Read more: Keeping Tabs on the Times

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 de los periodistas a la autocrítica y a la débil participación del público. Hace falta una mayor difusión de estos casos y el avance hacia algún tipo de organización regional que permita el intercambio de experiencias.

Al momento de describir el estado de situación de la figura del Ombudsman (también llamado Defensor, Ouvidor o Mediador) en la prensa latinoamericana, distintos investigadores coinciden en remarcar que se trata de un proceso que todavía se encuentra en desarrollo.

Susana Herrera Damas y Rosa Zeta de Pozo (2005) concuerdan con Zaira Sánchez Piña (1999) en señalar que la implementación de esta forma de autorregulación en los medios de comunicación de la región ha sido “reciente”. Es necesario tener en cuenta que -si bien el primer caso se registró en 1989 en el diario brasileño Folha de San Pablo- fue en la década del 90 cuando “la figura empezó a generalizarse y darse a conocer” en otros países.

Gerardo Albarrán de Alba (2002), en tanto, al comparar el surgimiento de este mecanismo en la prensa norteamericana y europea con respecto a la latinoamericana, concluye que en ésta última “su aparición ha sido tardía”. Germán Rey (2003) también se refiere a los “pocos años” transcurridos desde 1989, lo que según su visión, hace que los Defensores de la región deban enfrentar un “oficio nuevo”, todavía “en construcción”.

Desde 1989 a la fecha se han registrado experiencias de Defensorías del público en casi todos los países de América del Sur y en algunos de América Central (Ver Anexo). Sin embargo, no han estado exentas de dificultades surgidas por motivos económicos , por conflictos con los periodistas o directivos y por la débil participación del público , lo que ha terminado en algunos casos con la desaparición de los cargos.

Por parte de las empresas periodísticas, se observa en la región la influencia, al momento de iniciar este tipo de experiencias, de lo hecho al respecto por el diario español El País. Su Defensoría del Lector (vigente desde 1985) y el Estatuto que rige su actuación, han sido fuente de inspiración para los medios locales.

Ahora, si se analizan las motivaciones de los medios para implementar este mecanismo de autorregulación, los objetivos declarados apuntan a mejorar los canales de comunicación entre el público y los periodistas. Sin embargo, y tal como señala Albarrán de Alba (2002), en los hechos “el alcance del defensor del lector latinoamericano tiene diverso acento”: a veces señala “el desarrollo de una conciencia ética de la redacción” o de “una voluntad empresarial de cambio”. En otros, simplemente se trata “de un instrumento de control interno” o de una mera “apariencia” para tratar de conquistar lectores.

La participación del público, en tanto, y su conciencia acerca de que la información también es un derecho humano que se debe ejercer, aparece como un aspecto que todavía sigue siendo necesario trabajar. En este sentido, Rey (2006) es claro al indicar que en Latinoamérica “aún es precaria la participación de la sociedad civil, los procesos de transparencia y las actividades de rendición de cuentas”. Un concepto similar al expresado por Caio Tulio Costa (2006: 11), el primer Ombudsman del diario brasileño Folha, quién acerca de su experiencia indicó que le tocó “implantar un servicio de atención al ciudadano en un país donde la ciudadanía no llega a ser una noción, es un deseo difuso y una posibilidad distante”.

También el carácter foráneo de la figura parece agregar otra dificultad para su afianzamiento en la región. Al menos, así lo analiza el ex Defensor del diario español El País, José Miguel Larraya (Ortiz, 2009: 80) cuando se refiere a las diferencias existentes entre el tipo de sociedad en la que surgió el Ombudsman con respecto a aquellas de raíces latinas. En este sentido, señala que “la figura del Ombudsman responde a una mentalidad anglosajona”. Por eso considera que “si hay un cierto escepticismo en las sociedades latinas sobre este tipo de funciones, es en parte razonable”.

Por otra parte, aparece la dificultad de determinar cuántos Defensores del público u Ombudsman actúan en la prensa latinoamericana. En un rastreo hecho para la Maestría en Periodismo de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), se ha podido determinar que en 2010 se encontraban activas, al menos, treinta Defensorías distribuidas en Argentina, Brasil, México, Colombia, Ecuador y Venezuela (Pauwels, 2010).

Sin embargo, la falta de una agrupación regional y el escaso número de Defensores latinoamericanos que integran la Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) complica el establecimiento de un número más certero. Existen intentos de avanzar en algún tipo de intercambio regional entre quienes ejercen el rol, aunque por el momento sin organizaciones de tipo formal. Uno de ellos es el impulsado por Lucio Segovia, ex Defensor del lector y la lectora del diario venezolano El Nacional, quien creó un grupo virtual para que sus colegas de distintos países puedan enviar sus artículos, compartir informaciones y debatir aspectos vinculados con el oficio.

En cuanto a la ONO, Albarrán de Alba (2002) llama la atención acerca de la “ignorancia” que tiene esa organización internacional acerca de la “mayoría” de los Defensores latinoamericanos. Situación también advertida por los brasileños de Folha. Junia Nogueira, la primera mujer en ocupar este tipo de cargo en ese diario, señalaba que la ONO le parecía “una entidad distante” (Costa, 2006: 258). En tanto, su colega Marcelo Beraba marcaba “la fuerte influencia de los diarios norteamericanos” en la entidad y la necesidad de “redefinir su rumbo y ampliar sus cuadros a Europa y América Latina” (Costa, 2006: 279).

En similar sentido, se expresó el Ombudsman de TV4 de Suecia, Jaane Andersson (2009), durante la conferencia de la ONO de 2009 en Washington. Allí advirtió acerca del “dominio” de los Defensores estadounidenses en la Organización y cómo “todos los procedimientos, debates y presentaciones se hacen en inglés”. En este sentido, señaló que “debe invitarse” a colegas “franceses, españoles y portugueses” a “unirse” a la ONO.

Tales sugerencias no pasaron desapercibidas por la Organización que tras su conferencia anual de 2010 anunció que “uno de sus próximos pasos” sería incorporar material en “francés, español y chino” a su sitio web (Dvorkin, 2010).

Ahora, ¿cómo es ser Ombudsman o Defensor en América Latina? y ¿qué innovaciones se han registrado en los últimos años?.

Germán Rey (2006), ex Defensor del Lector en el diario colombiano El Tiempo, describe la tarea de quienes actúan en la región como “compleja”. Como ejemplo señala que mientras ejerció el cargo recibió “cartas de paramilitares, narcotraficantes, sicarios y políticos corruptos protestando por las informaciones que en la mayoría de las ocasiones eran verdaderas, pero que contrariaban sus intereses criminales”.

En cuanto al perfil de los Defensores latinoamericanos, dos trabajos coinciden en afirmar que si bien hay “dimensiones comunes” se observan “diferencias” en las formas de trabajo.

La Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI) organizó en 2002 en Guadalajara (México) el Primer Seminario Internacional de Defensores del lector. Quienes ejercían, en ese entonces, este tipo de cargo marcaron como coincidencias su labor de “mediación”, el necesario carácter “autónomo del oficio”, las “limitaciones temporales” en el ejercicio de la función y el “trabajo con las demandas de la gente”. Las divergencias estuvieron relacionadas fundamentalmente con la “distancia” o “cercanía” que cada Defensor mantenía con los periodistas del medio (Rey, 2003).

En tanto, la investigación de Herrera Damas y Zeta de Pozo (2005) también concluye que, si bien las Defensorías del público en América Latina presentan “una variedad de formas”, tienen similares objetivos: “el fomento de la autocrítica, el diálogo interno y el respeto de la ética profesional”.

En cuanto a las innovaciones, aparece como un dato relevante en la región el surgimiento durante la primera década de 2000 de distintas experiencias de Defensorías en medios audiovisuales, sobre todo en aquellos de carácter público. Así lo demuestran los casos de Brasil, México, Chile Argentina y Colombia , aunque con distinta suerte, ya que algunos sólo han sido intentos de corta duración.

Constituye también una novedad la aparición en Brasil, a partir de 2007, de Defensores con competencias exclusivas sobre dos sitios de Internet (UOL e IG), lo que sigue ubicando a este país en la vanguardia con respecto a este tema.

Merecen citarse también a algunas Defensorías en particular por llevar adelante iniciativas que podrían ser fuente de inspiración para otras experiencias:

Por ejemplo, se destaca el diario mexicano Público de Guadalajara, por la forma de elección de su Defensor, quien puede ser propuesto no sólo por los consejos editoriales o los miembros de la redacción sino también “por cualquier lector interesado en el proceso” .

En algunos casos la participación del público se formaliza a través de Consejos que actúan complementando la labor de los Defensores. Esto sucede en medios brasileños como el diario O Povo y la Empresa Brasil de Comunicación (EBC).

Otras Defensorías se distinguen por ser promotoras de actividades o “servicios” que incluyen talleres abiertos a la comunidad, encuentros de estudiantes con periodistas, visitas a las instalaciones del medio y hasta la posibilidad de presenciar las reuniones editoriales. En este aspecto sobresalen el diario venezolano El Nacional y el mexicano Tabasco Hoy.

Tampoco hay que olvidar los intentos de distintas universidades por dotar a sus propios medios de comunicación de una figura como la del Ombudsman. Se trata de una forma de instalar entre los estudiantes la importancia de la autorregulación. Tienen o han tenido experiencias de este tipo: México (Universidad de Guadalajara ), Colombia (Universidad de Antioquia ) y Brasil (Universidad Católica de Santos, Universidad de Brasilia y la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Minas/Arcos ).

En tanto, algunas Defensorías comienzan a explorar otros caminos para estar en contacto con audiencias y periodistas, más allá de la información que pueden publicar en sus propios sitios en Internet (Pauwels, 2006). Algunas, como Radio Educación de México y Teleantioquía de Colombia cuentan con sus propios “perfiles” en Facebook, desde donde piden a sus seguidores sugerencias y propuestas. El Canal 22 de México, por su parte, sube los videos del programa “Defensor del Televidente” a YouTube y en El Colombiano de Medellín, Víctor Zuluaga Salazar ha utilizado la Intranet del diario para poner en marcha un “proyecto pedagógico” dirigido a los periodistas .

Otro aspecto queda por resaltar. Se trata de la coincidencia de tres gobiernos de la región (Argentina, Ecuador y Bolivia) en proponer la creación de Defensorías del público por ley, en particular, con competencias sobre los medios audiovisuales. Estas iniciativas, si bien se alejan de la concepción de las Defensorías como un mecanismo de autorregulación de la prensa, sí indican la actualidad de un debate referido a cómo el público puede presentar objeciones a los contenidos de los medios.

La “pedagogía del Derecho a la Información” es el fin superior del trabajo de los Defensores. Así lo ha explicado Javier Darío Restrepo (2003, Marzo), no solo un referente en materia de ética periodística en la región sino también alguien que conoce esta labor desde adentro, ya que encarnó el rol de Defensor en medios colombianos en dos oportunidades. Tal “pedagogía” debe ir dirigida en dos sentidos: hacia el público y hacia los propios periodistas. Este esfuerzo requiere, en el panorama latinoamericano, necesariamente de un trabajo colectivo.

Es por ello que las Defensorías del público de la región necesitan de una mayor difusión. A nivel social, para que el público participe con sus observaciones y deje de ser “una mayoría silenciosa” (García Posada, 2007, Enero 7). A nivel profesional, entre los dueños de los medios y los propios periodistas, para lograr el compromiso de los primeros -en cuanto a la independencia y autonomía de los Defensores- y la cooperación de los segundos, en la respuesta al público y en la corrección de los errores. A nivel institucional, se hace necesario también aunar esfuerzos y tejer redes de cooperación con escuelas, universidades, organizaciones no gubernamentales, gremios del sector, etc.

Allá, por 1993, la revista argentina La Maga –la primera en tener Ombudsman en este país- lo caricaturizaba como una especie de Superman: un hombre de gesto adusto y postura firme que calzaba botas, llevaba una capa y en su pecho una insignia con una gran letra “O”. Seguramente, los Defensores lejos están de tener esos poderes sobrenaturales para cambiar por sí solos el estado de las cosas en materia de medios. Ellos son, todavía, una minoría en los medios de comunicación de Latinoamérica. Sin embargo, sus trabajos requieren de nuestra atención, porque marcan uno de los caminos posibles, no el único, por el que puede transitar el Derecho a la Información.

(*) Flavia Pauwels es licenciada en Ciencias de la Comunicación por la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), carrera en la cual se desempeña como profesora. Cuenta con un postgrado en Planificación y Gestión de la Actividad Periodística y ha cursado también la Maestría en Periodismo en la mencionada universidad, donde se ha especializado en la figura del Ombudsman de la prensa o Defensor del público. Para su Tesis de Maestría ha estado en contacto en los últimos cinco años con Defensores o ex Defensores de Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, México, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Panamá, España, Estados Unidos, Inglaterra, Holanda, Sudáfrica y Dinamarca.

Contacto: flaviapauwels@hotmail.com

NOTAS

En 2007 IG Brasil creó el cargo de Ombudsman para su portal en Internet. El elegido fue Mario Vitor Santos, con gran experiencia en este tipo de funciones ya que ocupó en dos oportunidades el mismo cargo en el diario Folha. Sin embargo, a comienzos de 2009 el director de la empresa le comunicó a Santos que “el contrato del Ombudsman no era compatible con una nueva realidad salarial vigente en IG” (2009, Febrero 17). En tanto, Juan Carlos Nuñez del diario mexicano Público reconoce que la crisis económica que ha afectado en forma global a la prensa gráfica, incide negativamente sobre la labor de los Defensores. Al ser consultado para esta investigación señaló que “el periódico vive momentos difíciles desde el punto de vista económico, lo que ha implicado duros recortes de personal”. Tal situación hace que “las recomendaciones del Defensor no sea fáciles de cumplir, pues los compañeros reporteros y editores carecen de tiempo y de recursos necesarios para elaborar un mejor diario” (e-mail, 2009 Diciembre 12).

