Who can forget the flags that sprouted on cars and homes around the country in the weeks leading up to the kick-off? Traffic became a constant national parade.

Patriotic fervour hit its peak just before the opening game against Mexico, and that Friday the entire country seemed to grind to a joyous, vuzuzela-fuelled halt.

Around lunchtime, the centre of Johannesburg gridlocked as people streamed to their chosen viewing spot: home, fanpark or — for the lucky ones — Soccer City itself.

It was an unforgettably loud and cheerful moment. For the first time in many years it felt like South Africa was one nation, in spite of everything.

And the media were in the thick of things. Even the ordinarily staid Business Day presented its masthead in Bafana Bafana colours on the day of the opening. Radio 702 went even further, bringing fans in their tens of thousands on to the street in a demonstration of support for the national team.

The spirit of unity extended to the rest of the continent, and South African have tended to support African teams against all comers. I was in the stands for the Ghana vs Serbia game, and it was very clear that aside from a scattering of Serbia-supporters, Loftus Versfeld backed the Black Stars.

Bafana Bafana’s draw against Mexico sustained the national mood, but the dramatic loss against Uruguay caused severe damage. Suddenly, the team went from being heroes to losers. They were, quite simply, punished for disappointing our overblown hopes.

Everybody had something to say. Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira came in for a roasting, and I heard some callers on radio focus on the fact that he was a foreigner. Some wanted him simply fired, others called for a South African coach — a recurring theme in the discussion about the national team. And there were some who said the coach had deliberately sabotaged the team because he is a foreigner.

There it was, the xenophobia that is the dark underside of South African patriotism.

The final performance against France was not good enough to qualify for the next round, but at least it salvaged enough national pride to mute the anti-foreigner sentiment.

But for how long?

Already, there has been a flurry of fearful reports that an upsurge of attacks on foreigners can be expected after the Fifa caravan has left our shores. The word, by the way, is “upsurge” — because such attacks are part of our daily reality. They have become as much a part of the South African way of life as braaivleis or chiskop.

The whole idea of people sitting together planning attacks for a time after the World Cup boggles the mind: are we to imagine a shadowy Committee of Xenophobes that hates foreigners but does not want to harm the tourism industry?

It is extraordinary that South Africans can walk down the street one moment, joyously waving the flags of countries such as Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, and be plotting against the nationals of those countries the next.

Should one seek to explain the contradiction by arguing that these are different kinds of South Africans? Perhaps those attending the games have enough money not to feel threatened by foreigners. In that view, xenophobia is the preserve of the poor.

This neat distinction does not hold water. Recent research by the Gauteng City Region Observatory made the shocking finding that 69% of residents have xenophobic attitudes, and that there are no significant differences between the various race, class and other groupings.

It is true that attacks on foreigners are largely concentrated in poorer areas: in many ways, they are related to service-delivery protests. They are said to emerge from competition for resources. Perhaps we love visitors, but can’t abide immigrants.

I fear that xenophobia and the extraordinary outpouring of patriotic fervour marking the World Cup are two sides of the same coin. Heaven knows, we can use a greater sense of national unity and purpose, but we should not need to define it against outside enemies.

It was understandable that the media were swept up by the national mood, and it would have been churlish to stand aside. Now that the peaks of patriotism are behind us though, journalists need to get their feet back on the ground. Our best contribution to the country’s welfare is to report with a sense of critical distance.

Xenophobic attacks may claim our attention sooner than we would like. It may be time to look past the vuvuzelas and flags, and remember that the fundamental issues facing the country have not disappeared.

This column was originally published in the Mail & Guardian on July 5, 2010.

This week started out with the publication of an extraordinary series of articles in The Washington Post called “Top Secret America,” an in-depth accounting—two-years in the making—of a government-industrial “national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping citizens safe.”

