'IDS' wrong to print ad explanation

Once again, the IDS management has stumbled in the wake of the publication of the controversial David Horowitz advertisement, "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea -- and Racist Too."\nThe ad ran in the April 13 edition of the IDS. Since then, the IDS editors have made some seriously flawed decisions -- the worst of which forbade the paper's regular columnists from writing about the Horowitz ad -- culminating with their ill-advised decision to print an explanation of policy regarding the ad in the Friday IDS. \nWhy was this a mistake? Timing, for starters -- the IDS had already printed a two-page letter forum the day before the policy explanation ran. While many of those letters to the editor were critical of the paper's decision to print the ad, others dealt with Horowitz's arguments. The explanation ran after all of these letters.\nTo further complicate matters, the IDS had already printed, in its April 17 edition, the first of a series of guest columns criticizing the Horowitz ad. The second appeared in Friday's edition, along with the policy explanation. By publishing such a defense of its decision to print the ad in the wake of other discussion of the issue, the IDS shifted the focus of its readers' criticism from the ad itself to the paper's decision to print it. \nA second reason why printing the explanation of policy is that it was incomplete. In their chronology of the events surrounding the publication of the Horowitz ad, IDS managing editors Andy Gammill and Liz Beltramini conveniently skipped over the fact that one week before the ad ran, then-IDS columnist Jim Stinson wanted to write a column about the impact of Horowitz's arguments on higher education, particularly the implications on free speech and social discourse, which Horowitz sees as dominated by liberal ideology.\nStinson was told he couldn't write anything about Horowitz or slavery reparations, not even in the context of free speech or in regard to the controversies at schools that had already printed the ad, such as Brown University and the University of California-Berkeley. \nWhen interviewed for this ombudsman column, Stinson, who has since resigned from his position as an IDS columnist, explained his purpose for writing about Horowitz's ad.\n"I didn't plan to mention IU or the IDS at all," he said. "I wanted to mention the erosion of speech and rights and the intolerance of speech and information sharing we have seen -- from Napster to McCain-Feingold … I have followed this issue extensively, and no campus paper, even the ones that rejected the ad, tried to suppress all and any commentary about the ad and certainly not the national issue itself."\nStinson, one of the few conservative IDS columnists, said he wanted to discuss the Horowitz ad in another larger context; namely, the alleged suppression and degradation of conservative viewpoints within higher education. The fact that he is politically conservative, which is strongly reflected in his columns, made this turn of events even more puzzling and frustrating.\n"If columnists had to shut up about every political ad that may or may not run, we would all be in trouble," Stinson said. "Throw in commercial ads, and you would have no opinion page at all. The fact that (the Horowitz ad) is a conservative political ad may demonstrate a double standard. No editor would ever ask a columnist to not mention a company if there were a liberal, anti-capitalist bent to the column that may honk off the advertiser."\nA third and final reason why the policy explanation shouldn't have been written and published can be summed in one word: honesty. The IDS editors are being honest to neither themselves nor their readers. "Columnists then suggested the compromise that they would write about the national controversy surrounding the ad," Gammill and Beltramini wrote in Friday's explanation. "But by taking a stance on what other newspapers have chosen to do, they would also be commenting on our decision to run the ad in the IDS."\nIt's not clear why the IDS management is deluding itself on this issue. The views of individual columnists do not represent those of the newspaper as a whole. This point cannot be stressed enough. Staff editorials are for setting forth the paper's official stances on issues. A columnist such as Stinson could easily write about the ad's larger issues without including any sort of criticism -- implicit or explicit -- of the paper's decision-making process.\nWith that said, I'd like to cut the IDS some slack, seeing as how this is my last column as the paper's ombudsman. I've been rough on the IDS lately -- not that it didn't deserve it, in my opinion. But if there has been one redeeming quality shining through all of this uproar, it is the IDS editors' willingness to subject themselves and their decisions to my criticism, something that speaks well of them as journalists. It's been that way all semester and, indeed, all year. We've had our disagreements about the content of my columns, but never, not once, have they tried to change something without my permission. \nFinally, to the IDS readers: thanks for making my job so tough. You've been vocal and outspoken about your campus newspaper. I didn't get to tackle all of the issues you suggested, but another ombudsman will be along soon. Keep reading.