La gestión de Mário Magalhães, en el diario brasileño Folha, finalizó con polémicas. El periodista se fue del cargo, que ejerció solo durante un año (2007-08), por disentir con la Dirección, la cual ordenó que no se publicara más en Internet su Crítica Interna, cuyo acceso era libre para cualquier lector desde 2000. En su última columna, Magalhães (2008, Abril 6) dijo que para renovar su mandato el diario le exigía “un retroceso en la transparencia de su trabajo”, aduciendo que “la competencia” se aprovechaba de las “ideas y sugerencias” del Ombudsman de Folha y las implementaba antes en sus propios diarios. Magalhães contrarrestó diciendo que de esta forma “los lectores perdían un derecho” y que la Crítica Interna, ahora sólo distribuída por e-mail a los principales periodistas de Folha, igual podría llegar a la competencia. En tanto, y si se habla de relaciones tensas con los periodistas, valen como ejemplos las experiencias de dos ex Defensores del diario brasileño O Povo. Adisía Sá fue víctima de un atentado en el cual tiraron ácido sobre su auto. Además recibió amenazas en las cuales le advertían que iba a ser atropellada, que su vehículo se iba a prender fuego o que una bomba explotaría en su edificio (Faria Mendes, 2003). Lira Neto, en tanto, relata en su libro (2000) las represalias que tomaron en su contra los colegas del diario porque él criticó a quienes desempeñaban en forma paralela su rol periodistas y de asesores de comunicación de políticos o empresas.

La queja por la falta de reclamos aparece con frecuencia en el discurso de los representantes latinoamericanos. Sebastián de la Nuez, de Últimas Noticias de Venezuela indicaba: “siento que (los lectores) no son lo suficientemente críticos (…) no ven muchas sutilezas que se pueden dar en la mala concepción de una información” (Pineda, 2006). La brasileña Débora Cronemberger de O Povo calificaba a la intervención del público como “muy tímida” (2002, Enero 5). Similar apreciación hacía Víctor Zuluaga Salazar de El Colombiano (2008, Enero 7), quien indicaba que en ese periódico la colaboración de los lectores era “constante pero escasa”. En el diario La Época de Chile, cuenta el investigador José Luis Santa María (2005), la experiencia de la Defensoría duró poco por la falta de un “rol crítico” por parte de los lectores. El principal problema, señala, es que “la gente casi no se quejaba”. En el diario El Deber de Bolivia, Juan Javier Zeballos Gutiérrez vivía una situación similar. Cuenta al respecto que su experiencia como Defensor ha sido “poco gratificante por una falta de cultura de los lectores a quejarse” (e-mail 2009, Diciembre 12). Finalmente, Ronald Nava al asumir el cargo de Defensor en El Nacional de Venezuela se declaraba “preocupado” porque en su primera semana de trabajo no había recibido “ni una llamada” de los lectores (2007, Mayo 25).

Colombia tiene en la región la particularidad de haber sido el primer país en sancionar una ley que establece la obligatoriedad de los canales de televisión de contar con un Defensor del Televidente. En 1996 la ley 335 estableció en su artículo 11 que los operadores privados debían “reservar el 5% del total de su programación para presentación de programas de interés público y social”. “Uno de estos espacios”, se precisaba, “se destinará a la Defensoría del Televidente”. En tanto, y en enero de 2007, la Comisión Nacional de Televisión (CNTV), en su Acuerdo 1, artículo 7, estableció que: “Los operadores privados del servicio de televisión abierta de cubrimiento nacional y local con ánimo de lucro, los operadores públicos de cubrimiento nacional y regional y los concesionarios de espacios de televisión del Canal Uno, deberán destinar un espacio al Defensor del Televidente”. La normativa no sólo extendió, como se observa, la obligatoriedad de las Defensorías sino que además estableció en su artículo 8 la existencia de un programa de televisión dedicado a tal fin en cada canal.

Algunos medios audiovisuales, públicos y privados, de otros países de la región también han intentado la puesta en funcionamiento de una Defensoría. Por ejemplo, Radio de la Ciudad en Argentina (Pauwels, 2005); Radio Universidad en Chile (Bersezio Pavez y Manosalva Rodríguez, 2006); TV Cultura y EBC en Brasil; Ecuavisa en Ecuador y Canal Once, Canal 22, Radio Educación e IMER en México.

Un ejemplo de la convocatoria que hace el diario Público para que los lectores sugieran candidatos a Defensor puede leerse en: http://impreso.milenio.com/node/8048308 (Consulta: 2009, Diciembre).

En marzo de 2008 la Universidad de Guadalajara designó al profesor Enrique Sánchez Ruiz como Defensor del Público con la tarea de “velar porque las producciones audiovisuales (de televisión abierta) y los programas producidos y transmitidos por las estaciones de la Red Radio UdG se realicen con altos estándares éticos, que no falten a la verdad ni ofendan al público”. La gestión de Sánchez Ruiz fue efímera y terminó renunciando. La Universidad designó luego, en junio de 2008, a José Luis Vázquez Baeza, director de la Escuela de Periodismo Carlos Septién García. Más información: http://www.ombudsman.udg.mx/ (Consulta: 2009, Diciembre).

El mérito de haber sido el primer medio de comunicación con un Defensor del lector en Colombia lo tiene una publicación universitaria. Fue en 1990 cuando el periódico EntreVista, editado por la Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad de Antioquia designó al experimentado profesor y periodista Juan José García Posada para tal función. García Posada volvió a ser Defensor del Lector en el diario El Colombiano de Medellín entre 2004 y 2007.

En el periódico de la Universidad Católica de Santos el rol lo desempeñaba un profesor. En tanto que, en las publicaciones de la Universidad de Brasilia y de la Pontificia Universidad Católica, se elegía a un alumno para tal función. El investigador brasileño Jairo Faria Mendes (2003) señala que estas experiencias se convirtieron “en un gran ejemplo para los medios brasileños”.

El proyecto puesto en marcha por la Defensoría de El Colombiano, a través de la Intranet del diario, se titula “Pensando en los lectores”. El mismo, consta de una biblioteca virtual con dos centenares de títulos, decenas de diccionarios, enlaces a sitios de interés y la recopilación de las columnas de todos los Defensores que han pasado por el cargo. Recursos que están disponibles en las computadoras de cada periodista (Zuluaga Salazar, 2009, Abril 13 y 20).

Existió en Bolivia en 2007 una iniciativa, promovida por el partido político del presidente Evo Morales, acerca de la posibilidad de incorporar a la nueva Constitución la figura del Defensor del lector, del televidente y del oyente. Sin embargo, tal iniciativa no prosperó. Según da cuenta Juan Javier Zeballos Gutiérrez, ex Defensor del lector del diario El Deber, “la Asamblea Constituyente finalmente no aprobó nada al respecto” (e-mail: 2009, Diciembre 14). En Ecuador, en tanto, a fines de 2009 había sido entregado al Consejo de Administración Legislativa la propuesta de crear la figura del Defensor del Público como parte de una nueva Ley de Comunicación. Más detalles en: http://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/files/Tema%20del%20dia/Info-Defensor-del-pueblo.jpg (Consulta: 2009, Diciembre). Finalmente, en Argentina se aprobó en octubre de 2009 la Ley de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual que establece, entre otras cuestiones, la creación de la “Defensoría del Público”. Se accede al texto completo de la ley a través de: http://www.comfer.gov.ar/web/ley26522.pdf (Consulta: 2010, Mayo).

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PAUWELS, Flavia (2006): “Ombudsman e Internet: a mitad de camino”. Observatório da Imprensa. Brasil. Año 12. N 397. En: http://www.observatoriodaimprensa.com.br/artigos.asp?cod=397DAC004 (Consulta: 2006, Diciembre).

PAUWELS, Flavia (2005): “La primera experiencia de un defensor del oyente en un medio público argentino”. Sala de Prensa N 85. En: http://www.saladeprensa.org (Consulta: Noviembre de 2005).

PINEDA GONZÁLEZ, Míriam Lorena (2006): El defensor del lector como promotor de la participación ciudadana. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Facultad de Humanidades y Educación. Comisión de Estudios de Postgrado. Maestría en Información y Comunicación para el Desarrollo.

REY, Germán (2006): “Realidades y actos de fe. La situación del periodismo en América Latina”. Ponencia presentada en la Conferencia anual de la Organization of News Ombudsmen. San Pablo. Brasil.

REY, Germán (2003, Marzo): “El defensor del lector: un oficio en construcción”. Sala de Prensa N 53. En: http://www.saladeprensa.org (Consulta: 2005, Marzo).

SA, Adísia (1998): Clube dos Ingênuos. Fortaleza. Brasil. Edições Demócrito Rocha.

SÁNCHEZ PIÑA, Zaira (1999): La figura del defensor del lector en el diario colombiano El tiempo y el diario venezolano El Nacional. Caracas. Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.

SANTA MARÍA, José Luis (2005): “El defensor del lector: ¿Un paso adelante en la ruta de la transparencia informativa?”. Cuadernos de Información N° 18. Facultad de Comunicaciones. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. En: http://fcom.altavoz.net/p4_fcom/site/artic/20051209/pags/20051209090606.html (Consulta: 2009, Diciembre).

SANTOS, Mario Vítor (2009, Febrero 17): “Despedida”. Ombudsman. IG Brasil. En: http://colunistas.ig.com.br/ombudsman/ (Consulta: 2009, Febrero).

ZULUAGA SALAZAR, Víctor (2009, Abril 13): “Aumentan los comentarios enviados por los lectores”. Defensor del lector. Diario El Colombiano. Medellín. Colombia. En: http://www.elcolombiano.com/ (Consulta: 2009, Abril).

ZULUAGA SALAZAR, Víctor (2008, Enero 7): “Una mirada al inicio del año 2008”. Defensor del lector. Diario El Colombiano. Medellín. Colombia. En: http://www.elcolombiano.com/ (Consulta: 2008, Enero)

____________________________

ANEXO

Los principales casos por país, sus años de surgimiento y los nombres de quienes ocuparon los cargos se detallan a continuación. Aquellos medios que se encuentran subrayados conservaban sus Defensorías en funciones a inicios de 2010: Los datos surgen de fuentes documentales y de los testimonios de los Defensores en cada país consultados por Pauwels (2010). En esa Tesis, realizada para la Maestría en Periodismo de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, también se explica detalladamente la historia y las características de cada uno de los casos.

BRASIL:

Folha –diario- (1989): Caio Tulio Costa, Mario Vitor Santos, Junia Nogueira de Sá, Marcelo Leite, João Batista Natalí, Renata Lo Prete, Bernardo Ajzenberg, Marcelo Beraba, Mário Magalhães, Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva y Suzana Singer.

O Povo –diario- (1994): Adísia Sá, Márcia Gurgel, Lira Neto, Gibson Antunes, Débora Cronemberger, Regina Ribeiro, Guálter George, Plínio Bortolotti, Paulo Verlaine, Rita Faheina y Paulo Rogério.

TV Cultura –televisión- (2004): Osvaldo Martins y Ernesto Rodrigues.

Radiobrás:.-radio y televisión- (2004): Emília Magalhães y Paulo Machado.

EBC (Empresa Brasil de Comunicación) –radio, televisión y agencia de noticias- (2007): Laurindo Leal Filho (Ouvidor General), Paulo Machado (Agencia Brasil), Maria Luiza Franco Busse (TV Brasil) y Fernando Oliveira Paulino (radio)

IG –Internet- (2007): Mario Vitor Santos.

UOL Brasil –Internet- (2007): Tereza Rangel y Mara Gama.

Otros casos: consultar el artículo de Faria Medes (2003)

COLOMBIA:

EntreVista –periódico, Universidad de Antioquia- (1990): Juan José García Posada.

El Tiempo –diario- (1992): Felipe Zuleta, Nohra Sanín, Leopoldo Villar, Javier Darío Restrepo, Germán Rey, Patricia Lara, Cecilia Orozco y Clara Mendoza.

Vanguardia Liberal –diario- (1992): Sonia Díaz Mantilla.

El Espectador –diario- (1998): Manuel José Cepeda y Juan Manuel Charry.

El Colombiano –diario- (1999): Jesús Vallejo Mejía, Javier Darío Restrepo, Juan Luis Mejía, Juan José García Posada y Víctor León Zuluaga.

Caracol –televisión- (1997): Bernardo Hoyos y Amparo Pérez.

RCN –televisión- (1997): Julio Nieto Bernal y Consuelo Cepeda

Teleantioquía –televisión- (2001): cuenta con un Comité integrado por cinco miembros procedentes de distintas disciplinas.

Defensorías del Televidente desde 2007 en: Telecafé (Joana Trujillo), Telecaribe (Iván Barrios), Telepacífico (José Arizmendi), Canal Uno (Patricia Gómez), CityTV (Paula Arenas), Canal Capital (María Teresa Herrán, Germán Yances y Judith Sarmiento) y Canal 13 (Alejandro Rodríguez).

BOLIVIA:

La Razón –diario- (1990): José Gramunt de Moragas.

Grupo de Prensa Líder –para sus ocho diarios-: El Deber, El Norte, La Prensa, Los Tiempos, Correo del Sur, El Potosí, Nuevo Sur y El Alteño- (2003): Luis Ramiro Beltrán. Finalizada su gestión solo el diario El Deber continuó con la experiencia, primero a cargo de Martha Paz y luego de Juan Javier Zeballos Gutiérrez

CHILE:

La Época –diario- (1991). Guillermo Blanco

El Periodista –revista- (2003). Ernesto Carmona

Radio Universidad de Chile –radio- (2006). Ingrid Saavedra

ARGENTINA:

La Maga –revista- (1992): Carlos Abrevaya y Adriana Lazzeretti.

