mdoneil writes “Some disgusting self admitted pedophile uses Civil Right to have sex with children as an excuse in Court.
I can’t think of words that express my disgust at this pervert. He molested disabled young boys after giving them drugs. He created some fake church to advance the cause of pedophelia. He used this church to push his NAMBLA agenda.
The item about the library blog, “Cuyahoga County Bill Mason said Distasio was arrested after he wanted to write a blog for the Lakewood Library. Officials noticed something was wrong and notified Rocky River police.” I have no idea what Cuyahoga County Bill Mason (or who) is. Nor is it clear how this is intertwined with his deviate acts.
The complete article is here. While I oppose the death penalty, I certainly rethink my position when I hear of someone robbing a child of their innocence for their deviant gratification.”
Fact Checking
More details about this case are easily gleaned by a simple two minute Google search, which produces these facts:
1. Bill Mason is a Cuyahoga County Prosecutor.
2. The accused’s involvement with the library was limited. According to a September 2005 news report filed at the time of arrest, the suspect’s primary venues to lure victims were his personal web site and a local coffee house and cyber cafe; the library was listed as one of several public places the suspect “frequented,” without being identified as an actual place where any crime took place. See Police: Suspected Rapist Lured Kids At Local Businesses.
Neither the local Cleveland Plain Dealer nor the AP mentions any link to the public library at all:
Plain Dealer: Pedophile: Sex with boys is sacred religious ritual
AP, via the Houston Chronicle: Man says sex with kids a sacred ritual.
3. As I read the story cited by the submitter, the public library officials are identified as the persons who recognized the malign intent of the suspect and turned him in. This is not a tale to flog librarians with the mythical canard that libraries and librarians ignore childrens’ safety to protect the rights of child rapists. But the story doesn’t highlight that fact; it seems to try to perpetrate the myth by implication.
Which brings me to my observation: what’s the purpose of this post? As ugly as this tale is, as much as I agree with the submitter’s opinion of the suspect, given the tenuous link to libraries (or better, the failure to ascertain precisely what is the library’s connection to the events accounted for in the original story) why is the submitter’s personal opinion about pedophiles elevated to the status of a news story, rather than being identified as an editorial, or an opinion, or posted to a LisNews personal journal?
If this is a news site, we deserve better sourcing and fact checking, and opinion columns should be clearly labeled as such.
Re:Fact Checking
Library is spelled wrong in the headline too. I’m so ashamed.
Most people that visit here are librarians, or at least capable of fact checking themselves.
I see the connection to libraries, as the article mentions …libraries.
The article was poorly written, however I left it to everyone’s own initiative as to their personal desire to fact check it themselves. Remember the Mao’s little red book incident? Some librarians (and others) can fact check on their own, apparently others cannot. It is not my job – nor any other librarians – to spoon feed people information. You know, the teach a man to fish idea.
Re:Fact Checking
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. You’re even entitled to engage in sloppily-sourced, tabloidesque Fox News-style ranting.
But LisNews isn’t obligated to mount it on the front page as “news.” It did so, however, and that’s the decision I question, especially as there is no clear tie to the practice of library and information science, or how this is news librarians can use.
Now, given that I don’t feel confident about mounting my questions and my critique without the protection of anonymity I probably won’t get an explanation. But I believe LisNews’ audience deserves better than mere sensationalism.
As for librarians’ jobs – I thought librarians’ role as information professionals was to provide users with multiple sources of accurate, well-sourced information to draw upon – as the Wiki article has it, “analyze information needs and provide a wide variety of information resources to meet those needs.” Surely, the obligation to do so doesn’t stop simply because those inquiring are librarians themselves, or because the librarian chooses to assume “they can do it themselves.”
Re:Fact Checking
Wikipedia is not authoratative so I really don’t care what it has to say.
If you want to know why an article was posted you can always ask the person that posted it. I submitted it because I found it interesting for several reasons: It was so poorly written to be amusing, it was tangentially related to libraries, and third because those people who prey on children make me mad.
Since this is not my site I can only offer my own opinion, but many things here are not directly related to the practice of librarianship. Dr. de la Pena McCook, GregS, SearchEnginesGuy, and many others suggest things they find interesting and one of the authors may or may not post them. If you are looking for a site with only library related news, with nothing else, no opinion, no other information, no dialogue, you probably should look elsewhere. If you find a place like that let me know because I’ll read that too, not in place of LISNews, but in addition to it.
In the several years I have been reading LISNews I have been exposed to material I didn’t care for, and opinions with which I disagree, but those are the things that allow us to grow intellectually.
If you want someone to do your research for you then you should go into your local library and ask for help. LISNews is not a tele-reference service (as far as I can tell) and there are many of them around. Try askalibrarian.org, the Florida statewide service.
If you really don’t feel comfortable posting under your name you can make one up as many people here do. There are any number of free email tools as well.
As to my “[S]loppily-sourced, tabloidesque Fox News-style ranting.” If you don’t like it don’t read it. Geez.