The piece in question was written by UO faculty member Mohamed Jemmali and mainly criticized the role of the U.S. in supporting Israeli acts of provocation.

Jemmali wrote: “I know that my taxes are supporting American weapons given to Israel to kill Palestinians, occupy their land and destroy their homes. I know America is the only supporter of Israel in the U.N. I know these are the primary causes of promoting hatred among Arabs against Americans.”

Though the tone of the opinion piece was indeed inflammatory and Mr. Jemmali’s politics bled right through, nothing in the piece advocated hate.  Weismann states that such a “volatile” article should not have been run and says,”If you insist on publishing an article laced with unsupported judgment, the appropriate measure would have been to place an article arguing the opposing point of view right next to Jemmali’s article.”

I agree that it’s always nice to see opposing points of view on the opinion page and it would benefit many newspapers if they ran point-counterpoint features on hot-button issues.  It also would have aided Jemmali’s article if he had substantiated his claims better.  But, the suggestion that newspapers should pull volatile content off the opinion page is flat wrong.

I can think of no better exercise in dialogue than two writers presenting different perspectives on an issue, which is what, by printing Weismman’s article, the ODE provided.  Though she alleged Jemmali’s claims were inaccurate, she provided no evidence.  She also showed a passionate bias herself, strongly identifying with the Jewish state and admitting that she took “personal offense” at some of the comments made.

The opinion page should be a medium for intelligent discourse and dissent.  Newspapers have a responsibility to make sure there is factual accuracy in their content, but just because a writer shows bias or aggression or writes in an inflammatory way doesn’ t mean their voice should be removed.  If we abandon hot-button issues and strong opinions in editorial journalism, we gut its most fundamental components.  Then, what’s the point of having an opinion page at all?

The disparity, as dramatic as it is, mirrors the the political composition of many other journalism schools across the country.  A 2005 study of nine top journalism schools by David Horowitz and Joseph Light revealed similar ratios of political affiliation.  Columbia University had 15 Democrats and one Republican, while Berkeley had ten Democrats and zero Republicans.

According to a study performed by UO economist Bill Harbaugh in 2006, there are 15:5 registered Democrats in the total UO faculty for every one Republican.  The Oregon Daily Emerald reported that 96% of contributions during the 2008 election cycle went to Democratic candidates; in 2004 the figure was 100%.

Academia generally trends to the left, and the concentration of liberal professors at UO isn’t too surprising.  In most subjects, politics are irrelevant, but not in journalism.  The question of whether or not reporting is fair and objective is reliant upon how the beholder perceives the ideas presented.  It is innately difficult to support journalism that reveals an inadequacy or flaw in one’s own ideology.  How many times does a pro-choice advocate heap praise on pro-life reporting or vice-versa?

In fact, the two biggest media watchdogs in the business are divided on ideological terms.  Media Matters is “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Newsbusters calls itself “the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” The bottom line:  people rarely push ideas they dislike, and that goes for college professors as well.

“College is supposed to be the marketplace of ideas ” said C.J. Ciaramella, editor of the UO conservative magazine The Commentator.  “But it’s more like the Model T of ideas here, you can get any one you want as long as it’s black.”

Jon Palfreman, a long form documentary filmmaker and UO journalism professor, agrees the University can be hostile to Republican thought.  “Diversity of ideas means embracing ideas that you hate as well as ideas that you like.  We don’t have many smart right-wing ideas on campus here, and you probably won’t survive by promulgating such ideas,” he said.

I’ve been a journalism graduate student at UO for the last year, and though I’ve found the facutly to be generally open-minded, there’s no question that the discourse suffers when half of the political spectrum isn’t represented.  Journalism thrives on ideas, not just left-wing ideas or right-wing ideas, but a steady stream of diverse ideas. I don’t think a ratio of 26-0 or 38-2 achieves that.  Although, short of a political litmus test (which I’d oppose), I’m not exactly sure what can be done about it.

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.