The hearing, convened by Senator John Kerry, featured representatives from the Washington Post, the Dallas News and Google.  Kerry, who has expressed solidarity with  newspapers–especially the plight of the Boston Globe–led things off by welcoming attendees to “a brave new world” and quoting Joseph Pulitzer’s refrain, “Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.”

Maryland representative Ben Cardin (D) stumped for his recently proposed Newspaper Revitalization Bill, which would allow newspapers to receive 501 C-3 classification and the beefy tax breaks that accompany them(see past post on its flaws).

Former Washington Post Managing Editor Steve Coll struck a balanced tone by referring to the current state of journalism as “creative destruction.”  He complimented the innovation of online enterprise, but questioned if citizen journalists and bloggers could provide the same valuable public interest reporting as newspapers.

David Simon, a former journalist and producer of The Wire, was much more blunt.  He bashed blogging as “repetition, commentary and froth,” and content aggregation as leeching.  He laid much of the blame at the decision of newspapers to tie in with Wall-Street and “unencumbered capitalism”

However, his heated remarks were no match for Huffington.  In her thick Greek accent, the baroness of blog lacerated newspaper bosses for “putting content behind walled gardens,” “sticking their fingers in the dike” and “pretending the last 15 years didn’t happen.”

She stated her optimism that journalism would survive and flourish, but recommended that efforts be pulled away from saving newspapers and toward saving journalism.  She lauded the blogosphere for its ability to follow and hammer away at a story until it “breaks through the static,” and she excoriated the mainstream media for not doing its journalistic duty in covering the lead up to the Iraq War and the financial crisis. The news industry has had “far too many autopsies and not enough biopsies,” she said.

It was a rousing performance.  I didn’t agree with all it, but Huffington clearly has the spunk and tenacity necessary to transform a crisis into a period of innovation and growth.  Considering the pessimistic state of journalism, I’ll take it.

You can watch the video of the hearing here

Considering the fact that close to 10,000  Americans die from gun violence a year, there is a need for more media attention on gun regulation. Unfortunately, instead of taking a critical look at the issue, CBS composed a slanted piece that obfuscates the problem.

CBS reporter Lesley Stahl traveled to Richmond, Virginia to visit a gun show and investigate Virginia’s attempt to close the gun show loophole. She interviewed  four individuals in favor of closing the loophole; two issue advocates associated with the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, a police chief and Senator Dianne Feinstein.

CBS showed clips of the Virginia Tech massacre numerous times during the segment, however the shooter purchased all of his guns legally, something that is only briefly mentioned.  This is misleading, but the bigger inequity is the the lack of opposition viewpoint and data that CBS provides.

Stahl interviews one person who defends the current loophole, Phillip Van Cleave, the president of Virginia’s largest gun-rights group. A hokey Southerner, Van Cleave does a poor job stating his case and never mentions the likely ineffectiveness of this legislation. CBS also found it unnecessary to present the readily available statistics that show that closing this loophole probably won’t significantly reduce homicide rates.

In order to prove this, I’ve calculated the impact of closing the loophole on the Virginia firearm homicide rate by using statistics provided by the FBI and  Department of Justice.

According to a DOJ report from 2001, only .7% of guns used in crimes came from gun shows in 1998. I believe that this number is still fairly accurate today. It is only .1% higher than the 1991 figure and the Brady Ban regulations came into effect in 1993.  Also, there has been little jump in gun application rejections over the last ten years.

I believe this figure is consistent with the percent of gun show guns used in murders.  If there is a statistical discrepancy,  it is probably that a lower percentage of gun show guns are used for homicide than other crimes. This conjecture is based upon a pretty simple idea: murderers tend to skirt the law and generally avoid being identified or signing forms.

Now to gauge the potential effectiveness of this regulation, we need to figure out how many of these gun show murderers benefited from the loophole. The firearm background checks mainly weed out those with criminal records. In fact, according to a 2005 DOJ report approximately 84% of rejections at the state level between 1993 and 2003 were for either felony convictions, domestic violence convictions, restraining orders or related criminal activity.