At the same time, a deceptively edited and grossly misleading film clip was posted on the Web site BigGovernment.com, run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. The two-minute clip from a much longer speech makes it appear that a black, middle-level Agriculture Department officer, Shirley Sherrod, was admitting that she had discriminated against white farmers. The clip, and accompanying commentary by Breitbart, immediately went viral, as things do nowadays, and quickly spread throughout the media, with inadvertent and irresponsible help from the administration and the NAACP that also failed to check and to consider the source.

The Post series, with excellent attention paid to use of the newspaper’s Web site to display the breadth of the linkages and the depth of the research, is a reminder of why newspapers—many of which are in serious financial and staffing decline—and news organizations with the resources and commitment to finding out what is really going on are so crucial to informing citizens who want to know.

The Breitbart posting reminds us of how we are exposed so fast and frequently these days to misinformation and how easily it spreads though a society.

That brings us to the first letter in this week’s mailbag. It is about the Wednesday night segment on the PBS NewsHour dealing with the controversy over the Sherrod story. This is followed by a response from the program’s executive producer, Linda Winslow, and some thoughts of mine.

Then comes a letter dealing with a segment of last Friday night’s “Need to Know” broadcast in which President Obama is caricatured. This also includes a response from the producer and from me.

Finally, there are several e-mails about last week’s ombudsman column dealing with the three-part, three-hour documentary about former Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Some are favorable and some are critical, including an important criticism from a former U.S. ambassador to the former Soviet Union.

No Mention of Breitbart

I watched Jim Lehrer’s interview (7/21/10) with (the NewsHour’s) David Chalian on the USDA fallout from the firing of Shirley Sherrod, and I am hard-pressed to understand how neither Mr. Lehrer nor Mr. Chalian mentioned the name of Andrew Breitbart a single time. In all the discussion about how everyone in the media and government was too quick to judge and act upon misinformation, how is it possible to overlook the only person, other than Ms. Sherrod herself, who knew how falsely the video portrayed her views? Breitbart knew because it was his malicious editing of the video, and his posting of it on his website (www.biggovernment.com), that created the situation. I can only wonder whether NewsHour sponsors have pressured Mr. Lehrer to tread carefully when dealing with the right-wing. In this case, Mr. Lehrer and his political editor didn’t tread at all. What a terrible failure by Mr. Lehrer and his guest.

Forest Hills, NY

Executive Producer Linda Winslow Responds:

We have received several complaints from our viewers regarding NewsHour coverage of the Shirley Sherrod story. Most focused on two points: why we didn’t mention the name of Andrew Breitbart whose web site, BigGovernment.com, originally posted the incomplete and misleading excerpt from Ms. Sherrod’s speech; and why we didn’t take to task other online news outlets, as well as major cable news channels, who exacerbated the misrepresentation of Ms. Sherrod’s position by playing the incomplete excerpt over and over.

We certainly could have mentioned Mr. Breitbart’s name but, since we don’t consider him to be a household name, we were more concerned with mentioning the name of his web site and identifying it as a vehicle for conservative political opinion.

By the time the NewsHour aired at 6pm, our editors had decided the [Agriculture Secretary] Vilsack apology to Ms. Sherrod, and her reaction to it, had advanced the story well beyond the Breitbart behavior that started the whole thing. That’s why the introductory setup was written to explain, as briefly as possible, how the mistreatment of Ms. Sherrod began…In our judgment, this story was about how a combination of supposedly responsible organizations and institutions handled a misleading piece of information that first surfaced on a web site with an avowed political agenda. The press, the administration, and the interest groups involved all have blame to share for pre-judging Ms. Sherrod’s words before understanding their original intent and full context.

(Ombudsman’s Note: I think not naming Breitbart was a serious omission. While his may not be a “household name” to lots of people, he is very well known among the media who report information to the rest of the country and he has been at the center of other major controversies, including promoting and releasing video tapes of a staged encounter last year that essentially destroyed the community organization ACORN. Subsequent state investigations revealed that these tapes were misleadingly edited.)

