By Antonia Noori Farzan / The Washington Post
The librarians of Citrus County, Florida, had what seemed like a modest wish: a digital subscription to the New York Times. For about $2,700 annually, they reasoned, they could offer an easy way their roughly 70,000 patrons to research and catch up on the news.
But when their request came before the Citrus County Commission last month, local officials literally laughed out loud. One commissioner, Scott Carnahan, declared the paper to be “fake news.”
“I agree with President Trump,” he said. “I will not be voting for this. I don’t want the New York Times in this county.”
In a move that is now generating intense online backlash, all five members of the commission agreed to reject the library’s request. The discussion took place on Oct. 24, the same day when the Trump administration announced plans to cancel federal agencies’ subscriptions to the Times and The Washington Post. While there’s no apparent connection – the Citrus County meeting began several hours before the Wall Street Journal broke the news of the new edict – the controversy unfolding in central Florida highlights how politicians nationwide are parroting the president’s disparaging rhetoric about the media.
While the Citrus County Commission is technically nonpartisan, the area, located amid the swamps and springs north of Tampa, is deeply conservative. At the Oct. 24 meeting, the proposal to budget several thousand dollars for a Times digital subscription was met with immediate disapproval and suspicion.
“Do we really need to subscribe to the New York Times?” Commissioner Ron Kitchen Jr. asked.
The other men seated at the dais chuckled.
“I actually was going say that,” Carnahan responded. He had seconded a motion to hear the item only so that they could have a discussion about the Times, he said, volunteering his opinion: “I don’t agree with it, I don’t like ’em, it’s fake news, and I’m voting no.”
Suggesting that a lack of resources wasn’t the problem, Carnahan said that the library could take the thousands of dollars that an institutional subscription to the Times would cost and ″do something else with it.” And community members who really wanted to read the paper could simply sign up for home delivery. “I support Donald Trump,” he concluded.
Flanked by a county flag depicting frolicking manatees, all four commissioners who were present agreed to turn down the request. When a fifth commissioner, Jimmie Smith, returned to his seat and learned what he had missed, he took no issue with denying the library funding.
“Why the heck would we spend money on something like that?” asked Smith, a former Republican state representative.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Should we start a gofundme for the library? ________________________________
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DrNick, that’s a great idea but I fear this narrow minded county board would penalize the library. Maybe close it. It probably holds books on the American Library Association list of banned books.
No free minds in Citrus County!
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The Trump Era: It’s OK to be stupid. We are too.
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I’ve lived in Florida, now, for a little over a decade–in the land of the gun show, of the Trump rally, of the feral teenager, of the beauty pageant for four-year-olds, of big, spray-dyed hair and bigger trucks. It’s a place where a city council will pass a resolution banning Satan from the town. It’s a place where one finds, on opposite sites of a swamp covered by a black blanket of mosquitoes, a megachurch and a strip club, each the size of a small European country. I’ve enjoyed immensely being a kind of anthropologist in this exotic culture, but I must say that often I find it downright scary. It’s a place where parents call my principal to complain that Mr. Shepherd is teaching demonism because we performed, in my theatre class, the opening scene of Macbeth.
There are two Americas. And they are completely irreconcilable. I hereby call for splitting the country in two–the United States of America and Ivankalandia. (TammyBakerLandia?) Clearly, the two cannot be governed as one.
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Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? I think of it often.
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My son says to me – mom – you would that movie – it is what you are always talking about.
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Oh my Lord, Ponderosa, yes!
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Heh, heh, & I always thought Hiaasen was over the top. Just telling it like it is, eh?
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Love him! Tom Dorsey is another writer of hilarious detective fiction, set in Florida, full of weirdness. Here’s the thing about Florida: if you just tell it as it is, you will be accused by people in saner parts of the world of being some sort of humorist.
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One of the saddest and most scary part of the whole mess we are now enduring is the war on truth. So many now have been led astray by the
real false news and find it difficult – for them – to know what to believe now.
False news, alternative news were unknown terms until the Trump era. Now, people have been programmed to trust the real fake news.
History is filled with dictators who have spread their propaganda and when it is too late, discover to their horror who they followed.