According to the same DOJ report, recidivists are much more likely to buy their guns from illegal sources (somewhere between 13 and 50% more likely). So, a solid percentage—possibly even a majority—of the crimes committed by those who purchased guns from gun shows were by individuals without criminal records who wouldn’t be affected by closing the loophole. However, in order to cautious, let’s suggest that 2/3 of them had criminal records. Also, biting into that figure is the number of individuals who would have gone elsewhere to find a gun. I am going to guess one half. So,  let’s calculate:

Total Virginia Gun Murders 2007: 287
Projected Murders From Guns Purchased at Gun Shows 287x.07 =2.009
Adjustment for Individuals Without Prohibitive Criteria: 2.009x.66= 1.325
Adjustment for Individuals Who Will Find Alternate Ways to Commit Homicide (either buying illegal guns or using alternate weapons): 1.875 x .5= .66

Total Lives Saved=2/3 of 1 life

I can’t think of any more mitigating factors, although there may be some. I used conservative estimates, but I made a lot of assumptions. I’d be interested if anyone sees big flaws.  Even if I were off by 300%, it would only save 2 lives.

So, what’s wrong with saving two-thirds of one life?

Well there’s an opportunity cost associated with creating public policy, as a government has finite resources and money. I have no idea of the cost of the enforcement of this legislation, but I’m confident it’s in the millions, not to mention the amount of money spent by anti-gun advocacy groups. A very solid argument can be made that we shouldn’t waste money on pointless gun control laws. Virginia is a state with no waiting period for hand gun purchases, why not focus efforts there.  Or, for the money spent on enforcement of this law, alternatives such as putting more cops on the streets or more money into programs for inner city youth might be more efficacious.

But my beef was never with the anti-gun advocates, in fact before I plugged the numbers I was in support of this legislation myself. My grudge is with CBS and 60 minutes.

It took a five minute Google search for me to find the important stat here– that only .7% of criminals use guns from gun shows. If CBS had even done a modicum of research they could have included this in their report.  Honestly, I believe they knew that figure was out there, but chose not to include it because it would have ruined the theme of their piece. This sort of under the radar advocacy journalism is worse than the sensational polemics of people like Bill O’ Reilly or Keith Olbermann because it’s rarely detected. CBS chose to focus on emotion and drama instead of facts, and they should have their feet held to the fire because of it.

Watch the video below and tell me what you think.

According to Ziegler, he was initially going to demonstrate at the event, but then decided to cover it as a journalist.  USC officials had marked off a specific area behind a barricade for him to protest, and refused to let Ziegler in the event.  According to USC,  only press that had been approved by nominees was allowed.

In the full video, which is embedded below, Ziegler is being annoying and dramatic, but he is never confrontational with police, school officials or attendees.  In fact, he makes it abundantly clear that his intention is to cover the event as a journalist and to ask critical (and annoying) questions about whether or not Couric is worthy of  an award.

Ziegler points out, correctly, that there is a tremendous irony in a journalist at an award ceremony for journalistic excellence being banned from covering the event.  Though USC is a private university, it has a commitment to safeguarding dissent.  It’s clear from the footage that it wasn’t Ziegler’s actions, but his politics that got him removed.  In a lengthy blog post, Ziegler wrote

In effect, I was being punished, repressed, and physically harmed as a form of prior restraint because they anticipated that I might do something to disrupt the proceedings based on my prior writings and commentary on the event (in which I never claimed I would do anything more than exactly what I tried to; give away copies of my film as an educational exercise).

Though he’s a bit self righteous, he’s correct, and it’s shameful that USC’s journalism school had such a primitive response to the incident. Dean Ernest Wilson claimed in his statement that the Annenberg School of Communication has a “powerful and evident commitment to protecting and promoting freedom of expression and the rights of the press,” but what was truly evident is that USC isn’t interested in tolerating journalists who are a bit kooky, very critical and a threat to their mid-afternoon toast to Katie C.

