Children’s publishing company Scholastic said that it is removing materials from its Web site originally created for use in conjunction with ABC’s “The Path to 9/11” amid growing controversy over the docudrama….”After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues,” Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic said in a statement. They will be replaced with materials stressing critical thinking and media literacy.
Media Matters for America review of The Path to 9/11 “resource sheets” and “discussion guide[s]” provided to teachers has found that the material omits critical information regarding the Bush administration’s pre-Iraq war weapons of mass destruction claims; falsely suggests a tie between Iraq and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; gives upbeat accounts of reportedly dire conditions on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan; suggests that military responses to Osama bin Laden by the Clinton administration could have “hinder[ed] the U.S. stance on the war on terror”; and asks students to debate whether the media “hinder our national security.”
Getting From News Archive Search to your Library
It seems like a natural extension of efforts already underway at Google, particularly with the Google Scholar OpenURL registration service, that local library holdings would also be included in the possible sources to obtain the target article. I wonder out loud in a blog post on DLTJ whether the omission is one of: a) it’s coming, just not yet; b) libraries have these resources (sometimes from the same commercial supplier) and we have a well defined way (OpenURL) to link to them? — maybe we should do something about that; or c) unless you can give us a revenue stream like we get from the commercial suppliers, we won’t link to you.
Based on some second-hand comments attributable to Google staff that have been published in various media accounts of the new service, I think we can eliminate the third option. In the absence of other ideas, we’re left to conclude that one of the other two scenarios is closest to reality. I have my suspicions — what are your’s?
Re:Getting From News Archive Search to your Librar
I think this is just another case of one product team at Google (News) not talking to another team (the OpenURL, Scholar team). The company is growing really rapidly, with mushrooming numbers of products — it’s not too surprising to me that one hand wouldn’t be coordinating with another.