This war MUST be fought and won. Society cannot be built on sand, on false premises ad nauseum.
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Florida is a very diverse state. Unfortunately, the leadership is often in the hands of regressive, close minded politicians that suppress, restrict and sometimes defy logic.
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Extremely so. We have many, many varieties of wackos.
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At this point Trump’s dogged supporters are too stubborn, too self-deluding, too beaten down by relentless conservative propaganda, and too invested in this charlatan to ever admit they might have been wrong to support him. The best we can do for them is to vote a Democrat into office so they can see for themselves what real leadership looks like.
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It seems our social conditions are ripe for the spread of conspiracy theories.
Research shows that people who are well-informed but strongly distrusting are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, we are living in a period where more and more people fit that description. Today, Americans have historically low levels of trust in government, with only 17% of Americans saying they can generally trust Washington to do what is right. And the cacophony of voices in today’s media environment makes it hard for people to evaluate the veracity of information they come across online. So, it seems our social conditions are ripe for the spread of conspiracy theories https://gen.medium.com/how-to-avoid-the-real-fake-news-ec6145839ccc
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“Sunstein and Vermeule define conspiracy theory as ‘an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who attempt to conceal their role.’ “
Being well-informed politically will give you lots of opportunities to observe the machinations of powerful people who obfuscate their actions to protect/ enhance obscene asset accumulation—actions targeting govtl support of public goods—through appeals to religious freedom, protection of minority access to quality education, et al disingenuous bromides.
The only difference between me and a conspiracy theorist is the “secret arrangement” part. I find it laughable to imagine that $clout-y actors like Koch, Bezos, Gates are working in concert to change America to suit some ideology. Why would they even need to, the door is wide open for any individual multi-billionaire to twist policy into protecting his hoard. And 35+ yrs of trickle-up legislation has spawned hundreds of them.
The excellent article you link points out that conspiracy theory’s main danger to democracy is its encouragement to accept the status quo. What hope has the individual against a secret cabal of the powerful? I often find myself dredging up hoary aphorisms to snap people out of it. “Power corrupts”: the govt has been giving away $power to elites for decades: the suite is predictable: it’s human nature, & capitalist tendency, to seek to conserve or enhance one’s power. On the ed front: Waltons, Broad, Adelson et al?: “Birds of a feather flock together.” Add Gates and Powell-Jobs? “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
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There Are Not Two Sides To The Trump-Ukraine Story!
https://rantt.com/how-the-media-should-cover-impeachment
Many in the media are also avoiding an uncomfortable truth. It’s much easier to say the country is “divided” on impeachment than to say that one side is basing their beliefs on propaganda and lies from a right-wing media loyal to the president. If there was no Fox News, we’d be much higher than 50% of Americans supporting impeachment and removal from office….Every single one of their arguments against the impeachment inquiry are in bad faith and not based in truth, but there is still coverage on some mainstream outlets that give their lies equal airtime without debunking them. While this has largely subsided, there was a period of several weeks where mainstream orgs rushed to legitimize President Trump’s false claims against Hunter Biden.
That is playing into his hands. All President Trump really wants is an aura of corruption, which is why his administration pushed so hard for a public announcement from Ukraine about the launched investigations.
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The only positive thing from this train wreck is that the Florida librarians would even request a subscription to the NYT. It would appear that they had not swallowed the right wing meme that the NYT is fake news. Bravo to the librarians. When will Florida build monuments to Hannity and Limbaugh?
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To Kentucky: Matt Bevin down. Yes!
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This is one of the most heart-breaking articles I have ever read: a war on truth, a war on journalism, a war on thinking and on being informed–or even on allowing others to choose what they want to read.
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“$2,700 annually” Hmmm I’m not a fan of Trump but this seems like a lot, especially since I’m becoming increasingly skeptical of mainstream media for other reasons.
How much do they pay for their digital subscription to Truth Digg? Democracy Now? Consortium News? Etc.?
Another point this should raise is that our tax payer dollars are providing a modest amount of funding for some media outlets yet they’re not accountable to us. If our libraries are going to pay for news those outlets should be chosen by public some of these better media outlets are struggling for funds & can’t get as much name recognition because establishment is rigged in favor of Oligarchy news.
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