COMMUNITY EVENTS
Free or low cost Community Events and college courses are intended to provide background on the yearly topic and to touch on areas related to the February Conference that may not be covered in its three-day format. The views of our presenters are their own and may not represent those of the Camden Conference.
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Avocado Toast and other Health Claims: The Challenge of Medical Reporting and Misinformation-Marty Gagnon at Auburn Public Library
January 7, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST
The Camden Conference presents Marty Gagnon on Tuesday, January 7 at 1pm at the Auburn Public Library. This event is free and open to the public.
This presentation will provide an overview of some of the challenges for the reporter and information consumer in assessing the validity of a health report. The session will look closely at some of the common myths which drive policy on issues such as immigration and vaccination.
Gagnon, prior to his work in the public library profession, was a journalist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. In October 2017, Gagnon and a small team from the Auburn Public Library along with Sun Journal Editor Judith Myers traveled to Chicago to participate in a media literacy initiative. The Media Literacy at Your Library was a project of the American Library Association (ALA) in collaboration with many other partners. The training and interactive workshop featured the curriculum of the Stony Brook University Center for News.
In 2018, Gagnon used the training and his past experiences in the journalism field to create a media literacy and “fake news” class at the Lewiston-Auburn Senior College along with a series of events at the library. Seeing the amount of interest and general concern for the implications and lack of civil discourse fueled by misinformation, Gagnon created a companion website. The site is non-partisan and takes no advertising and can be viewed at www.themediasavvycitizen.org.