Checking through my feeds and shared items this morning I came across an item on libraries shared by a friend that seemed to promise bad reporting and calls to close libraries down. Better still, it was from Fox News. I was suddenly smiling, pleased to see that over in America the same quality of investigation is available on the subject of the future and worth of libraries as we saw recently from KPMG. I read on.

Boing Boing had linked to a piece by Chicago Fox news affiliate on Libraries apparently ‘ proposing that Illinois shut down its library system’, indeed the piece on Boing Boing is titled: ‘Fox Advocates Shutting Down Public Libraries’ Fox News eh. Typical. However, then I follow the link to the story; read the text of the story which starts ‘ They eat up millions of your hard earned tax dollars. It’s money that could be used to keep your child’s school running. So with the internet and e-books, do we really need millions for libraries?’ and then watched the actual broadcast story (See below: which lasts almost 6 minutes)

You know what? Boing Boing and Cory Doctorow are totally misrepresenting the story. Misrepresenting Fox News. Seriously, can you sink lower than that? Nowhere in this news piece do Fox ,as a company, or their reporter Anna Davlantes advocate shutting down public libraries. Nice attention grabbing headline, but it is in fact, a LIE.

If you actually WATCH the piece, it sets out to debate the question of ‘do we still need public libraries’

It looks at the situation is Chicago, and asks the question of whether the $120 million a year that goes to the libraries would be better spent on education, the transport authority, the police etc. What they don’t say is, yes we should. In fact the balance of the whole piece is the opposite. Yes there are some vox pops of people saying they don’t use a library but there are also ones saying how important it is to them.

Indeed reporter Anna Davlantes states :”There are 799 illinois public libraries, and boy do we use them.”

They then speak to Andrea Telli from Chicago Public Libraries who says that they are ‘busy, busy, busy’ and that visits and circulation both on the rise.

Fox do send an undercover team to the city’s main library, the Harold Washington Library in the Loop, which they say boasts 5,000 visitors a day [actually if you are ever in Chicago, it is well worth a visit]. I’ll admit this is the one really really bad bit of journalism in the piece, where they tell us they were there for an hour and reckoned about 300 people came in and most of them were there to use the free internet access, not browse the bookshelves. It added nothing to the debate and should have been edited out of the piece.

There is also a studio discussion featuring Denise Zielinski (Dupage Library System) and Jim Tobin (National Taxpapyers United, Illinois). Tobin makes clear he wants to see cuts across all public spending not just on libraries – although he is a man who thinks the internet has ‘pretty much made libraries obsolete’ (and says he argued the same 30 years ago when paperbacks started being mass produced. No, really.)

And finally, the piece ends with some viewer comments all of which are pro-libraries.

But don’t take my word for it – watch it yourselves. Who’s being more honest, Fox or Boing Boing?

I should also say that there is some great pro-library comments on the written piece, although again I would say that I feel Ms Davlantes is unfairly criticised, and would question whether all those commenting actually watched the piece.