Diversity in print

The old maxim that those who think in herds behave in herds is a fair description of the campus environment at IU these days. Dialectic reasoning is shunned. What one thinks matters more than how one thinks.\nFor all the catchphrases about "diversity on campus," both the administration and the student body are strangely silent about diversity in the print press. The former currently provides the The New York Times and USA Today to the latter free of charge. \nFull disclosure: I spent this past summer as an intern for the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal in Brussels, Belgium.\nWhy not replace the nauseatingly populist USA Today, with, say, The Wall Street Journal? Doing so would raise and sharpen the level of debate while providing a good balance to the excessively leftist New York Times. These improvements are sorely needed in an increasingly politicized press. \nIn its Oct. 19 editorial, "Saddam and Iraq on Trial," The New York Times scolded the "exercise in victor's justice" by the United States and its Iraqi allies in the "show trial" of Saddam Hussein. I expect this characteristic from a newspaper and a mentality that has long afforded Hussein and his villainous fellow Baathists the benefit of every doubt.\nBut what comes as a surprise is that The New York Times proceeded to berate the "narrow sectarian government" that replaced Hussein's Tikriti-based Baathist gang. There you have it. The paper that failed so roundly to rebuke Baathists while they plundered Iraq -- and seemed rather upset when some decided to bring an end to their plundering -- now has the nerve to protest democrats in one of the Arab world's few democracies.\nUnless someone gives me a credible reason to think otherwise, my provisional conclusion is that The New York Times is less offended by Iraq's ancien régime than the current one, which it derides for "borrowing noxious elements of Baathist law to speed the way toward an early and politically popular execution." \nIf my impression is correct, Iraq under Baathist subversion had little patience for the idea of a public trial. Nor did the regime find the time to hold any "popular" referendums. To equate it with one that does is beneath my contempt, and I hope, dear reader, well beneath yours.\nI have no trouble with the positions of The New York Times being expressed, mainly because I feel confident enough in my own to rebut them. But I become slightly annoyed when the arguments I encounter in the classroom can invariably be traced to its pages.\nIntellectualism and fairness demand that a newspaper of more conservative scruples be added to the newspaper box. Until it is, I flatly refuse to abide by the mindless clichés of USA Today, whose commercial bias consistently fails either to elevate the campus debate or balance the arguments that have for so long been imposed on it. Liberal or conservative, so should you -- unless you cannot take the heat. But debating these issues was never meant to be confused with a garden party.