To the Editor:

We, the members of Altamont Main Street USA, are writing to follow up on the letter we sent you (posted on March 23, 2017) concerning the placement of tabloids in local supermarkets and stores. We would like to send some further information about this issue.

In a Times Union article by Tim O’Brien, which was published online on March 17, 2017, Mona Golub, representing the Price Chopper and Market 32 stores and responding to our request that tabloids be moved away from the checkout counters, stated that Price Chopper and Market 32 carry many products, and that “the criteria by which any of them are judged, purchased or consumed are at the discretion of our customer.”

Consumers of course have the right to decide what to buy. What we object to is the placement of publications that promote false, harmful news stories in checkout lines, where no one can avoid seeing them. When stores locate such publications at the checkouts, they are privileging them and helping to promote them.

We are not asking that these publications not be offered to customers, simply that they be moved to another part of the stores that wish to sell them. We ask local stores: Are you willing to do this?

We want to provide further information and a few examples about what, more specifically, stores that place these publications at the checkout stands are helping to promote. One source (he is quoted by name) for the recent political stories in the National Enquirer is Roger Stone, who served as a campaign adviser to Donald Trump in 2015. Stone has a long history of verbal attacks that are sexist, racist, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, and that mock disabled people.

He incites violence. For example, he suggested on Twitter that Bernie Sanders should be “arrested for treason and shot” (April 17, 2014); Hillary Clinton, he said, should be “arrested, tried, and executed for murder” (July 11, 2014). Moreover, Stone has admitted to having contact, via Twitter, with Russian hackers who helped sway the 2016 United States presidential election; these hackers were a front for, or allied with, the Russian intelligence service, the GRU.

This person — a person who spews hateful rhetoric and who is tied to foreign sources who seek to wreck American democracy — is the source for many political stories, especially recent ones on the election, in the National Enquirer.

When stores put tabloids like the National Enquirer in privileged positions (at, for example, the checkout counters), they help to promote the ideas and views of individuals like Roger Stone.

Most adult shoppers have the ability to judge whether a publication is trustworthy or not. But not all people who pass through the checkout lines are adults. Businesses should think of the many children who, accompanying their parents on shopping trips, see these tabloids.

One should consider, for example, the girls who happened to look at issues of the National Enquirer from October 2015 and September 2016, both of which falsely and preposterously claimed that Hillary Clinton was seriously afflicted with a variety of severe illnesses (stories supported with photoshopped images on the cover). These stories, which, not coincidentally, echo certain comments made by Stone, feed the sexist stereotype about women being frail and, in this case, not physically able to assume the rigorous responsibilities of the presidency.

Imagine the young girls who, passing through checkout lines, saw these covers, looked at the images, and read the headlines. Do local companies really want to present stories like these to children in the Capital District?

Yes, consumers have a choice. But businesses have choices too — and responsibilities. Stores that leave the tabloids at the checkout stands make clear their willingness to help promote fake news and the vicious rhetoric of people like Roger Stone.

Castina Charles

and the members of Altamont Main Street USA