~ ~ ~

I was up at 4:50 in the morning in the Bay Area in California and was watching excellent programming, when along came a program (Need to Know), “Who is Obama?” with a cartoonist Steve Brodner. I was shocked that you were seriously interviewing a cartoonist who depicted Obama over and over again as a monkey. The questions asked were fair, and ones I myself have asked, however, the depiction of our president, or anyone, especially a person of African American descent, as a monkey, was so offensive that I turned PBS off immediately. Please do better than this. I will not watch PBS for quite some time. Fair and equitable criticism and discourse is what our democracy is about. However degrading depictions of individuals is what racism is about and to treat one such person as someone to be listened to and codified by an organization such as PBS is deplorable. The only power I have as an individual is to turn you off until you do better.

Walnut Creek, CA

‘Need to Know’ Executive Producer Shelley Lewis Responds:

I want to assure you that Mr Brodner did not depict President Obama as a monkey. Not at any time. He drew the President climbing a mountain peak, using a walking stick, and wearing a robe that looked something like a Tibetan monk. Later, camouflage colors were added to his face to depict his war policies. It’s true that Mr Brodner, as a satirical cartoonist, exaggerates features, and he, like virtually every cartoonist who draws the President, draws Mr. Obama’s ears as very prominent. Could that be what you were reacting to? I’m not sure what else I can say, except that we would never, ever, have depicted the President in such a disrespectful and racist way.

(Ombudsman’s Note: There were moments when I also found these drawings to be jarring, especially since the narration talked about evolution. It was clear this was meant in a political sense yet one can have sympathy for a viewer who found the whole thing unsettling. Here’s a link to the segment, actually called “Obama, Where Art Thou?”)

More ‘Turmoil’ Over Shultz

See my comments on: http://jackmatlock.com/2010/07/shultz-pbs-series-ethics-questions/

Jack Matlock, Fayetteville, TN

(Ombudsman’s Note: Matlock, as I mentioned earlier, was the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during the latter part of Shultz’s tenure and beyond. He was among those interviewed for the broadcast. In his comments, he is critical of my assessment. I, as they say, stand by the column as both fair and critical. When you have among the funders for a documentary The Stephen Bechtel Fund, an arm of the firm Shultz headed for some nine years and also served on its board of directors, and Charles Schwab, founder of the investment firm where Shultz also served on the board, you have “created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest” for viewers, in my view.)

~ ~ ~

Mr. Getler, What is the point of having you as ombudsman if PBS entirely disregards your report? Shultz was a second-rate economist and compared with Dean Acheson and even James Baker a second-rate secretary of state. Three hours is indeed over the top for this Bechtel family retainer.

Michael Aronson, Boston, MA

~ ~ ~

“Turmoil” producer David DeVries asks, “Must we fall prey to a knee jerk requirement for negative coverage to ‘keep it balanced’?” My answer is, you must at least DILIGENTLY SEARCH for all points of view on a topic, in order to be sure you’re keeping it balanced. That would include, for example, interviewing people who were targeted by the Reagan/ Shultz foreign policy, such as those in El Salvador in the 1980s who were bombed time and again by the US-funded Salvadoran government. Funded at $1 million a day during that period by our US taxes!

Barbara Larcom, Baltimore, MD

~ ~ ~

Kudos to Michael Getler for such a thoughtful, substantive & wide-ranging analysis. I was delighted to see the calibre & care of this thinking.

Betsy Taylor, Lexington, KY

~ ~ ~

First, thanks for addressing the issue of the Shultz show and for applying the appropriate ethical tests. Is it, however, too much to ask that the Ombudsman be gracious as well as factual? FAIR’s ideological leanings and its role in media activism are perhaps worthy of a mention. Far more important is the question of whether they were right, which you concede they were. By devoting the first paragraph after the description of the program to who you were getting complaints from, you make it seem as if that’s what matters. Which would you rather: that PBS receive criticism that it can address or that people simply stop watching and stop contributing?