Luna –revista- (1997). Cecilia Absatz y Clara Fontana

Perfil –diario- (En 1998: Abel González. En 2005: Nelson Castro. En 2007: Andrew Graham-Yooll)

Radio de la Ciudad –radio- (2004): Guillermo Jelen.

El Tábano –revista- (2003): Daniel Luján.

Línea Capital –diario- (2007): Rubén Zamboni.

MEXICO:

Uno más uno – diario- (1992): Algunos investigadores mexicanos citan a este diario como el primero en tener Defensor, en cambio otros adjudican tal mérito a El Economista.

El Economista –diario- (1993): Alejandro Avilés.

Público –diario- (1997): Francisco Núñez de la Peña, Carlos Enrique Orozco Martínez, Mara Robles, Augusto Chacón y Juan Carlos Núñez.

Síntesis –diario- (2004): Lilia Vélez Iglesias

Tabasco Hoy –diario- (2004): Antonio Javier Nucamendi Otero.

Noroeste –diario- (2006): Arturo Santamaría Gómez y José Refugio Haro Haro.

Canal Once –televisión- (2008): Ricardo Raphael de la Madrid y Mauricio Farah Gebara.

Canal 22 –televisión- (2008): Gabriela Warkentin.

Radio Educación –radio- (2008): Ernesto Villanueva.

Sistema de Medios de la Universidad de Guadalajara (2008): Enrique Sánchez Ruiz y José Luis Vázquez Baeza.

IMER (Instituto Mexicano de Radio) –radio- (2009): Felipe López Veneroni.

Otros casos: consultar el artículo de Albarrán de Alba (2002).

PARAGUAY:

Hoy –diario- (1993): José Luis Simón

ECUADOR:

Hoy –diario- (1994): Juan Pablo Moncagatta, Felipe Burbano de Lara, Diego Araujo, José Lasso, Omar Ospina, Carlos Jijón y Ana Karina López.

Ecuavisa –televisión- (2008): César Ricaurte

PUERTO RICO:

El Nuevo Día –diario- (1997): Florilda “Nanny” Torres

VENEZUELA:

El Nacional –diario- (1998): Elías Santana. Alba Sánchez, Lucio Segovia y Ronald Nava.

Últimas Noticias –diario- (2004): Sebastián de la Nuez, Miriam Colmenares y Jesús Cova.

PANAMÁ:

La Prensa –diario- (2001): Herasto Reyes, Mileika Bernal, Marianella Ferrer y Yasmina Reyes.

Link to English translation

The Netherlands Media Ombudsman Foundation, which is dedicated to the self-regulation of journalism in Dutch-speaking regions, in collaboration with the Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Journalism in Tilburg, has conducted a study into the performance of ombudsmen in the news media.

The study is intended to provide professional journalists with more insight into the phenomenon of the news ombudsman as a self-regulation instrument.

The experiences gained thus far with regard to the performance of ombudsmen in news media have demonstrated that the phenomenon of news ombudsman can be an instrument in the self-regulation of journalism. Our frame of reference for this study is the ideal image of a news ombudsman, viz. a fully independent ombudsman who deals with complaints from news consumers in an efficient and adequate manner, who publicly and critically assesses the quality and presentation of journalistic products generated by the medium for which he works, and who places his assessment in the light of relevant issues related to journalistic ethics.

In this study we aim to answer several questions: what types of ombudsman can be distinguished, in the Netherlands and at the global level; what are the similarities and differences; what types of media employ news ombudsmen (daily newspapers, broadcasting companies, digital media); and do news ombudsmen actually contribute to the quality of journalistic products?

In order to gain a picture of the role played by a news ombudsman we have asked ombudsmen across the globe to fill in a survey. In this survey we presented the following questions: what are the tasks and authorities of a news ombudsman; who took the initiative in appointing him; what is his background; how independent is he; does he operate on the basis of his own statute and, if so, what does this statute entail; to whom is he accountable; does he have his own column (for example, weekly) and does he write it in accordance with his own views or is it reviewed beforehand by the editor-in-chief or the management?

We consider that we have made a reasonable case for arguing that, despite the trends outlined, there are amply sufficient points of departure to conclude that the news ombudsman contributes to fostering journalistic quality. Once journalists are aware that some one is monitoring their work every day, critically and publicly (through his column) and that complaints from news consumers about the journalistic product are taken seriously, this will decidedly generate a quality impulse.

To news media that wish to expand their credibility with the public and reinforce their journalistic quality, the ombudsman is one of the most pre-eminent instruments. It seems likely that media will gain in reliability and solidity if the journalistic policy process were made accessible to the public.

A shift, if any, in the position of news ombudsman, viz. from house critic to PR officer or even legal adviser, will not be conducive to journalistic self-regulation. The self-regulating effect of an ombudsman primarily encompasses the publishing of substantiated judgements on journalistic processes and products.

We take a positive view of blogs and sites set up to improve contacts between the media and news consumers, but in our opinion, such options cannot be a substitute for the ombudsman instrument. Accountability and self-regulation are promoted by the media’s public analysis and correction of mistakes. In this respect, ombudsmen and readers’ editors can increase the transparency and accountability of media organisations.

Determining the degree of independence of a news ombudsman and its effect on his position is difficult, even in cases in which that independence has been laid down in an individual statute. Many ombudsmen, also those with their own statutes, indicate that they are accountable to the general editors or the management. This study seems to justify the impression that truly independent ombudsmen, critically assessing their media’s own journalistic product, represent a small minority.

The recent sharp fall in the number of news ombudsmen, especially in the United States, is at odds with the trend that modern society is calling on the media to give more account and exercise more openness regarding their journalistic policy process. This is an alarming discovery, considering the fact that in his plans for the new press policy Minister Plasterk expresses his satisfaction about the appointment of ombudsmen or readers’ editors by news media (cf. http://www.minocw.nl/docu men ten/67791.pdf). Firstly, we do not share his satisfaction at the number of ombudsmen and readers’ editors. Secondly, we believe that the minister ignores the fundamental difference between independent ombudsmen/readers’ editors and their colleagues, who lack an independent status at their medium.

Recommendations

Ideally, the ombudsman is a journalist or media expert assessing the journalistic product on a full-time basis, as a house critic, rather than operating as a PR officer in order to try and earn the commitment of the public.

In order to remove the existing skepticism in society, a news ombudsman needs to be able to operate fully independently. He has no connections with the editors and does not participate in editorial consultations. He tests the journalistic products against prevailing ethical standards and shares his analyses and unfettered judgement with the public.

When journalistic processes and products are tested against ethical standards, these standards must be open and accessible to the public, for example, through the media’s web site. The ombudsman must specify such standards in his publications. The ombudsman’s own methods must also be transparent; his statute must be public.

Another essential requirement is that the ombudsman or readers’ editor must be easy to reach and approach. The newspaper or broadcasting company must publish his e-mail address, telephone number and office hours in a clearly visible manner in the colophon and/or on its home page.

In order to promote worldwide uniformity in the role of news ombudsmen, the ethical code (Mission Statement) of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) is recommended as the basis for his operations. It should be noted in this respect that the uniqueness of each news medium, manifested in medium type and target group, can lead to certain adjustments and supplements to such a standard code.

Should an ombudsman preferably be some one from the editorial ranks? Or is an external ombudsman given preference? Some one who used to be a (general) editor has the advantage of being familiar with the editorial culture. An outsider can adopt a fully independent position, especially when appointed for a limited period of time. That is why a structure involving an editor-in-chief publishing a letter or responding to questions once a week is not ideal. Although his recommendations carry more weight in terms of policy than those of an ombudsman or readers’ editor, there is no independent and critical review.

Especially this independence is essential. In addition, the candidate must be someone who is well acquainted with journalistic practices and the prevailing customs and standards. Someone who enjoys the confidence of the editors and the general editors. In order to be credible in the eyes of the readers or viewers, he will need to adopt a critical attitude towards the editors. This implies that he will continually test the journalistic processes and products against the journalistic and ethical principles and standards of the medium concerned.

The position of a news ombudsman is still delicate, particularly among fellow journalists at the ombudsman’s own medium, who feel uncomfortable with a professional critic (“the copy police”) of their product. Full independence of a news ombudsman can aid in internal acceptance.

The public needs to have low-threshold access to some one who takes their comments and complaints seriously and who challenges the editors to give chapter and verse. This will contribute greatly to the transparency of journalism and self-regulation in the media sector.

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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 in the world: the Yomiuri Shimbum (10 million copies a day).

In Brazil, it is difficult to know how many newspapers have an ombudsman. In 1995, at least eight newspapers had one: Folha de S. Paulo, Folha da Tarde (SP), O Dia (RJ), AN Capital (SC), O Povo (CE), Correio da Para¡ba (PB), Di rio do Povo (Campinas- SP) e Rumos (CE), the lather a monthly publication.

In spite of that, at least two of these a newspapers put an end to the function: Folha da Tarde (in 1996) and AN Capital (in August 1997, not waiting even for the end of the commission of the ombudsman). The only Brazilian publications affiliated to the ONO(Organization of News Ombudsmen) and to the ABO (Associa‡ao Brasileira de Ouvidores) are Folha de S. Paulo e O Povo (CE).

We have also two Brazilian Broadcasting systems with ombudsmen: Radio Bandeirantes( SP) and O Povo/CBN-OM (CE). Up to the moment, in the USA you have one ombudsman in a TV station, Paul Giacobbe, in Warwick, CT (Connecticut); and in Canada, two: both in the CBC Network, one for the French and another for the English transmissions.

Proportionally, there are few means of communication with ombudsmen (except in Japan). This brings a question about the reason for the majority of the media being afraid of implementing the function.

History

The ombudsman appears officially in 1809, in Sweden, with the status of minister and the function of controlling the public power and listening to the appeals of the citizens against government organs. Later, the ombudsmen were adopted in other countries, mainly the Scandinavians ombudsmen were created against ethnical discriminations, they have the Parliament Ombudsmen, that of the consumers, etc.

Before the Swedish experience (in the XIX century), there had been “listeners”. We know that in ancient Rome the Tribune of the Pleb listened to the complaints of the citizens. In Colonial Brazil, the bishops had the function of “Listeners of the Crown”, which gave birth to the popular expression (in Brazil): “Complain to the bishop”.

The first press ombudsman appears in the U.S.A. in july 1967, with the function of listening to the complaints of the readers of the Louisville Courier Journal and of the Louisville Times, both in Louisville, Kentucky. In spite of that, the first ombudsman with a public column has been Richard Harwood, in the Washington Post, in 1970.

The American pioneerism in the creation of the press ombudsman in questioned by the Japanese. The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbum guarantees that, in 1938, it had already a professional with a function similar to that of the ombudsman.

In Brazil, the first newspaper to adopt ombudsmen has been the “Folha de S. Paulo”, that in 1989, chose Caio T£lio Costa to occupy the function. Other newspapers could have tried to create it first. According to Caio T£lio, the first publication that tried to implement the function was the Jornal do Brasil, in 1982, and didn’t succeed because various journalists invited to occupy the function refused it.

According to him, the main competition of the Folha, O Estado de S. Paulo tried to create the function. Directors and journalists of the Estado discussed the subject with specialists of the Navarra University and everything was being prepared for the implementation of the project, until finally in the middle of 1990, this project was abandoned since the Folha de S. Paulo had created the office first.

Folha’s experience was pioneer not only in relation to the press, but also in relation to any kind of institution. After the attitude of the Folha, many enterprises, public organs and even county administrations adopted ombudsmen.

The word “ombudsman”

The word “ombudsman” is of Swedish origin. It is the fusion of the word ombud (representative) and man (man). Caio T£lio translated the word as “the one that represents”, but its real meaning is “person with a delegation”. When the function was created in 1809, it received the denomination of “Justitieombudsman” (justice ombudsman).

By the word’s origin, it would be wrong to form its plural as “ombudsmen”, since it isn’t an English word. The correct form would be “ombudsm„n”. Its feminine form would be “ombudskvinna”, that would be “ombudskvinnor” in the plural form. “Ombudsmen” is used as it is the case in this article. The Folha de S. Paulo makes use of the word “ombudsman” when the function is occupied by a woman.

The work

Most of the times, the ombudsman has three functions: listening to the readers, writing a daily a bulletin criticizing the paper (which circulates internally among the journalists) and preparing a weekly column to be published. Some ombudsmen don’t have columns for public criticism, as is the case of “O Dia”. In these cases, the work of the ombudsman is very similar to that of a complaints department and loses its function, which is to stimulate the reflection main and the debate about the process of journalistic production.

To make their work, the ombudsmen need independence in relation to the direction of the paper. Because of that, some guaranties are given to this professional, as stability during his mandate (in the Folha it is of a year, which can be prorogated for two years more).

The ombudsman’s room far from the editorship, to avoid his involvement with the orientation of the publication. In the case of the Folha, the ombudsman has an office in a building near by.

The columns

The columns of ombudsman have characteristics that make them different from other sections of the paper. As to their contents, questions are presented that will help the reader very much in his critical point of view in relation to the means of communication. Many columns of ombudsmen in the Folha de S. Paulo have been read, and we verified that they bring basically:

1. Comparisons among newspapers (mainly between O Estado de S. Paulo and the Folha);
2. Critics concerning the covering of certain subjects, news, comments, headlines, photos, etc;
3. Discussions about ethic questions of the paper and those of the media;
4. Self-criticism of the ombudsman;
5. Consideration of themes connected to journalism;
6. Presentation of reader’s demands (some times reproducing the letters);
7. Critics to problems of the paper’s circulation, care of the subscribers, among other operational questions of the paper;
8. Disputes of the ombudsman with other press professionals;
9. Praises to the Folha and to other media vehicles;
10. Presentation of the news process, showing how they are obtained and edited;
11. Presentation of conflicts among Folha’s professionals and professionals of other media vehicles;
12. Report of the attendance to the readers;
13. Discussion about grammatical questions, mainly these concerning orthography;
14. Interviews with important professionals of the Folha.

