http://www.teleread.com/library/no-wonder-banned-books-week-isnt-well-known-the-organizers-dont-care/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:22:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.teleread.com/library/no-wonder-banned-books-week-isnt-well-known-the-organizers-dont-care/comment-page-1/#comment-1145956 ondigo Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:54:52 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/?p=29688#comment-1145956 Years ago on Salon (~'97), someone wrote a piece about interning for the organization that compiles the "banned book" numbers. He went to his boss and said he had good news: the number of bannings had gone down from the previous year. His boss told him to re-examine his data, she was sure he could make the number larger than the previous year. And the writers' main point was that reporters would only read the executive summary instead of looking at the details, so such questionable methodology could be gotten away with. (And not only by this organization, but most think tanks/lobbyists/grass roots orgs/etc.) Unfortunately, I can no longer find this article to link to, and I wouldn't blame anyone for dismissing my comment as a smear. But I know that *I* wouldn't take seriously any figures about currently banned books. Years ago on Salon (~’97), someone wrote a piece about interning for the organization that compiles the “banned book” numbers. He went to his boss and said he had good news: the number of bannings had gone down from the previous year. His boss told him to re-examine his data, she was sure he could make the number larger than the previous year. And the writers’ main point was that reporters would only read the executive summary instead of looking at the details, so such questionable methodology could be gotten away with. (And not only by this organization, but most think tanks/lobbyists/grass roots orgs/etc.)
Unfortunately, I can no longer find this article to link to, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for dismissing my comment as a smear. But I know that *I* wouldn’t take seriously any figures about currently banned books.

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