Albuquerque, NM

~ ~ ~

I believe that there are so many admirable things about George Shultz and he also benefits from looking good. He has enough goodness to shine on his own. However true this may be there is no doubt that this was an intentional hero-worship piece that should have no place on PBS. Every politician has made mistakes and these warts must be included with all the celebratory good-old-boy stuff that is being put out there which obfuscates the truth and in reality is an attempt to change history. Shame on PBS.

Edwin McCready, Los Angeles, CA

~ ~ ~

I live in Florida. Most of my friends were young adults when Schultz was a star. We remember who he was and what he did. The people that put together the program seem to be rewriting history, from our perspective. I am wondering if PBS has become a sponsor for the GOP. Is the director that accepted this film part of the GOP? It smells bad to us. We are questioning the fitness of the people that are suppose to be the guardians of what we thought were the rules of PBS.

S. Lee Holt

Not So Average Jane

As an average Jane citizen who attempts to follow our nation’s political leaders and the policies they promote, I have been well-conditioned to expect that bad news will eventually follow the men I have otherwise thought were worthy of my respect. The navy blue dress, the baby daughter, the payoffs to silence family members of special staffers, packages of frozen money, and most recently, reports from the massage therapist —all ways that otherwise competent politicians simply fail us as leaders.

I was inspired by the first episode of the George Shultz program and impressed by this man who has actually sustained through an entire lifetime a commitment to integrity and the greater good of our country. The critics of this biography are going to have to come up with something more than “too long” or “not enough bad stuff” to diminish my appreciation for this series. I think the line is “they just don’t make them like that anymore” and I very much look forward to learning more about this admirable man in the next segments. And thanks to PBS for a producing the program. I needed it!

Des Moines, IA

~ ~ ~

How is it that PBS often finds reason to reject the airing of items because of their backing by left wing but never hesitates to air something that is so heavily right-winged backed such as your currently airing George Schulz 3-hour special? The ability to deflect the brazen corporate right-wing influence in PBS is non-existent. As corporate influence grew from the 80’s, PBS has lost any semblance of fairness. The few examples of ‘another view’ i.e., “Now”, and Bill Moyers have been given a hard time, or just dumped. It is very sad and quite scary that the network which is supposed to be about fairness and the public good is so tied to its greatest sources of it money—the corporations such as Monsanto, the Oil industry and other bad very conservative apples. Yours with great concern about our future,

Barry De Jasu, Northampton, MA

Right Up There

Thank you for the great programs on the life of George Schultz. Truly
educational. Before seeing them, I looked to Jesus, Da Vinci, Gandhi, Einstein, and Jim Thorpe as models. Now I know, because of PBS, that they are all second rate next to St. George.

Roy Tuckman, Los Angeles, CA

~ ~ ~

Thank you for Turmoil Over ‘Turmoil.’ I don’t find the program listed by my local PBS station. I agree with the producer’s statement: “As we sadly know, our society has become plagued with partisanship and an obsession with ‘Gotcha’ publicity.” I don’t know if I would have watched the program, but I certainly admire Mr. Schultz. I, too, am a Democrat, but that never keeps me from admiration for people who, like Mr. Schultz, are worthy of admiration. Mr. Getler, I add you to that list. This may have been the best column you have written. I read every word written by you and everyone else.

Olive Lohrengel, Buda, TX

~ ~ ~

Good for Mr. deVries. I have never seen anything from FAIR that was fair and so have considered them an oxymoron in name and fact, not unlike CAMERA’s reaction to anything on NPR. Being a past target at a station of those who judge prior to viewing I long ago found that to discount them was the intelligent thing to do. Otherwise I would have been guilty of giving voice to their false ideology and political bias. It’s important not to be a carrier of the divisiveness that currently infects the U.S. and verges on being a plague that could destroy our democracy.

Dwight Bobson, Washington, DC

This column was originally published on PBS.org on July 23, 2010.