Over at the Huff-Po, brainiac John Wellington Ennis wrote a blog post entitled, “Does the First Amendment Protect Someone From Being a Dumbass” in which he assailed Zielger’s character for not showing “respect and tact,” while peppering him with childish insult after insult.

Ziegler shot right back with a Huff Post blog entry of his own, contradicting Ennis’s claims one by one(or at least the one’s that didn’t already contradict each other.)

The bottom line is John Zielger is a guy with a pretty mediocre film about something that is indisputable:  The media did an abhorrent job providing coverage during the election.  He’s no genius and I disregard much of what he says, but he should be able to critically question the work of Katie Couric without ending up in handcuffs. The fact that he can’t exposes the fragility of unpopular speech in one of the places it should be valued most.

I thought that the weather and the delicious meal would offset the gory details of the interrogation memos, and to some extent they did, but there is a chilling eeriness in actually reading the “dispassionate prose”–as the NYT so aptly phrased it–of the legal masterminds who set the gears of the Bush interrogation programs in motion.

Bush's Torture Dream Team

Though it was Jay S. Bybee who oversaw the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel when many of the memos authorizing brutal interrogations were approved, much of the handiwork was done by John Yoo.

Yoo–A South Korean immigrant and Yale Law graduate–set the standard for torture by defining it as action that “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.”

Using this broad definition, he was able to authorize a slew of deplorable tactics, but the most stunning revelation wasn’t the sort of brutal torture methods the U.S. was using–as this was already well known–but the calculated, rational legal minds who so cavalierly validated it.

Yoo was a dream legal counsel for a president attempting to enhance his power, as he was totally divested from the human cost of his work. During  a 2005 debate, Yoo was asked by Notre Dame legal scholar Doug Cassel, “If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?”

His  answer: “No treaty,” and, depending on the president’s belief at the time, no law either.

For this reason, it should come as no surprise that when Yoo and his cohorts were asked to supply the legal backing to exploit detainee Abu Zubaydah’s fear of insects by telling him they were putting stinging insects in his box and actually placing harmless bugs, they were game.

The bugs were never used, but the authorization was given.  It’s a strange thing to read, regardless of the sunshine.  Props to Obama for releasing the memos, even though they hampered my lunch.  Props to John Yoo for his hard work and creativity; too bad he used it in such a reprehensible way.

I think this blog is intended to be some sort of coming out party for my transition from a copywriting scab to a professional journalist– that’s why I have this header in which I look respectable– but whenever I think about inhibiting my writing to tailor to a certain audience I just get bored.

I don’t think Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman ever gets bored.  Actually, I’m sure she gets does get bored at some junctures of her life, but I never really get bored of watching Democracy Now.  This evening they aired a documentary on Pacifica Radio and its 60th birthday.

Founded in 1949 by peace activist Lou Hill, Pacifica is the oldest independent radio network in the US. It was also the first purely listener-supported radio station in the country, a framework that kept it out of the clutches of corporate media.

It was founded in Berkley in 1949 at an anarchist meeting and its early lifeblood was the far-left San Francisco intellectual scene, but it appeared to have a commitment not to ideology but to freedom of speech and reporting the news.   According to Goodman’s column, the organization was in desperate economic straits in its infancy but consistently found support from its listeners.

It gained much of its influence while airing live broadcasts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and was especially prominent in the coverage of the student riot following a HUAC meeting in Berkley in 1960.  It hosted debates between James Baldwin and Malcolm X on non-violent protests, banter from leading intellectuals during the Cold War about the possibility of nuclear apocalypse and the poetry of Langston Hughes, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and more.

More importantly, it consistently aired journalism of criticism and dissent.  People valued that, and they pulled out their pocket books and contributed regardless of the fact that no one was compelling them to do so.

That seems like pretty honest journalism. Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible that we could ever return to a model so pure.

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