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…

The news ombudsman: Watchdog or decoy?

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…

Anger management

By Stephen James
Sacramento News & Review

Here today, gone tomorrow: “Some people thought it was on the mark,” said Tony Marcano of his ombudsman column, “and some people thought I was completely out in left field.”

It’s a job with a strange title and duties that inevitably invite animosity and conflict. Ombudsmen handle customer complaints and scrutinize the business that employs them. In the newspaper industry, that often translates into bluntly criticizing the work of reporters, editors and managers, all in plain view of several hundred thousand readers. “Journalists are remarkably defensive people,” explained Jeffrey Dvorkin, National Public Radio ombudsman and president…

‘Public Editor’ Daniel Okrent, Recruited After Scandal, Draws Ire of Reporters

By James Bandler
2004 © The Wall Street Journal

When the New York Times decided to hire a “public editor,” it wanted to heal a damaged institution. The Jayson Blair scandal — which began with a reporter’s fabrications and ended with the firing of two top editors — had badly bruised the paper’s credibility. The public editor would scrutinize the Times’s future performance and act as an advocate for readers.

Daniel Okrent, a veteran magazine editor, has been the Times’s public editor for seven months. But instead of bringing calm, the experiment has created fresh tensions within the Times about such subjects as…

Mike’ll get ya

By David A. Markiewicz
American Journalism Review

Michael Getler has proven to be the toughest ombudsman at the Washington Post in a long time. What’s the impact of a hard-hitting in-house critic on a newspaper?

For a year now, Fridays in the Washington Post newsroom have crackled with a little added anticipation, something apart from the expectation of the next big story and beyond the eagerness of reporters and editors looking forward to the weekend.

The end of the week has also brought the release of the latest “Omb Memo,” a pointed, one- or two-page assessment of the staff’s recent failings and accomplishments as…

Increasingly, newspapers call on ombudsmen to cure what ails them

By Lucia Moses
Editor & Publisher © 2000

Their motto might be, “Journalist, heal thyself!” While their job description varies, and they go by different names – ombudsman, reader representative, or public editor are common ones – their function is essentially the same: to lend an ear to readers and serve as an internal critic. Sometimes, there’s a price to pay, however, for prescribing tough medicine.

Journalists love to probe, and criticize, but are famously thin-skinned themselves, and “ombuds” are in the awkward position of having to criticize their own newspapers – which can mean taking their employers, co-workers, or former colleagues to…

This is a job for… Ombudsman, writer of wrongs!

By Kim Campbell
The Christian Science Monitor © 2000

When The Los Angeles Times published a front-page photo on May 17 of a Colombian mother with a bomb around her neck, it drew fire from readers. How could the Times print such a shocking photo of a woman waiting to die from the device forced on her by guerrillas?

The answer came in a column written by readers’ representative Narda Zacchino, who has been fielding calls and demystifying newspaper practices – like the choosing of Page 1 photos – since her position was created last year.

At a time when the public is increasingly…