A follow-up story, focusing on the need to beef up pool safety regulations, told readers that 10 people had drowned in Ontario in as many days. “A 13-year-old Bradford boy in a backyard pool Tuesday was the fourth teen to drown recently,” the article stated.

A day later, a Star editorial entitled “Drownings are all preventable” weighed in on the important issue of water safety, citing the fact that over the past week several drownings had occurred including, “a 13-year-old Bradford boy in his backyard pool.”

But the death of Thomas Wright, 13, who was pulled unconscious from his family’s pool on July 6 is not to be counted as one more drowning statistic. Nor should this terrible incident be held up as an example of the need for increased vigilance by parents to prevent water tragedy.

Though no less tragic, what actually happened to Thomas, a top student and avid athlete who had just completed Grade 7 at Mother Teresa Catholic Elementary School, remains a mystery.

With the investigation continuing, the coroner has yet to pronounce on the cause of Thomas’s death. As initial police reports of this death indicated, the boy had been swimming in the family pool, with his parents watching from the deck, when he was pulled out in distress, “without vital signs.” CPR was performed on the unconscious boy and paramedics were called. He was taken to hospital where he “succumbed to his injuries and died.”

Though the reports from the South Simcoe Police Service never actually stated that the then-unidentified boy had drowned, widespread media reports throughout the Greater Toronto area labelled the death a drowning and held it up as an example of the perils of summer and the need to pay heed to water safety. A local TV station sent a helicopter flying over the town of Bradford to shoot footage of backyard swimming pools to illustrate their reports about this tragedy.

Given the phrasing in the police reports — “pulled out in distress,” and “without vital signs” — I think that citing this as a drowning was an understandable inference. Still, this is a reminder to all of us in the media that the facts can never be taken for granted no matter how straightforward they might seem.

The erroneous conclusion that Thomas had drowned only added to this family’s grief and it matters greatly to them that the record is corrected.

The boy’s grandfather, Dennis Jackson, contacted me this week to voice his concerns about what the family regarded as “totally inaccurate” news reports and “false insinuations” of the Star’s July 8 lead editorial calling for more parental vigilance regarding water safety.

Jackson said the family interpreted what was intended as a public service editorial that made a valid point about the need for all parents to “redouble their efforts to prevent tragedy,” as implying that the boy’s parents had been irresponsible in his death. I explained to Jackson that this was certainly not the intention of the editorial.

Given that there had been no follow-up reporting on the poolside tragedy, the Star had not even learned that this death was not a drowning until Jackson brought these facts my way.

The grieving grandfather told me that Thomas, whose father is a Toronto firefighter, was a strong swimmer who held a Bronze Star and was working on his Bronze Medallion. His parents were vigilant and made sure all three of their boys learned to swim at an early age. They were poolside when Thomas was in the water and surfaced in distress.

“They did as much as any parents could do,” Jackson said.

Though Wright’s parents, Sonny and Karen, did not want to talk with me, they explained some of this in a letter published in the Bradford Times.

“Thomas did not drown as reported,” they stated. “He experienced an unknown medical condition while in his family pool. He did not take in any water, and results of the autopsy came back inconclusive.

“Thomas had no underlying medical conditions, so his sudden passing has left our family with many questions; as yet we haven’t been offered many answers.”

The Wrights thanked emergency services and medical personal for coming to their aid and expressed their appreciation to local residents for their outpouring of support in Thomas’s death. Hundreds of people attended his funeral last week.

“Our son’s life and his passing have sparked a flood of support from family, friends and members of this community which has completely overwhelmed us,” they wrote.”

Among those local responses was an apology printed in the Bradford Topic, a weekly paper owned by Torstar’s Metroland Media Group Ltd. “The Topic apologizes for previously incorrectly reporting the boy drowned,” editor Jay Gutteridge wrote.

And here too, the Toronto Star apologizes to the Wright family for the misunderstanding in this sad summer tragedy.

