Press councils’ choice: make big changes, or fade to black

Press councils across Canada are declining because they lack relevance, credibility and money, writes Brian Gabrial. Yet the need for a watchdog over journalism’s ethics has never been greater, and it’s time to choose between accepting a slow death and taking some bold—and controversial—moves.

Ombudsmen in the Latin American press: A complex task that seeks to become permanent

Abstract:

At the outset of 2010, at least 30 Ombudsmen experiences were in operation in the Latin American media, not only in newspapers but also in audiovisual media, especially in those of public management. The task of the News Ombudsmen or Defenders in the region is complex, in view of the economic difficulties with which the media are faced, journalists’ resistance to self-criticism, and meager participation by the public. There is a need for wider dissemination of information on these cases and for progress toward some kind of regional organization that will permit a sharing of experiences.

When describing the current status of…

Defensores del público en la prense LatinoAmericana: Un trabajo complejo que busca consolidarse

Introduction:

Prof. Flavia Pauwels of the University of Buenos Aires is a scholar of ombudsmanship
in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Here is her scholarly assessment of the
growth of the institution in Latin countries. An English translation to follow shortly.

Resumen:

Al iniciarse 2010 al menos treinta experiencias de Defensorías del público se encontraban en funcionamiento en los medios de comunicación de América Latina. No sólo en diarios, sino también en medios audiovisuales, particularmente en aquellos de gestión pública. El trabajo de los News Ombudsmen o Defensores en la región es complejo, debido a las dificultades económicas que atraviesan los medios, a las resistencias…

Defining a news ombudsman in a digital world

As news organisations become increasingly connected to their audiences, and those audiences equally become increasingly networked, the capacity for the news organisation to be held accountable by their audiences can only intensify. As we know, news organisations hold themselves accountable to their audiences through the application of a commonly held set of journalistic principles.

It is the task of news ombudsmen to assess whether their particular organisations have met those principles. The precise scope of the news ombudsman’s role reflects the legal and regulatory environment in which particular news organisations operate.

If we look at the present membership of the ONO, we…

How should requests to ‘unpublish’ be handled?

Last summer, through a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the Associated Press Managing Editors Online Credibility Project, I researched and wrote a “white paper” on this issue “Top unopublish or not to unpublish” after surveying more than 110 North American news organizations on how they are handling requests to delete articles from news websites. I presented the paper at APME conference and will be doing a webinair on it through the Poynter Institute in May. It was also covered by Columbia Journalism Review.

The paper attempts to come up with “best practices” in handling these requests…

The news ombudsman: Watchdog or decoy?

Self-control and dialogue in midst of controversy — lessons from Denmark

Good afternoon everyone.  Thank you so much for this opportunity to address the issue of public service broadcasting and ombudsmanship!

As we all know, news ombudsmen and readers editors are used at some of the best newspapers in the world. Washington Post was one of the innovators. Folha de Sao Paolo, Le Monde, The New York Times, The Guardian and many others have followed the example during the last decades.

This kind of ombudsmanship builds on a strong tradition. Every newspaper has its own way of doing it, but the basics are the same. In other words: Here you have a well…

Ombudsman: Self-criticism in newspapers

By Jairo Faria Mendes
Master of Arts in communication and culture
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Few people know what an ombudsman is, but various of the biggest newspapers in the world have the column, as Le Monde (France); El Pa¡s (Spain); Washington Post, Boston Globe e Philadelphia Inquirer (USA); The London Free Press, Calgary Herald, Montreal Gazete, Toronto Star e Halifax Cronicle-Herald (Canada) for instance; and even the Russian newspapers Izvestiya, known as an official organ of the communist party of the extinguished USSR. About half of the Japanese newspapers have an ombudsman, among which the one with the biggest circulation…

Fighting the enemy within

(Andrew Finkel was until recently a Reagan–Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. He has also served as a correspondent based in Istanbul for a variety of international organisations including The Times, TIME, the Economist, and CNN. He is also one of the few foreigners to have written a regular column in the Turkish language media.)

By Andrew Finkel
IBI Global Journalist

Blaming the media when things go wrong may be an old political trick, but it is one that succeeded only too well in earning Turkey’s prime minister Tayyip Erdoðan an enthusiastic round of applause in a speech…

Death of the ombud? Only in Canada

By Jeffrey Dvorkin
ONO executive director

Are news ombuds an endangered specied. In North America, the answer now seems to be yes.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I agreed in May to become the first executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) in the midst of the largest economic downturn in the history of journalism.

Only a few years ago, newspapers and broadcasters around the US and Canada would point to their in-house ombuds (aka readers’ editor or public editor) as an example of openness and transparency with their readers, viewers and listeners.

In case the term is…