The End of Truth or What We Learned from the Shirley Sherrod Case

As we can see by the Shirley Sherrod case the layman is not only the victim of misinformation by the media. The Obama Administration and the NAACP were literally caught with their pants down for reacting to the right wing media machine that attacked Sherrod. These media outlets are now trying to cover their tracks.

One thing that the Sherrod case exposes is the lie that the liberals are some kind of champions against racism. You would think that liberals would go into the trenches with their fellow comrades in the fight against the right-wing media machine. Nope, none of that since everyone is so worried about image over substance or real politics.

The transference of information, or misinformation, now, can mean life or death, or in this case someone's job. Everyone is reacting to the speed at which information is traveling through the web and into mass consciousness. A celebrity is pronounced dead on Facebook or Twitter and the eulogies obituaries, and tears start flowing before the dead can turn on their computer and say wait: I'm not dead!

Now more than ever we have to check our information to see whether it's valid or not or can be verified through a second source. Have we come to a moment where the truth doesn't matter?

"Google is Not An Information Source" or deciphering class politics in information literacy problems.

So I have not written in awhile, delinquency on my part yes, yes. But take into consideration that I started my current job at Berkeley College in February and I am midway through my second full quarter. I've taught over 40 Info Lit classes that were fired off at me with near precision. All in all I might have this thing called information specialist, librarian. A drink here or two doesn't hurt either.

But there is so much to reflect on and so many question to ponder as I sit in the trenches of information literacy and educational technology. One question I don't hesitate to answer is whether information literacy when it comes down to college students is a "class question". While the mass media portrays the average American person as being connected, tuned-in, tweeting out, face-booking high school and college sweethearts, masses of young people go without computers, less the par internet service that can keep up with the Internet savvy.

By the time they do get to college, working class students, largely from Black or Latino backgrounds, need to learn not only information literacy but need to distinguish media literacy at the same time as they are trying improve poor writing and math skills. All products of the American school system.

A perfect example of this was when I gave a research session for a Feminist Philosophy class. After the class, which was great, a student wanted to know the appropriate citation format for sources she had found on the Internet. I showed her a leaflet (crib sheet I had created for the new MLA rules). She insisted she just needed to know how to cite Google. I responded to her that "Google is Not an Information Source" it's just your messenger you've sent to retrieve the information you 1. put in and 2. the information you wish to retrieve.

She looked at me with a black stare. What? "But I got it from Google?"

"No. You went to a website that contain the information that you wanted. Do you remember what website it was?"

"Yes. It was Google."

So on it went. Is it really hard for any person to think that if you put something into Google and you go the result that you retrieve the information from Google itself? I don't think so especially with the proliferation of the edition of "google" as a verb in our lexicon in the past 10 years. But would most people think of how to use it in a works cited page for research? I don't know but you have to wonder how students in their formative years are taught the different forms of media on the Internet and how you can cross from website to search engine to social media in a blink of an eye.

So is information literacy a question of class politics?