Alt movement needs transparency

This week I did a story on the “alt” Glacier National Park and “alt “ Forest Service Twitter accounts. There’s no “alt” Flathead National Forest account, at least not as far as I could see.

The alt Glacier Facebook page didn’t strike me as all that informative. It rehashes a lot of stories that are in the national, regional and local media.

If you’re going to start an “alt” site, shouldn’t you have some real dish? Like some secret government docs or something really useful?

So far the alt sites I’ve looked at rehash the news. Real news from real journalists like myself trying to make sense of the world and who are willing to put their names something.

The alt sites are thin on contact info and in journalism, if you can’t confirm a source, then it isn’t worth a damn.

I understand that some people who speak out could lose their jobs. But you can’t tell me there aren’t retired or former Park Service or Forest Service folks who are willing to speak out for the record and put their name on something.

This whole cloak-and-dagger stuff is crap. Yes, there are some potentially huge issues coming down the pike. But critics need to be as transparent, perhaps even more so, as their foes. Real science needs to be backed up by real scientists, not some Facebook page with absolutely no contact information.

I’ve seen dark days in the Park Service over my 19-year career.

I can remember times when vehicles would pull up to me as I was ready to go for my evening hikes. Windows would roll down and real news would be whispered in my ear from sources I trusted.

Their tips always panned out, usually with a bureaucrat fumbling for an answer on the other end of the line and a story that wasn’t always flattering for the green and the gray.

Facebook is part of the problem, of course. It could be a vehicle for solutions, but the fact that anyone can start a page and hide behind its “privacy” wall breeds malcontents and trolls, it doesn’t solve them.

Don’t get me wrong, journalism has long relied on unnamed sources.

But this “alt” thing isn’t really that. It’s a political rant, and needs to have at least some modicum of transparency.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.