The majority of these items refer the ombudsman’s to work as a critic, which corroborates the importance given by the ombudsman to his task of these aspects, the one that appears in the columns is number two (“critics concerning the covering of certain subjects”).

These contents show the importance of the ombudsman’s work. For instance, through item tem (presentation of the news process) the reader may understand that journalistic work isn’t totally objective.

In a column published in July 10, 1990, the Folha’s ombudsman mentioned a mistake concerning information vehiculated by the paper, that could be related to the process of inquiry of the fact. According to the ombudsman, the ex-president Collor talked by radio to the navigator Almir Klink, who was in Antartica. But owing to a technical problem, the navigator had no means of answering. Later, the press department of the Presidency distributed the conversation(inexistent), having transcripted the conversation between the president and the navigator. All newspapers, except O Estado de S. Paulo believed(and published) this lie.

Some months before, in January 28, 1990, the ombudsman had talked about a release by the press of a meeting between President Collor and the economist M rio Henrique Simonsen that never took place. In both these cases, the ombudsman showed how easy it is to create news, and that the reader must question the veracity of the media.

Language

The text of the ombudsman has characteristics that differ from other texts in the newspaper. The journalistic style to which the columns of the ombudsman better adapt themselves is the commentary (they are signed, give emphasis to opinion, have definite periodicity, they analyze up to date subjects). But in spite of that, various peculiarities turn them different from other columns of the paper.

One aspect that is quite peculiar in the ombudsman speech is the constant use of the first and second person’s singular. In the paper, even the opinative texts are almost always written in the third person sing. 50 columns published in the Folha de S. Paulo have been analyzed in relation to their linguistic characteristics.
The columns of ombudsmen have a touch of humor and have a dynamic text (with the constant use of short sentences, puns, etc). In the column of December 12, 1996, for instance, the ombudsman Marcelo Leite talks about the postponement of the transmission of his function to other professional in a quite ironical way: “Freedom has been postponed for three or four weeks”.

But the main characteristic of the ombudsman’s speech is the use of various strategies in the attempt to stimulate the dialogue with the readers. Since he is “the representative of the reader” this couldn’t happen otherwise.

Then, to create a near relationship with the public, the ombudsman calls the reader to a direct dialogue. He uses the word reader with a function similar to that of a vocative. “I call the reader’s attention to…” (FSP, 3-3-1996). Other times the reader is “the main actor”. “The reader has been carried by TV from a world of moral deformity to the immensity of the cosmos” (FSP, 12-8-1996).

Trying to create a relationship of identification with the public, the ombudsman sometimes presents himself as a reader. “As a reader I want to know who is interested in…” (FSP, 5-26-1996).

It’s interesting to notice that he prefers the use of the singular (reader) when referring to the public. Using the singular, it is as if he were speaking to each of us in particular.

Besides the word reader, the ombudsman sometimes made use of the second person singular, a stronger means to create a relation of intimacy with the public. Trying to create an informal relationship with the public, he uses the first person. “When I wrote the column…” (FSP, 12-29-1996). In some situations, the ombudsman presents himself humbly, making clear that his opinions are not unquestionable. “I am not competent and don’t have the courage to interpret…” (FSP, 12-29-1996). This posture makes the readers feel at easy to get touch with him.

With the journalists the ombudsman also has a dialogue. But, different from that which takes place with the readers, the interlocutor with press professionals is conflictive. The “reader’s representative describes the journalists as professionals without ethics and incompetents. In the columns analyzed they are called “na‹ve”, “ignoramus”, “incompetents”, “boring”, “morbid”, “complicated”, caused of not knowing the grammatical rules, “opportunists” and “of lack of respect”, among other things.

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 at the end of a Washington gala dinner last June. His subject was the vexed question of US-Turkish relations and he won the approval of his audience for his assertion that a friendship conducted through the media was bound to go wrong.

The Turkish government’s view that the unravelling of one of the key strategic friendships of the post-War era is a matter of press perception than of substance has not convinced everyone. Turkey and America do not see eye to eye on what is happening in Iraq. However Mr Erdoðan’s less than full respect for the integrity of his country’s media, an attitude repeated on other occasions, has suddenly found a much wider audience.

The weight of anti-US headlines and editorials, stories about the blood lust of American troops in Iraq, even the suggestion that American scientists had caused or refused to issue warnings about the Asian tsunami, led Robert Pollock, editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, to speculate in a signed article that Turkey was not so much Europe’s “sick man” as that continent’s raving loony. He described the press as egging Turkish society on a downward spiral to becoming “small minded, paranoid, and marginal … friendless in America and [pace Ankara's EU aspirations] unwelcome in Europe”.

Others began to ask themselves what exactly it is the Turkish public reads. The Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post were among the many to report the runaway sales of a lurid revenge thriller called Metal Storm in which a Turkish patriot avenges the American invasion of his country by detonating a nuclear device outside the White House. The Financial Times pondered the success of “Mein Kampf” in Ankara bookstores (March 10, 2005).

Throughout the 1990s, the Turkish press was often depicted as competitive and vibrant, despite the attempts by an oppressive state apparatus to prune it back. The implication in the annual reports of organisations concerned with press freedoms like the publishers of Global Journalist, the International Press Institute (IPI) was that if the press did not speak out more openly, it is because it is confronted by an antediluvian statute book and the deep-seated illiberality of the Turkish establishment. These organisations have been slow to take on the proposition that there may be something rotten inside the media itself and the consequences could be equally damaging to Turkish society – if only because it has allowed not simply the Wall Street journal but the government itself to dismiss the country’s media not as a watchdog but as an untamed beast not to be taken seriously. Indeed, I would argue further that a strategy only to criticise the state and not consider the corporate cultures of media organisations themselves has led to an erosion of press freedom and legitimated bad practice.

Of course the Turkish media itself has answered some of the accusations that it behaves irresponsibly. One not altogether satisfactory riposte is that genuine Turkish anxiety over the quagmire on the other side of its border with Iraq has indeed made press and society more receptive to the journalistic equivalent of asymmetric warfare – a barrage of rumour and innuendo against which the only defence is integrity and vigilance, habits which not all news outlets in Turkey have bothered to cultivate. Yet another reply is that the worst excesses of vitriol and slander are in fringe publications of limited circulation, and that it is wrong to depict them as having penetrated the mainstream. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) whose website monitors among other things anti-semitism often quotes papers like Yenicað or Orta Dogu, publications which most Turks have never even seen, let alone read. Even those papers with slightly higher circulation which attempt to curry government favour, like Yeni Þafak, have only limited influence over policy makers. One of the columnists whom MEMRI quotes for his crypto-Nazi stance in the religious reactionary Vakýt newspaper is Hüseyin Üzmez, an unreconstructed ultra-nationalist infamous for the attempted assassination of the liberal newspaper editor Ahmet Emin Yalman back in 1952!

This leads to a third line of defence that the real novelty is not the scattering of wild, politically unreconstructed views throughout the Turkish media, but the West’s decision to pay attention to them. Turks themselves, like readers of the US supermarket scandal sheets have long acquired of reading their newspapers with a pinch of salt. Much of the current criticism of the Turkish press originates in the very American neo-conservative tradition which is fundamentally peeved by Turkey’s refusal to see events in Iraq through its end of the binoculars. This school is certainly more sensitive to government deputies’ and ministers’ failure to distance themselves from attitudes which are anti-semitic or otherwise distasteful.

The outgoing American ambassador to Turkey famously organised a public seminar to refute charges that his government was responsible for the tsunami. And yet the British media continuously mocks the Bush administration’s own medieval scientists who deny the existence of global warming or see life inviable in a stem cell embryo. Curiously enough the Turkish state, too, took a dim view of the fringe sectarian paper Yeni Asya when in 1999 it described the horrendous earthquake in Western Turkey as divine retribution against the country’s secular establishment. The subsequent trial of the editor and a journalist of that paper was a cause celebre among international organisations concerned with freedom of expression and the subject of a stiff letter of protest from the director of the IPI to the then Turkish prime minister (19 June, 2001).

That applause for the Tayyip Erdoðan’s Washington speech still suggests, however, that most Turks suspect that the problem is not superficial and lies within the way the press itself is a political actor, and the way it uses the power it accumulates irresponsibly or in a way motivated by self-interest, with or without the complicity of the state.

This point was reiterated at a recent lunch with foreign correspondents where the head of the country’s premier industrial corporation, Mustafa Koç, complained of the “harm” the nation’s press had done in helping to precipitate the economic crisis of 2001. Many media groups used their influence to secure bank licences and engage in a financial world in which they were ill-equipped to operate. In several instances banks owned by groups with media interests operated fraudulently. The forced closure of some 20 public and private banks cost the Turkish tax payer $46 billion of private banking debt (then over 33 percent of GNP) through the government’s insurance deposit scheme.

One of the most notorious examples was the $6 billion collapse of Imar Bank controlled by the Uzan family, a group whose interests included Turkey’s first private television station, Star, as well as a newspaper of the same name. It used these outlets to pursue an unabashed war against the group’s business opponents and set a tone for yellow journalism throughout the media during the 1990s. One of Star’s most famous vendettas was against the head of the Turkish Capital Market Board who had accused the Uzan parent company of illegally stripping the assets of CEAÞ, a major hydro-electric supplier which the Uzan’s had purchased from the state. Those holding shares in the publicly listed CEAÞ, including Mark Mobius’ Templeton Securities, found the value of their shares eroded and the incident eroded foreign confidence in the emerging Istanbul Stock Exchange.

The Uzan media latterly promoted the political fortunes of Cem Uzan, one of the family members. Cem Uzan’s “Youth Party” ran on an ultra-nationalist, anti-Europe, and anti-America ticket- a stance more than justified by the conviction of his family in a New York court for fraud with a judgement to repay $2.6 to the Motorola Corporation and a further $1.7 billion to the mobile phone manufacturer Nokia. When Imar Bank collapsed the Star media group was seized by the government bank regulators to repay debts some of which were also fraudulently incurred, including the resale of government securities which the bank had neglected to purchase in the first place.

Yet while outside monitoring agencies rightly criticised the restriction which the Turkish government were using to confine the press they were found no voice to criticise the e corporate culture of Turkish news organisations themselves. Admittedly this is no easy task as two further examples illustrate.

The first concerns the dismissal of a columnist of the pro-government Yeni Þafak, a paper which is often cited as the most noxious in its wild accounts of US atrocities in Iraq. Husnu Mahalli, a Syrian national, was not a reporter but a columnist for the paper who expressed views common in the Arab world that the “irrationality” of terrorist violence has to be seen in the context of the abuse suffered by the civilian populations in Palestine, Fallujah and elsewhere. He was virulently opposed to Israel and infamous for having appeared to defend (September 5, 2004) the deadly Chechen raid on a school in Beslan by citing years of Russian oppression. He is quoted by the MEMRI website with an article its editors describe as detailing “America’s purported murderous activities [in Iraq] as emanating from a genetically ingrained tendency to murder. “Members of the prime minister’s press team deny they put pressure on Yeni Þafak to drop Dr Mahalli from its staff, the Turkish press community has little doubt that he was sacrificed to save the government from embarrassment. If this assumption is true then it would be a counter-intuitive example of an Islamic-leaning paper coming under pressure from a government it supports to adopt a more pro-American line.

The second example is more complex. On June 23, 2004 Milliyet, an aggressively secular and left of centre paper, published the first of a three part series by its Ankara bureau chief. In bold headlines above the fold it announced that it had exclusive access to the minutes of a secret meeting in Washington to discuss probable Turkish reaction to the hypothetical Iraqi Kurdish seizure of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Such a story goes to the heart of Turkish concerns that the only tangible result to from the American invasion on the other side of its border with Iraq will be an independent Iraqi Kurdish state. This, Turks fear, will aggravate discontent among their own Kurdish population and point to a steady increasing level in terrorist violence by Kurdish separatists inside Turkey itself. Thus the story could be predicted to stimulate anti-American sentiment.

The problem is that many of the people reported to be at the State Department meeting and whose views were quoted in detail were not even in America at the time. Professor Henri Barkey, a professor at Lehigh University, who was in London, expressed outrage not just that he was reported to have attended a non-existent meeting, but that even the photo purporting to be of him on Milliyet’s front page was of someone entirely different. According to a press release issued by the US embassy (June 25, 2004) in Ankara “The alleged quotes by these experts that have appeared in the Turkish press are fabrications… Reports in the Turkish press alleging that such a meeting took place are false.”

Fortunately Milliyet had an ombudsman, the first in Turkey, a distinguished journalist who was elected president of the international Organisation of News Ombudsmen. It therefore had someone responsible to adjudicate the controversy. The ombudsman, Yavuz Baydar, came to the conclusion that his newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief had been hoodwinked by a Turkish academic based at Utah University, who had claimed to be at the meeting and who was acting from motives which were unclear. Baydar saw no option but to print a retraction.

This he did, against the wishes of the proprietor of his newspaper and at great personal cost. Mr Baydar was dismissed from his job as ombudsman and also removed from his position as the host of a nightly current affairs programme broadcast by CNN-Turk – a 24 hours news television station which exists as a joint venture between DYH and AOL Time Warner. Although not fired entirely, Baydar took these actions as a form of constructive dismissal and eventually found a job as ombudsman on another newspaper after waiting to receive his severance pay. He set out these events in a letter of complaint he sent to the publication committee of the Dogan Yayin Holding (DYH) which oversees a code of ethics for the group’s many publications. He also requested that the IPI issue a protest on his behalf as did other IPI members in Turkey. The new president of the ONO, Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman for National Public Radio in America, similarly contacted the IPI as well as Milliyet.

