all lose.