Milliyet defended both its decision to remove Baydar and to print the story of the alleged State Department meeting. A letter from the paper’s then editor-in-chief Mehmet Yilmaz to a Turkish columnist and IPI member Fehmi Koru of Yeni Þafak newspaper, the lone journalist to cover dismissal, said that Baydar’s complaints were motivated by bad faith after he had decided to join a rival newspaper. The board of the International Press Institute was by chance meeting in Istanbul in November 2004 at the invitation of executive board member Vuslat Dogan Sabanci, daughter of the DYH chairman Aydin Dogan, and chief executive of a Milliyet’s sister newspaper Hurriyet. Following this meeting, Yilmaz reported to Mr Koru that “The IPI saw no need to accede to Mr Baydar’s request to put the matter on board’s agenda.”

Indeed in a letter to Baydar dated 10 January, 2005, the Austria-based IPI director Johann Fritz said that the IPI did consider the issue but came to no conclusion. “The Vienna staff cannot be expected to play the investigative detective,” he wrote. He disregarded Baydar’s central complaint that the IPI had an obligation to uncover the reasons why a newspaper would punish its own ombudsman for behaving honourably. Instead Mr Fritz described the issue as a labour dispute in which the IPI had no authority to become involved. Previously he had pleaded “pressures of time” for his refusal to meet with Mr Baydar during his visit for the board meeting in Turkey.

On the other hand, Mr Fritz on behalf of the IPI did find time to become involved in another labour dispute. He dispatched a stern letter to the Turkish prime minister (8 February, 2005) in which he protested the failure of the state regulator-appointed board of Star media group to re-instate nearly 700 workers from the Uzan era. That letter also described the closure of Imar Bank and the government take over of the CEAÞ electricity plant (presumably because of the Uzan’s group’s extensive media interests) actions (which) demonstrate a clear and open policy of repression and censorship against the free press in Turkey.”

Thus we have an example of the IPI failing to support a journalist in his lonely mission to write the truth, yet happy to criticise a government for failing to accept a situation whereby a business dynasty defrauds Turkish taxpayers and foreign shareholders on a massive scale and which moreover uses the money so extorted to finance a media group which supports the extremist and isolationist political ambitions of its proprietor.

So yes, the Turkish press is in need of radical reform and yes, the Turkish government frequently deserves criticism. The problem is finding someone to cast the first stone.

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 unfamiliar, whatever the position is called, the role of an ombudsman is essentially the same: to deal fairly and openly with public complaints to a news organization. An ombudsman is the in-house critic who is independent of management. His or her findings are always made public. Usually the position is for a limited term and many news organizations make it a condition of employment that the ombudsman may not be rehired to another position in order to guarantee the ombudsman’s independence and credibility.

But with the financial crisis of the past year, ombudsmen have been considered a luxury that struggling media organizations can ill afford. In the United States, 14 ombuds position have been abolished in the last year. In Canada, six positions have been axed, leaving only the Toronto Star and CBC/SRC with staff ombuds.

Yet surveys conducted by news councils and the ONO have shown that a news organization with an ombuds have more credibility than those that don’t. A similar conclusion was reached in a study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). And the Iowa Libel Research Project conducted an analysis of complaints to newspapers over a 15-year period that showed how harried and defensive editors who handled public complaints resulted in more lawsuits compared to an ombudsman who handled the calls.

If that weren’t enough, a study by The Guardian showed that hiring a readers’ editor reduced legal costs to the newspaper by 30%, more than paying for the salary of two people – the readers’ editor and an assistant.

Despite that evidence, newspapers and broadcasters in North America started targeting their ombudsmen even before the recent financial troubles.

According to the Ryerson Review of Journalism in 2006, editors were already casting a gimlet eye on their in-house critic: “The ombudsman’s role ran ‘out of gas,’” says Allan Mayer, editor-in-chief of the Edmonton Journal. ‘We worry about credibility every day,’ says Winnipeg Free Press editor Bob Cox, ‘but we’re not going to appoint one person to fix it. It has to be a part of the newspaper’s culture.’”

Often the reason given for abandoning the position is credited to (or blamed on) the Internet. Some editors think that blogs and media critics can do as good a job of holding a news organization accountable. In some cases, this may be true. But in my experience, accountability requires a systematic approach to complaints, combined with an ability to know the newsroom culture, and then have the capacity to make an independent judgment about a legitimate complaint.

Fortunately, some significant journalistic players in the U.S. continue to buck the trend and maintain the position of public ombudsman. These include the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR, PBS, The New York Times and ABC News.

Even more optimistically, it is overseas where increasing numbers of ombudsmen can be found. Ombudsmen in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and India are being hired. News organizations in Lebanon, Morocco, East Africa and Taiwan, among other countries, have asked ONO to send its members to help establish the position. The need is compelling in these places because ombudsmanship is seen as an essential aspect of independent and self-regulating journalism, and the basis for effective democratic institutions.

The challenge for ONO – a thirty-year old organization – is to renew itself in this rapidly evolving media landscape. ONO needs to continue to support its members who are in-house ombuds and at the same time identify and support the best of those independent and often contrarian media critics who increasingly inhabit the web.

The challenge for all media organizations is to understand the value that an independent public ombudsman can offer by creating a less-defensive atmosphere inside a newsroom and helping the public understand better what constitutes essential and excellent journalism.

Jeffrey Dvorkin’s career in broadcasting includes many years at the CBC, where he was managing editor of radio news among other positions, and at National Public Radio, where he was vice-president of news and information, and later ombudsman. He also served as executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. He is currently the Rogers Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at Ryerson University and executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO).

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 of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONB). “They tend to bristle at the thought of anyone questioning their deathless prose,” ONB Director and Orlando Sentinel Ombudsman Manning Pynn agreed. “Anytime somebody says something harsh about you, you’re going to resent it, and so it is kind of a lonely job in many ways. It’s difficult to do this job without offending people periodically … people who may be your colleagues and friends.”

Sacramento Bee Ombudsman Tony Marcano can relate.

Marcano occupies a second-floor office away from the main newsroom and staff and reports solely to the publisher, Janis Heaphy. By all indications, Marcano has indeed managed to periodically offend reporters and editors at the paper. A short 16 months ago, Marcano gave up a position as assistant metro editor at The New York Times and accepted the ombudsman slot at the Bee. “Tony has a sophisticated sense of media, and his extensive journalism background … has given him the solid foundation and perspective necessary to be an effective ombudsman,” Heaphy told the staff in a memo announcing that Marcano had been hired.

In a Bee article notifying readers of his arrival, Marcano said that he wanted “to lift the veil that pervades the business and shed a little light on how we do things.” It appears Marcano may have shed too much light at times, eventually singeing the egos of co-workers. Marcano explained that when he started the job, he was less than straightforward in his approach–in effect, holding back for fear of offending. His early columns, he said, were “wishy-washy” and inconsistent. “I discovered that the reason that they were inconsistent was because I wasn’t taking a firm stance on things, and the only way to make it more effective was to take a firm stance and suffer the consequences of it. And sometimes the consequences were people would get pretty angry.” Offsetting the negative reactions were others who agreed with him. “So, it wasn’t this kind of universal denunciation of what I had said; some people thought it was on the mark, and some people thought I was completely out in left field,” he said.

Marcano recently announced he was leaving the Bee, and the job of ombudsman, to return to the mainstream newsroom as an editor at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The veteran newsman implies he is tired of the outsider role and the tension that comes with it.

“I think I’m more effective in a newsroom than in this role. Or, at least, I’m more comfortable,” he said. His last ombudsman column is scheduled to run on November 7, after which he’ll depart for the East Coast. SN&R wanted to ask Bee reporters how they felt about Marcano’s tenure, but most wouldn’t talk.

One reporter at the Bee who was willing to speak on the record about the ombudsman was Deb Kollars. In his June 20 column this year, Marcano took to task a couple of long-term investigative projects that recently had been published by the daily. One of those projects was Kollars’ four-part series, “A Season of Sorrow,” about the Grant High School cheerleading squad and how it coped with the death of one of its members. Marcano opined that the purpose of the story was unclear. “Was it an illustration of how teenagers cope with tragedy? How schools can muster limited resources to help students come together in adverse circumstances?” he asked. “The newspaper needs to explain, in no uncertain terms, how any series is relevant to its readers’ lives, or what new information or lessons the series might provide. No reader should take it on faith that a series is worth reading just because the Bee spends weeks or months producing it and gives it a lot of space,” he wrote.

Marcano’s remarks hit a nerve with Kollars, a 20-year journalism veteran who had indeed spent months–three, to be exact–of work on the project. Kollars said she was confident the series was worth reading, and she cited reader response as proof. “I had hundreds and hundreds of readers who wrote and contacted me and understood exactly the point of that series [and] took away lots of riches,” she said. Exacerbating the friction with the ombudsman, she explained, was that Marcano had never talked to her before writing his cutting analysis. “I know if I were writing a piece about someone else’s work, particularly if it was critical, I would make it a point to talk to them. That’s just the kind of person I am,” she said. “That was just my one and only experience with our ombudsman, and I wish that there had been more experiences of a different kind,” she said.

Probed for her insights on how her co-workers viewed Marcano, Kollars said that was an “uncomfortable subject” she was reluctant to elaborate on. “What I can tell you is he got mixed reviews inside the newsroom. Some people liked his work and agreed with the issues he raised, and others didn’t care for it,” she said. “Please don’t make it out like I thought he was horrible. … He’s a nice guy, and I wish him well.”

Marcano’s most internally controversial column, reportedly generating a strong reaction all the way up the chain of command to Executive Editor Rick Rodriquez, was published less than two months ago. Marcano revealed to the Bee’s 289,000 readers that the paper had been beaten in its own backyard by the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times in timely coverage of the official report of the California Performance Review panel. “It was a huge scoop for the Times and the Chronicle. … The Bee was left spitting out the competitor’s dust,” Marcano wrote.

Draft copies of the report were obtained by the Chronicle and the Times–but not the Bee–several days before its formal release. Compounding the disgrace, according to Marcano, was that the Bee misled readers by implying that it also had obtained a copy of the report when, in fact, it hadn’t. A source allowed the Bee to look at the report and take notes, but the paper didn’t get its own copy until later. “A more complete description would have noted that the source allowed the Bee to view the report only after it had been leaked to other newspapers. But that would have required the Bee to admit that it had been beaten on what is ostensibly its own turf,” Marcano wrote. Marcano called the Bee’s misleading representation to readers “disingenuous–it unfairly diminished the accomplishments of the other newspapers and surreptitiously raised the Bee to a level of parity.”

A common theme running through several of Marcano’s columns addresses the detrimental effects that inevitably flow from the capital city’s lack of daily-newspaper competition. “Papers in one-newspaper towns tend to go in one of two directions–either they maintain the competitive drive that led to their survival, or they rest on their laurels and become little media outlets for coupons and comic strips,” Marcano wrote in a column last February. This absence of competitive motivation leads to bland, formulaic stories, according to Marcano. “It’s like a menu of broccoli appetizer followed by broccoli salad, broccoli soup and a broccoli entrée. You can cook it different ways, maybe put some cheese on it and say they’re different dishes. But it’s still all broccoli,” he wrote in March.

“In my mind, the Bee is a straightforward newspaper, and my preference is for papers that are a little bit edgier,” he told SN&R. Was the capital’s esteemed weekly an example? “Maybe not that edgy, but yeah,” he said.

The repetitive tediousness, he explained, was pervasive throughout the Bee’s corporate culture. “I don’t really know one way or the other if there’s some sort of concerted or deliberate effort to make the paper sound essentially the same, [and] I don’t know whether people are adapting themselves to what they see is the newspaper style or whether the newspaper demands that style. So, it’s kind of a chicken-and-the-egg thing. I don’t know which came first,” he said.

Marcano also speculates that the Bee’s banality may stem from a legitimate fear of offending readers. “I’ve noticed that there are a lot of Bee readers who want the paper to reflect their sensibilities, more than what’s really going on in the world (to those folks, if it doesn’t meet their worldview, it isn’t news),” he wrote.

Marcano denied one report, attributed to an unnamed source at the Bee, who had claimed Marcano once referred to the paper’s senior editors as “hicks.” He does feel, however, that the paper doesn’t always take a particularly sophisticated tack on how it approaches stories. It’s an abstract concept that’s hard to explain, he said. “[They] don’t really go out on a limb very much … but that’s the paper’s style. And it’s not the way I would do things, but it works for them,” he said.

Veteran Bee federal court reporter Denny Walsh implied that Marcano may have had a point with the alleged hick comment, even if he didn’t make it. “Well we are hicks,” said Walsh. “Sacramento is a hick town.”

This column appeared in November 2004 in Sacramento News & Review.

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 the paper’s coverage of weapons of mass destruction.

Some editors complain Mr. Okrent’s questions are a nuisance, and also complain when he doesn’t seek them out for comment. One reporter encouraged colleagues to ask confrontational questions in a meeting between Mr. Okrent and business-section reporters. “Sometimes you have to treat others like the Russians — you have to demonstrate strength,” says the reporter, David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winner. “I’m just waiting for him to screw up,” Mr. Okrent retorts in an interview. He hastens to say the comment was a joke and that he will avoid tackling any issue concerning Mr. Johnston.

More recently, in an e-mail exchange, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller complained to Mr. Okrent about inquiries he was making for his column yesterday about a case of alleged child abuse. “i’ve got to say: man, you need a vacation,” Mr. Keller wrote. “It’s called reporting, right?” Mr. Okrent replied.

Businesses from Boeing Co. to Arthur Andersen LLP have turned to distinguished outsiders to fix problems wrought by scandals. None of these critics had a regular column with a large and influential readership. Moreover, unlike some newspaper ombudsmen who weigh in on routine questions of style, Mr. Okrent is using his post to question basic tenets of journalism and longstanding Times practices.

This tough stance comes at a time when the press is being regularly assailed by readers, especially online. Journalistic scandals at papers including Gannett Co.’s USA Today, the nation’s largest, have damaged the industry’s credibility among readers, and the media’s reputation among the public is at a low ebb.

When asked to name the public editor’s biggest accomplishment, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of New York Times Co., answers succinctly: “Surviving,” he says. “I did try to warn him.”

‘Very, Very Difficult’
Mr. Okrent, 56 years old, says his first months at the Times were “very, very difficult.” The paper, he says, “has a very strong immune system, and I was a different kind of antigen…. If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better.”

In the spring of last year, the Times discovered that one of its reporters, Mr. Blair, had systematically plagiarized and fabricated portions of articles on topics including the Washington sniper killings. The revelation added to pre-existing discontent about the leadership of Executive Editor Howell Raines, who, along with his No. 2, was forced to step down.

As the scandal unfolded, the Times set up committees to recommend changes. The paper adopted most of them: It appointed editors to oversee standards and staffing; simplified its policy on which reporters received bylines; and made efforts to improve communications among departments.

There was little agreement initially about whether the paper needed an ombudsman after 152 years without one. Some committee members, including Assistant Managing Editor Allan Siegal, thought rigorous editing was a better solution than having an outsider look over reporters’ shoulders. But Mr. Siegal eventually changed his mind and became a strong advocate of an ombudsman. He says he was persuaded, in part, by the comment of one of the three outside members of the committee that the paper needed to become “ostentatiously accountable.”

Regular Forum
Eventually the whole committee agreed. In adopting the committee’s recommendation, the paper gave the public editor a regular forum in its Sunday edition and later reserved a section of its Web site for readers’ questions and additional commentary. The ombudsman was free to correspond with individual readers.

Dozens of newspapers across the U.S. have ombudsmen and some, such as the Washington Post’s Michael Getler, are well-known for pointedly criticizing their employers. Other papers, including The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Co., prefer to keep quality control in the hands of editors.

When the Times announced its intention to hire an ombudsman, dozens of people applied, including journalism-school professors and a judge. Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine nominated Mr. Okrent, a longtime colleague who had been managing editor of Life magazine, editor of new media for Time Inc. and an unsuccessful candidate for the top job at Sports Illustrated.

Mr. Keller, the Times’s executive editor, says he was impressed by Mr. Okrent’s independent-minded coverage of the AOL/Time Warner merger for Time magazine. There, Mr. Okrent called his employer a “dinosaur.” Mr. Okrent also had a Renaissance man’s array of interests from baseball to jazz to architecture.

The Times gave Mr. Okrent an 18-month contract in November, paying in the low six figures, Mr. Okrent says, declining to be more specific. Even if the experiment didn’t work out, the paper was stuck with him. “We have to be careful,” Mr. Keller told Mr. Okrent, both men confirm. “It would be really tough to fire you.”

Mr. Okrent immediately marked himself as an outsider to the newsroom. He asked for, and received, permission to abandon Times style rules — the paper automatically uses ‘Mr.’ and ‘Ms.’ on second references, for example — in order to write in a more conversational manner. Other columnists have similar dispensation. Mr. Okrent told Mr. Sulzberger he wouldn’t recommend the Times fire specific reporters. “That’s not my job, it’s your job,” Mr. Okrent said, both men recall.

On Dec. 7, Mr. Okrent introduced himself to readers. He divulged in detail his sympathies on a range of political and social issues, despite advice to the contrary from Mr. Siegal. He acknowledged that his experience in daily journalism was limited; he was once a “not-very-good campus correspondent for The Times — a little on the lazy side, rarely willing to make the third or fourth phone call to confirm the accuracy of what I’d been told on the first one.”

Within a month, Mr. Okrent ran into resistance. In January, a reader complained about a business-section article about employment in the restaurant industry. Mr. Okrent wrote back, without consulting reporter Sherri Day or anyone else. Mr. Okrent told the reader that the editorial process behind the article, “did not represent the Times at its best,” according to a person who has seen the letter.

At a get-to-know-you session between Mr. Okrent and the business staff on Jan. 7, reporter Mr. Johnston, who had learned about the letter, pounded his fist on the table and accused Mr. Okrent of unfairly damaging Ms. Day’s reputation. Mr. Johnston also encouraged his colleagues to ask tough questions, he recalls. Staffers took their turns lambasting the public editor and Mr. Okrent says he apologized. He describes the meeting as a “lynch mob.”

At about the same time, Mr. Okrent met the paper’s department heads, representing sections such as sports and culture. Editors griped about the time they spent answering Mr. Okrent’s inquiries, people at the meeting recall. At last count, the public editor and his assistant have sent more than 4,600 messages to the staff about various matters.

At the same meeting, Mr. Okrent recalls, some editors complained about the opposite problem. One said he was annoyed after not being consulted about a column that blasted the paper for hyping its opinion-poll data, Mr. Okrent recalls. Mr. Okrent’s response spread around the office: Does a theater critic have to talk to actors when reviewing a play?

On Feb. 19, Tessco Technologies Inc., a wholesaler of telecommunications equipment, announced the name of a new director, Daniel Okrent. The press release mentioned that Mr. Okrent also served on the boards of Zinio Systems Inc., a company that digitized print magazines, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery.

Mr. Johnston, who says he supports the idea of an ombudsman, e-mailed Mr. Okrent: “I know from calls and e-mails I have gotten this morning that [the appointment] has aroused a lot of outrage in the newsroom,” he wrote, according to a copy of the e-mail The Wall Street Journal obtained from a third party. “The last thing we need is another scandal, but now we have one.” Mr. Johnston wanted Mr. Okrent barred from writing about any subject that touched on his board memberships, and took his complaint to Mr. Keller, the executive editor.

Mr. Keller disagreed with the concern raised by the reporter. Mr. Okrent had disclosed his board memberships and his talks with Tessco before accepting the job. But Mr. Okrent was furious. “I don’t need this s-,” he told Mr. Siegal, both men recall. He told Mr. Johnston he would “disclose loudly” should he ever have to write about issues related to those institutions.

Sweeping Statements
Even though Mr. Okrent has labored almost exclusively in the magazine and book worlds, that hasn’t stopped him from making sweeping statements about newspaper practices. “I’m afraid we’ll see reporters stop chasing quotes around the same time dogs stop chasing cars,” Mr. Okrent wrote in one column, taking the paper to task for using quotations out of context.

Soon after, Education Editor Suzanne Daley took Mr. Okrent to task for doing exactly that. In a column, Mr. Okrent quoted Ms. Daley saying she didn’t give a reporter time to check facts “because we’re a newspaper.” In a letter Mr. Okrent posted on his Web page, Ms. Daley wrote that Mr. Okrent had ignored the other reasons she provided, making it look as if she was “endorsing slipshod journalism.”

At the time, Ms. Daley told Mr. Okrent she wouldn’t answer any more of his questions, they both recall. “I think he suffers from not being a newspaperman,” Ms. Daley says in an interview. “Sometimes we don’t seem to be talking the same language.” Ms. Daley now says she would consider having a correspondence with Mr. Okrent via e-mail.

Mr. Okrent said relations with Ms. Daley are improving. “She said ‘hello’ on the elevator,” he says.

The section in which Mr. Okrent’s columns appear, Sunday’s Week in Review, hasn’t been particularly hospitable either. In early April, Mr. Okrent asked the section’s editor, Katherine Roberts, for a response to reader queries about the difference between Week in Review articles and regular news pieces. Ms. Roberts says she initially ignored Mr. Okrent’s e-mails. When she did reply, Mr. Okrent thought the answer incomplete.

Ms. Roberts says she felt Mr. Okrent could have found the answer by simply reading the section. “Did I drop the ball and not give him what he wanted?” she asks. “Yes.” She concedes her behavior was “somewhat churlish.”

Ms. Roberts was also peeved over the length of the public editor’s column. Mr. Okrent now prefers to avoid dealing directly with Ms. Roberts, and communicates instead through one of the section’s deputies. Ms. Roberts says she accepts the public editor as a fact of daily life. “Now it’s here, and we live with it,” she says.

In April, Mr. Okrent wrote an unusual column that criticized an article before it had run. A theater buff, Mr. Okrent predicted that the Times would run an unnecessarily prominent account of Broadway’s Tony awards, which he blasted as “artistically meaningless” and “blatantly commercial,” among other things.

After the column ran, Mr. Keller says he called the paper’s culture editors to make sure they were taking Mr. Okrent’s complaints seriously. Two days later, the Times ran a story on the Tonys that included a paragraph echoing Mr. Okrent’s point. It also ran a shorter second article that cast a critical eye on the awards.

But not everyone was happy with the public editor’s commentary. Jodi Kantor, editor of the Sunday Arts and Leisure section, says she objected to Mr. Okrent’s description of prior coverage of the awards as a “panting orgy.” Asked whether the Tonys column affected the paper’s coverage, Steven Erlanger, then the paper’s culture editor, says, “yes, of course it did, but I wouldn’t exaggerate it.” (Mr. Erlanger is now the paper’s Jerusalem bureau chief.)

On one occasion, the Times appeared to be scrambling to stay ahead of Mr. Okrent. In April, the public editor told Mr. Keller he planned to investigate long-standing criticisms about the paper’s coverage of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, in particular the notion that the Times didn’t challenge aggressively enough the government’s line. Mr. Keller told him the paper was already planning its own examination of the matter. An article by editors detailing a number of lapses ran a few days before Mr. Okrent’s piece.

Mr. Keller says the editors’ article had been in the works weeks before he learned of Mr. Okrent’s plans. But he says he was glad the Times’s mea culpa “appeared before we were lashed by the ombudsman, rather than after.” As a result, Mr. Okrent’s widely anticipated column was anticlimactic, Mr. Okrent says.

Last week, Mr. Okrent and Mr. Keller sparred over a column examining whether the Times erred in publishing an article about alleged sexual abuse committed by Tony Hendra, author of a best-selling memoir. Mr. Hendra denied the accusation to the Times and hasn’t been charged with a crime. Before Mr. Okrent finished the column, which concluded that the Times shouldn’t have run the story, Mr. Keller e-mailed to say he’d been briefed on Mr. Okrent’s interviews with the responsible editor. “and I’ve got to say: man, you need a vacation,” Mr. Keller wrote, defending the paper’s decision.

Mr. Okrent agreed he needed a vacation, and suggested Mr. Keller take one, too. Mr. Okrent added in the e-mail that he hadn’t made up his mind. “Sometimes, a question is just a question,” he wrote. “It’s called reporting, right.”

“sometimes reporting looks (from the other end) like a campaign,” Mr. Keller wrote back.

Mr. Keller says he finds Mr. Okrent’s work valuable, despite occasional disagreements. In wrestling with complicated questions about reporting ethics, Mr. Okrent, “not only helps educate readers, he also provokes a lot of constructive introspection at the paper,” Mr. Keller says.

Mr. Okrent has prompted some notable changes. In an early column, he chastised the paper for writing articles that contradicted earlier pieces without acknowledging the error. It’s a “squirrelly journalistic dance step,” Mr. Okrent wrote. Now, if new information undermines a previous article, the paper links the accounts in its electronic database, allowing readers to see the difference.

Outside the Times’s Manhattan headquarters, Mr. Okrent is winning praise from some of the paper’s fiercest critics, who feel they now have a friendly ear. Robert Cox, a consultant who runs a political commentary Web site called The National Debate, had waged a year-long campaign seeking a formal corrections policy for op-ed columnists.

Queries from Mr. Okrent, who had breakfast with Mr. Cox, prompted the Times’s editorial-page editor to issue a formal written policy a few days before Mr. Okrent’s column ran, a Times spokeswoman says. The policy wasn’t new, but it hadn’t before been made explicit. The Times said corrections would run at the bottom of contributors’ columns. “As far as I’m concerned, Dan has made a very big difference,” says Mr. Cox.

Mr. Okrent says frictions have eased in recent months and the paper is learning to tolerate his presence. Mr. Sulzberger says he is pleased with the project, which he expects to continue. Mr. Okrent’s “successor is going to have a much easier time,” Mr. Sulzberger says.

Even reporters are becoming accustomed to having an outsider peer over their shoulder. “Lord knows, we get a little puffed up sometimes,” says Gardiner Harris, a reporter for the paper’s business section. “Having someone who can puncture our over-stuffed egos is a really good thing.”

Mr. Okrent’s puncturing days will be over after his term ends. From the beginning, Mr. Okrent said he wasn’t planning on staying more than 18 months. When asked, he is able to pinpoint the exact time remaining on his contract. “It’s like a prisoner’s calendar,” says Mr. Okrent’s wife, Rebecca. “Crossing off the days.”

This column appeared in The Wall Street Journal on July 12, 2004.

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 seen by the paper’s ombudsman, Michael Getler.

Although Getler openly wonders whether he’s changed the paper since he took over the job last November, there is little doubt that his internal memos as well as his challenging Sunday editorial page columns have had a considerable effect on editorial staffers.

“Everybody reads it,” reporter Dana Milbank says of the memo. “It’s all over the newsroom.”

“His memos are a mini-event around here. Everybody’s eager to see who he’s going to take on and who he’s going to praise,’’ adds reporter Paul Farhi. “You don’t want to be on the other side.’’

The memo has attained such a high profile inside the Post that it’s been recognized in the form of the occasional in-house (B)omb memorandum, a witty and withering send-up composed by staffers, at least some of whom have been skewered in the official version. Its pseudonymous author:

Mike will getcha.

Getler’s Sunday column has been no less stimulating. He has addressed readers’ concerns about pieces felt by some to be racist, politically biased or mean-spirited. He has discussed whether the Post is too focused on projects at the expense of news (see “Treasure or Torture?” September) and suggested the paper should have reported in more detail on the accident that led to the death of owner Katharine Graham. On this point, he appeared to disagree with Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.—hardly an uncommon occurrence, according to Downie.

“Mike Getler is doing a terrific job,” assesses Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. “He’s making waves and ticking people off, which is exactly what an aggressive ombudsman should do. I see Getler as the toughest ombudsman in a long time.”

In columns written in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Getler praised the Post and other newspapers for their reporting. But he also raised questions about the uneasy relationship between the media and government over war coverage, and criticized elements of some Post articles.

At a time when the proper role of ombudsmen is being debated (should they be newsroom watchdogs, reader advocates or both?), and when some newspapers have redefined or eliminated the job, as in Los Angeles and St. Louis, respectively, Getler and the Post are clear on the autonomy and mission of the position.

The paper’s tradition of commitment to an ombudsman, reflected in its selection of respected journalists for the role and affirmed in their independence from management, has helped galvanize the importance and legitimacy of the job.

Among those who have served as ombudsman for the Post since the paper created the position in 1970—the second U.S. daily to do so—are such well-known figures as Ben Bagdikian, Richard Harwood, Geneva Overholser and E.R. Shipp. Getler, 65, spent 26 years with the Washington Post as a reporter and editor, and four more as editor of the International Herald Tribune, which the Post co-owns with the New York Times Co. The paper’s 12th ombudsman, he is now retired, self-employed and works under a contract, independent of the paper.

“He is the epitome of just how seriously the Washington Post takes the ombudsman’s role,” says Paul McMasters, the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment ombudsman.

Journalists inside and outside the paper agree that Getler appears to be the right choice for what can be a very dirty job. He is willing to publicly challenge even longtime friends and colleagues if he believes it is for the good of the paper. Not only does he have the professional chops to do so, he has a two-year, extendable contract that guarantees him the autonomy necessary to address the most controversial issues. “What Mike has going for him,’’ says former Post Ombudsman Joann Byrd, “is that he is one of the most highly respected journalists who’ve ever worked in that newsroom. He has the moral authority.’’

Getler’s long and distinguished career at the Post hasn’t kept him from sparring with his friends and former colleagues. Among them is Eugene Robinson, the assistant managing editor who oversees the paper’s revered but frequently boundary-busting Style pages.

Style’s mission, says Robinson, “is to push the envelope in terms of form and content. Not to gratuitously offend, not to be unnecessarily snarky or obnoxious, but to delight and surprise. When you do that, you occasionally exasperate, and that’s OK. That’s what we’re supposed to do. I think we die if we don’t do that.’’

Getler’s view of what should be in the section, Robinson says, “is more conservative. Mike’s an ace traditional newsman. He’s not clueless, but I don’t think he gets the section and what it wants to do, and he doesn’t get the full extent of the section’s relationship with its readers.’’

Getler counters, “I am kind of traditional. I fully understand that newspapers need to grow and evolve, but they need to do it in an acceptable way, in a way readers will accept. That doesn’t include being smartass or smart-alecky or arrogant, or using vulgarity unnecessarily. That is foolish. That is diminishing the newspaper for no good reason.’’

Newspapers, Getler says, “are not like ‘Saturday Night Live.’ People say, ‘Look what’s on television.’ But you can turn off the TV or change the channel. Newspapers come into homes. I think people expect newspapers to be one of those bastions of American culture that maintain standards. If we don’t, if we’re snide or arrogant or insulting, we’re going to pay a price.’’

Robinson says he had two main initial concerns with Getler’s views. He didn’t want his younger staffers to be afraid to try new approaches in their writing and reporting out of concern that they’d be criticized in a memo. And he feared that his old friend would be dismissed by veterans as “the neighborhood scold, complaining in a wild and very predictable way’’ that would make him easy to brush off.

Robinson says he took care of the first issue with constant reassurances to his staff, while Getler has avoided the latter by “picking his shots better.’’

Milbank, a frequent target of the Omb Memo, describes Getler as a “lively and prolific” ombudsman but adds: “The question is, does the criticism become so pervasive about every nook and cranny of the organization that it discourages risk-taking? It could make us more cautious, cautious to the point of boring. It could make our copy read more like the Associated Press.’’

For all his critical observations, Getler still seems to have the respect of staff, even those who’ve become memo material. “I really think he is doing a very good job,’’ says Style columnist Gene Weingarten, who is no slouch when it comes to envelope-pushing. “In my experience, most people feel he’s almost always right, except when he’s talking about them. Then he’s blitheringly wrong.”

Weingarten says Getler has “a swaggering ego. I don’t think it’s self-importance. You need that in an ombudsman. Some of the previous ombudsmen didn’t show that self-confidence.’’

As for his feelings about Getler’s views on Style, Weingarten offers, “I think he’ll be the first to tell you that [features] is not his strong point.’’

Getler is unbowed, in part, perhaps, because “most of the feedback I get is good,’’ and because staffers contribute ideas or raise issues to him.

Yet, he says, “there’s a lot of tension to the job. If you do your job right, you must not pull your punches. You say what you feel is useful and important.

“I don’t ever intend to be mean,’’ he continues. “If you approach the job from the standpoint of constructive criticism, criticism that is not mean, that will be absorbed in an open way, then you have to see it as helping a newspaper.’’

He seems to take the (B)omb memo and other flak in stride. “I think it’s clever,’’ he says of the parody. “I hope I can take criticism. It’s a newsroom, and newsrooms do those things.”

While the (B)omb memo maintains a mostly good-natured tone, it nonetheless scores some hits on the Omb. For example, one Omb Memo noted that a number of librarians among the Post’s readers were upset to read that Wimbledon tennis champion Goran Ivanisevic, upon tearing off his shirt in celebration, “revealed a chest that looked like a librarian’s.’’

The (B)omb, noting that the Omb had spelled ‘shirt’ as ‘short,’ retorted: “Is it possible the Omb meant that the tennis star tore off his ‘shorts’ and revealed a chest that looked like a librarian’s? This would indicate that Ivanisevic is in even worse shape than the article indicated. But if we assume that the Omb meant ‘shirt’ where he wrote ‘short,’ it appears the Omb has come down firmly on the side of buxom librarians. The Bomb can only speculate that this is because the Omb has not yet had his workplace harassment training.’’

Most of the Omb memo deals with weightier, if standard, newspaper issues: Story selection and play; balance, fairness and accuracy in reporting; misspellings and other technical errors; misdirected lead paragraphs; elements of style; and matters of taste. Though the memo doles out compliments as well, the preponderance of items and the amount of space given to criticism dominates.

Some of this may be simply a function of the job, says Byrd, now editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As she points out, readers generally don’t call an ombudsman unless it is to complain.

“You’re evaluating the paper from the point of view of finding flaws or suggesting improvement,’’ she says. “It’s all pretty negative. That’s sort of the downside to it.’’

One of the upsides, Getler says, is “how much interaction I have with reporters, and especially with young staffers who really like the memos. They tell me they learn a lot about the paper and they get a lot of tips about what to avoid and what kind of traps not to fall into. I like that. That’s one of the better rewards of the job.’’

Getler has been equally unafraid to cite flaws in his Sunday column, where he has provided a forum for debate on what turned out to be controversial articles and offered his thoughts on journalistic issues likely less apparent to readers.

Twice, for example, Getler has responded with columns to pieces that readers felt were unfair, even mean, in the physical descriptions of their subjects, South Carolina Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

The story on Thurmond vividly described the 98-year-old politician, noting his blotchy skin, blank stares and shaking hands and legs “flopping around like a puppet’s.’’

“The Thurmond piece was a very well done story in a lot of ways,’’ Getler says. “But the whole top of that story was a description of his physical infirmities and limitations. The idea of the image of somebody’s legs dangling like a puppet’s, to me, and to many, many readers, conveys a sort of meanness, a mocking, even though it’s real. It distracts from a good piece. People were so upset by the way that story began that it lost its journalistic quality. It needlessly alienated many readers.’’ Harris was criticized for the makeup job she displayed in her public appearances: “Her skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls….’’

In both cases, Getler wrote, readers viewed the descriptions as personal assaults. Robinson and Downie defended the stories in the column, but Getler agreed with readers that the articles had gone too far. The Harris piece, Getler wrote, “was a classic example of the arrogance of journalists that undermines people’s confidence in the media.’’

Fashion Editor Robin Givhan, who wrote the Harris story, says she wasn’t angry with Getler, even though “reporters, myself included, can be very thin-skinned about what they write. I was more surprised because [reader reaction] was so far from what I intended.’’ She points out that Harris’ appearance was “of her own making’’ and that it was “troubling’’ given that she had to deliver very serious news in a delicate manner. Givhan says she is accustomed to readers disagreeing with her because her job involves criticism and requires a point of view. Still, when Getler wrote about her, it was somewhat different. “When it comes from someone with the title of ombudsman, there’s immediately a sense of reprimand. It sounds and feels like a paternalistic rap on the knuckles.”

In the end, Givhan is in favor of having an ombudsman. “Even if people don’t feel they take away a journalistic lesson, it’s always good to have someone remind you to be sensitive and aware,” she says. “Not that you’ll change the way you write or report, but you’ll tread cautiously.’’

By contrast, reporter Natalie Hopkinson was greatly concerned when she learned she would be in an ombudsman column because of reader reaction to an Outlook section piece she wrote in June. Hopkinson says she “meant it to be a piece to encourage the black middle class to invest in the inner cities while gentrification is going on.”

One line in the piece states, “We damn sure are not about to let white folks buy up all the property in D.C.’’ Some readers branded the piece racist, flooding message boards with their comments, and Getler told Hopkinson he intended to write about it.

“Wednesday, he e-mailed me, saying he was going to write about me in his column. He said he spoke to the Outlook editor and some other folks, and asked me to address the question of am I a racist. I’m 24, so I was like totally freaking out. If [Getler] supports these people who say I’m a racist, that’s the sort of thing that could brand me forever.’’

Hopkinson and Getler talked, by e-mail and in person, and when the ombudsman’s column came out Sunday, she says, “I was pleasantly surprised. It was fair, and at least he tried to see what I was trying to do. He didn’t respond in a knee-jerk way.’’

Getler wrote that “Hopkinson’s thoughts are revealing and worth knowing,” adding, “I wouldn’t label them racist.” He did write that her views “were presented in inflammatory, in-your-face, racial rhetoric that alienated many readers rather than illuminating a complicated issue of history, place and emotion.’’

“That was a case of a lot of reader response to this article, which was in the commentary section,’’ Getler explains. “It was unusual in the sense that this person was also a staff writer. People took great exception to it. And I took exception to it as well.” The following Sunday, Getler wrote a follow-up, noting that readers had complained to him that racism apparently was acceptable at the Washington Post, so long as it comes from a black writer, and that his initial column smacked of damage control.

Getler responded, “There was a great deal that was offensive and divisive about this article,’’ and called it “journalistically flimsy in addressing a controversial topic.” “Yet,’’ he added, “it was commentary and an authentic expression of the emotions felt by one young, black family, and maybe many others.”

Hopkinson says the second column “took some shots at me. He sort of undermined me. I e-mailed him and told him I was really upset. I tried to explain my position even more. I didn’t appreciate the backtracking, but there are no hard feelings. We wound up leaving it like that.” Hopkinson, too, remains an advocate of an ombudsman. “It just keeps people on their toes a little bit,’’ she says. “Nobody wants to be called out, whether you’re a reporter or editor. He may not have power directly, but he’s still the voice of the Post. If he’d come out and said my article was racist and the Post should not have printed it, that could have stuck with me the rest of my career.

“But it’s not his job to worry about morale. It’s his job to determine if the paper is right or wrong. I don’t expect him to worry about my feelings, but I do expect him to be fair. And overall, I do think he’s fair.’’

Of course, Getler could have avoided pressing such a hot-button issue. Or he could have simply printed the responses of the writer and the story’s editor and avoided the brickbats from inside and outside the newsroom. But that’s not the way he sees it.

In fact, Getler says it’s essential that his own views are presented. “If you’re an ombudsman who only reflects readers’ complaints, reporters will not take you seriously,’’ he says. “But if you can sort out those complaints and bring to them your own understanding of how those stories evolve, and how reporters and editors work and put it in a context, then they do pay attention. Whether it changes anything, I don’t know. I do think they pay more attention if you have this internal understanding you can provide.’’

It has been said that the ombudsman has the loneliest job in the newsroom (that, in fact, was the headline on AJR’s article on the subject in March 1993), so Getler may be quite serious when he says he likes his office near the elevators at the Post because it gives people a chance to say hello as they pass by. “There is some isolation that comes with the job, in the sense that if I write critically, which you have to to be taken seriously in the job,’’ he says, “fewer people sit at the lunch table with me.’’

If this is true, Getler doesn’t seem to mind. Not enough, anyway, to change his approach. “At this stage in my career and life,’’ he says, “I’m willing to accept that because I think it’s an important job.’’ One can understand why upon hearing Getler talk about the ombudsman’s duty, to the American newspaper and to readers. He speaks on the subject with something that would approach messianic fervor, were he inclined to raise his voice.

“I am very devoted to newspapers and their role in American society,’’ he begins. “They are absolutely crucial. To me, it’s imperative that newspapers survive, and that the big metropolitan newspapers, in particular, be absolutely as good as they can because of their central role in the coverage and dissemination of news and analysis and commentary in the country.’’

But to do so, he adds, they must constantly evaluate themselves—how they gather and present the news, whether they are being arrogant or biased or insular. If they become too inwardly focused, he says, “they are in danger of a really serious disconnect with their readership.” Just the kind of thing an ombudsman can help prevent, painful though the cure can be. “Even a first-rate newspaper like the Washington Post has to be challenged,’’ he says. “It has to fix what it’s doing wrong, improve around the edges.’’

Readers do much of the challenging. While some call solely to vent, collectively, they can send a message, says Getler, who tries to absorb “what’s journalistically useful’’ and translate that to the staff accompanied with his own observations. It is, he says, similar to editors filtering through several reporters’ information to determine the real story.

“I don’t think reporters should be unduly concerned about readers,” he adds. “They need to be focused on getting the news and presenting it as thoroughly and as fairly as they can. But I do think it’s important that management have some sense about how their work is perceived by readers and that it understands the often valid points that readers make about how the news is presented.’’

Downie tapped Getler last year as his four-year commitment to the Herald Tribune wound down. Getler says that because of his varied, insider experience, Downie “felt maybe I had a better chance to be listened to. [And] Len probably knew I’d be a tough but fair critic.”

Downie says Getler has “a strong independence of mind and strong journalistic values’’ and that he “knew about the newspaper but hadn’t worked here for a while.’’ This allows Getler some distance and perspective. What’s more, Downie says he knew that Getler “could write a good column.’’

Which isn’t to say that the two always concur. To the contrary. “We have strongly disagreed on occasions,” Downie says. But, he adds, “I appreciate the outside view. We don’t want everybody to be exactly alike. And I learn a lot from his columns and his memos.”

Getler liked the idea of becoming ombudsman, in part because “it was the most make-a-difference job that was out there for me.’’ Besides, “it builds on everything I’ve done for my whole career. I love newspapers, and I think a lot about them.’’

The fact that he had a long history at the paper, Getler says, has helped. “I know how things happen here,’’ he says. “I know [the Post’s] culture and instincts.’’

He also was a natural for the job by inclination. “Even when I was here on the payroll as an editor and a reporter, I always spoke up critically when I felt the paper was doing something it shouldn’t or not as well as it should do.

“So, it’s probably not a bad fit for me.”

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 task. “At some level, you’re viewed as a member of internal affairs of a police department,” says Mark Jurkowitz, media writer for The Boston Globe.

He experienced that tension when he was the Globe’s ombudsman from 1994 to 1997 and he blasted a controversial Globe column that questioned the Vietnam War record of U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. “I wrote a column saying it had no business running in the paper without more evidence,” Jurkowitz recalls. His bosses didn’t question the column, but that critique and others made him unpopular with some staffers. “Without naming names, there are still people in this building who won’t talk to me,” he says.

Nevertheless, more and more American daily newspapers are turning to some form of ombudsman. The Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal all have added reader reps in the past year. While their numbers are still small – out of 1,489 U.S. dailies, only about 35 have them – the recent uptick has signaled a significant trend.

“The tide seems to be turning,” says John V.R. Bull, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s ombudsman of 16 years. “We suspect that the latest ASNE study showing people hate us and mistrust us has finally gotten through to editors.”

The December 1998 study by ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors) was among the latest bad news for newspaper credibility. The results – showing a public weary of mistakes, possible bias, and sensationalism – weren’t revelations for most editors. But they no doubt encouraged the growth of ombudsmen – or “ombuds,” as some call themselves.

In some cases, declining readership inspired a change. Like most U.S. daily newspapers, The Miami Herald was losing circulation. The Herald conducted focus groups, surveyed readers, and invited them to news meetings.

In late 1998, the paper decided that wasn’t enough, and appointed one of its seasoned editors, Barbara Gutierrez, as reader representative for the Herald (and El Nuevo Herald, its Spanish-language sister paper).

Despite the increase in ombudsmen, however, most papers don’t have them, for reasons either economic or philosophical.

Citing budget restraints, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., eliminated its ombudsman position last November to free up more money for reporters, for example. The New York Times, on the other hand, has no ombudsman because it’s not persuaded that they improve the quality of journalism, Managing Editor Bill Keller says.

“The idea is, you want the paper to be responsive to critics. That’s what we think editors’ jobs are,” he says. “You’re sort of absolving editors of what should be their responsibility.”

‘Ombud’ sprouts in Sweden

The first ombudsman was appointed in 1809 in Sweden to handle citizens’ complaints about the government, according to the Organization of News Ombudsmen. The concept came to Japan in 1922, when the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo established a committee to receive and investigate reader complaints.

The United States got its first newspaper ombudsman in 1967, for readers of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times in Kentucky. Today, there are news ombudsmen in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Many ombuds write staff memos summarizing readers’ comments as well as columns for newspaper readers. Some do outreach work, such as speaking at civic gatherings. Other duties may include handling corrections or reader services.

Because so many variables affect reader sentiment, it’s difficult to tell if having an ombudsman pays off. But many current and past ombuds have examples of cases where they’ve made a difference, however gradual.

As ombudsman at The Washington Post from 1992 to 1995, Joann Byrd saw increased appearances of blacks in feature photos after she wrote columns reporting that they tended to be underrepresented in such pictures.

She also believes that her columns pushing her newspaper to explain itself better to readers led it to seek more reader feedback.

Leonard Downie, the Post’s executive editor, agrees that Byrd had an impact on the paper on both counts.

“You make a difference just by raising issues, and, frankly, you never know how much concrete difference you make at the paper,” says Byrd, who is now editorial-page editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The Los Angeles Times’ first reader representative, Narda Zacchino, believes her office has helped reduce the number of subscription cancellations. She started the job in March. During the last nine months of 1999, 23 subscribers canceled for editorial reasons, down from 444 in the comparable year-earlier period, she says.

“I think it’s just as easy for a subscriber to pick up the phone and call us [as] the subscriber department, and it’s more satisfying because they can rant and rave and even, in some cases, get some satisfaction,” she says.

The Hartford (Conn.) Courant’s coverage of a local gay pride parade a few years ago angered readers who thought the paper focused too much on the extremists in the crowd. Reader Representative Elissa Papirno agreed, and brought those concerns to the newsroom. “The next year, they were very conscious of doing something mainstream,” she recalls.

And at The Miami Herald, Reader Representative Gutierrez believes she helped prevent a firestorm over the paper’s coverage of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor last year by reminding editors in advance of the date’s importance to many readers. The paper ran a story and photo, and didn’t get a single complaint, she says; others, such as The Washington Post, which gave short shrift to the anniversary, weren’t so lucky.

Critiquing the critics

As Papirno observes, there remains strong sentiment that the readers’ chief “representative” should be the newspaper’s top editor, not the ombud. But she and other reader reps believe that even if editors have time to respond to all their calls, which is unlikely, they don’t have the distance and perspective that an ombudsman brings to the task.

The New York Times’ Bill Keller admits the time he spends answering readers’ mail and calls, while substantial, isn’t enough. Nevertheless, he says, having someone else do it isn’t the best solution. He questions whether ombudsmen themselves have credibility with readers, because they tend to not have decision-making powers.

“I think people know when they write to me with a complaint … they know they’re talking to someone who has the ability to fix it,” he says. Better ways to improve credibility are running corrections and having sound accuracy and fairness policies, Keller says.

Proponents counter, however, that because ombudsmen get the bulk of reader feedback, they have the luxury of stepping back, which permits them to spot patterns in errors or reader comments. Also, readers often prefer talking to someone who’s removed from the process and won’t get defensive, they say.

Papirno was skeptical when she was offered the reader rep job at The Hartford Courant, where she was then an Op-Ed page editor. She believed all editors, not just the ombud, should talk to the public. Five years into the job, she feels differently.

“You almost don’t realize how much it’s needed until you do it,” she says. “I think in the minds of the public it makes a difference to know there’s someone they can complain to.”

Beyond the public-relations benefit, she believes her work improves the paper internally. Her memos summarizing reader complaints are available to everyone at the paper, which not only gets the news staff thinking about readers, but also educates the business side about what journalists do.

The ‘ombud’: inside and out

Most ombudsmen are staff members who were longtime editors at the same paper. They generally report to the editor or publisher, and often take part in editorial meetings.

In a few cases, newspapers have hired outside ombudsman, believing greater distance allows for greater independence. At The Washington Post, each ombudsman is an independent contractor who serves a two-year term with an optional third year. He or she can’t be fired, has sole responsibility for a column he or she writes, and is barred from future employment at the Post.

“We see the ombudsman as a person who represents what readers have to say and their own views as experienced journalists,” Executive Editor Downie says.

While each model has pluses and minuses, the insider model is better, believes Bill Babcock, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota. While the insider may be less objective about the paper, the outsider is less informed about the inner workings of the paper and at a disadvantage when trying to explain how coverage decisions or errors were made, Babcock says.

Many staff ombudsmen say while they work for their papers, there’s an understanding that they have autonomy to freely criticize them, and have had no problems exercising it.

But when they do, they risk the hostility of their peers – and often their bosses.

“I sometimes feel like the Grim Reaper walking through the newsroom, because people assume every time I come through, it’s because of an error,” says George Edmonson, public editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Zacchino came down on her company’s top executives in a column in November about the Los Angeles Times’ ill-fated profit-sharing deal with the Staples Center, which sparked a national scandal and led Publisher Kathryn M. Downing to apologize.

“It was obvious it was not going to be real comfortable,” she recalls. “Kathryn never said a word to me, but I heard she didn’t like it. I heard Mark Willes [CEO of parent Times Mirror Co.] didn’t like it. … He thought it lacked context.”

There were no repercussions, however, and Zacchino believes that’s because the people she criticized also strongly supported the creation of her job, and in her 30 years at the Times, she’s established herself as independent. She and Willes had a long talk, and parted, she believes, with a better understanding of each other’s views.

Other ombuds believe that answering to the publisher rather than the editor adds an extra cushion of protection.

Even with safeguards, The Boston Globe’s Jurkowitz says, the job is stressful, and staying too long can lead to burnout.

“I think it’s a job you don’t want to do two, three, four years, because there’s wear and tear,” he says.

And like all columnists, ombuds, who are used to putting out other people’s fires, occasionally start their own. Jack Thomas, the Globe’s current ombudsman, did it when he wrote a column slamming the worth of the paper’s funnies after readers complained about changes in its comics section. Thomas found himself on the hot seat when the column drew nearly 300 angry responses.

Same ends, different means

Some papers have used their ombudsman to target specific readership needs. Miami’s Hispanic population was surging, and when The Miami Herald decided to hire a reader rep, Barbara Gutierrez, a well-known Cuban American who is former executive editor for the Herald’s sister paper, El Nuevo Herald, was a logical choice.

“We have a very diverse population,” says Larry Olmstead, Herald managing editor. “It’s very helpful to have someone with bilingual skills in that market.”

In addition to writing columns and internal critiques, Gutierrez often meets with community groups and represents the paper at panel discussions. She believes that, in small ways, her language and cultural background help bridge a gap with readers.

And The Clarion-Ledger, a 101,632-circulation daily in Jackson, Miss., appointed Eric Stringfellow – an African American, Jackson resident, and longtime editor – as public editor in part to help solve the paper’s historical credibility problems in the black community, Executive Editor David Petty says. “It was extremely valuable that he has entrée in the minority community,” Petty says.

Stringfellow spends part of his time attending public forums and getting readers to attend meetings of both the editorial board and the reader advisory panel. But Petty says he also helped defuse criticism when the paper took some flak for its coverage of a bribery case involving a black city councilman. “People have brought him criticisms that we’ve responded to,” Petty says. “Those are extremely important things that can improve our credibility with readers.”

The diplomatic portfolio

For the typical ombudsman, however, most of the day is spent listening to readers’ complaints about story angles, helping them get letters published, passing on circulation calls, and the like.

But most ombuds can recall a day when a goof put their diplomatic skills to the ultimate test – and made an obvious case proving the benefit of having a reader representative.

For The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, it was a news brief that caused the trouble and, in fact, became literally a life-and-death issue.

“A few years ago, we published the address of a man who got murdered going to an ATM machine to get money to buy formula for an infant,” recalls Mike Clark, the paper’s reader advocate. The assailant was still at large, thus leaving his wife and her baby at risk. The victim’s widow called, scared for her safety and furious at the paper.

“It was stressful, because she was going through a grieving process already, and she was very critical of the paper,” Clark recalls.

At his urging, the paper ended up amending its ethics policy to include a section on crime victims and trained its staffers on the subject. Clark talked to the editors and writer about why the address was published. Perhaps most importantly, he visited the victim’s family and lent a sympathetic ear.

“If I hadn’t been there, who would’ve had time to meet with the family and talk about change?” he asks.

Joann Byrd had a similarly rough experience when The Washington Post ran a story that portrayed members of the Christian right as poor, uneducated, and easily controlled. Byrd took countless calls from angry readers over the story. “Listening helped, and there was no way to defend what the paper did,” says Byrd, who also wrote a column criticizing the paper.

And it’s not always editorial bloopers that get the phone ringing. At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, readers were outraged when the “Home and Garden” section was removed from some editions because of a production change.

Public Editor George Edmonson was on the job less than three months when his phone started ringing off the hook with irate callers. In this case, the problem was easily fixed. Edmonson talked to the general manager, who agreed to undo the change. “The business side admitted they made a stupid move and put it back where it was,” he says.

Credibility: A paper’s stock in trade

Many hope improving credibility will translate into more readers, with advertising dollars to follow.

If that’s not enough to convince reluctant publishers, proponents argue that having an ombud can defuse potential lawsuits. They point to the 15-year-old Iowa Libel Research Project, which found that complainants who file suit usually talked to the editor or reporter of the story first, were met with defensiveness, and walked away angry about the experience.

The University of Minnesota’s Babcock points out that newspapers’ credibility is too low to not try everything, and that includes ombudsmen: “Anything we can do to enhance our credibility – you can either say, ‘We have a duty to do it,’ or, ‘We darned well better do it.’”