This column was originally published in the Toronto Star on July 16, 2010.

Had journalists here and elsewhere instead pressed on, they might have found more to report with regard to the untold millions of dollars spent yearly on information services provided by contractors like Rendon.

For one, the identities of large companies are sometimes masked in public records with the designation “miscellaneous foreign contractors” – even when they are prominent, registered American firms, their contracts are unclassified, the companies and Pentagon officials are open about what they do, and the contractors have not asked to be shielded from public view.

One effect of this practice, which has been made harder to penetrate since I began asking about it early this year, is to hamper journalists, watchdog groups and members of the public in following the money trail of who is being paid by the government to inform and influence mass audiences in an ever-shrinking global media environment.

This comes as the Defense Department is reported to be planning to spend up to $1 billion next year on Psychological Operations while also imposing new rules that more tightly control information about the military and the Pentagon.

PsyOp is a component of what are called Information Operations (IO), which are persuasive actions that by law are supposed to be kept overseas and distinct from more neutral activities like public relations/Public Affairs (PA), which are supposed to factually inform audiences, including the American public.

Rendon is one firm in the information field whose identity the military has at times screened from public scrutiny, though an executive told me he was surprised to learn that.

Another is Wall Street-based SOS International Ltd., whose Web site says it provides intelligence and media support services to government and business around the world. Its two listed spokesmen did not respond to e-mail requests for information.

SOSi provided Gen. Stanley McChrystal with the civilian media adviser, Duncan Boothby, who arranged the fateful Rolling Stone “media engagement” that cost the general command of the Afghan war last month.

SOSi’s Web site says the company also provided a key aide to McChrystal’s successor, Gen. David Petraeus – a translator, Sadi Othman, who SOSi says rose to become a senior adviser while the general, himself a strong proponent of Information Operations, was leading the war effort in Iraq.

Rendon and SOSi contractors worked concurrently in the main military Public Affairs shop in Afghanistan last year, though only Rendon drew journalists’ attention. SOSi is still there.

Both are among nine firms I encountered with media-related contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan shrouded in the designation “miscellaneous foreign contractors” – even though the contracts in question for six of those firms did not seem to fit the criteria for masking vendors’ identities as laid out in the governing Federal Acquisition Regulation.

Moreover, since the Pentagon was provided with extensive details of this research into “miscellaneous foreign contractors” in the context of a query last month, key contract data that had been publicly accessible before then is now no longer so.

In nearly six months of pestering Pentagon offices, military PAO’s on two continents, officials elsewhere in government and contractors themselves, among others, no one was willing or able to explain the “miscellaneous” listings, which were found on usaspending.gov, the open, online government database for contract information.

That site was established in late 2007 by legislation co-sponsored the year before by, among others, then Sen. Barack Obama to increase government transparency for the $1 trillion in federal contracts awarded annually. Since 2000, $41.6 billion has been paid out to “miscellaneous foreign contractors,” according to usaspending.gov.

The Rendon ‘distraction’

Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith and his deputy, Army Col. Wayne M. Shanks, the chief of Public Affairs in Afghanistan, announced in late August that they were canceling the Rendon contract on Sept. 1, 2009, because five days of pesky coverage by Stars and Stripes and, to a lesser extent, other news outlets had become a “distraction.”

Such an abrupt capitulation led this skeptical old reporter to wonder if the cancellation itself was a distraction – that there might have been more to the story and that the scrapping of the contract might have served as a bone to throw any pursuing newshounds off the scent.

I began with two primary objectives: get a copy of the Rendon contract, to compare what it had actually prescribed in the way of “media analysis” against what had been written about it by journalists who by all accounts had not seen it; and to learn how the military was compensating in the wake of Rendon’s departure.

Along the way, more compelling issues arose.

The controversial Rendon contract was let by the Bagram Regional Contracting Center in Afghanistan and was processed and signed on Jan. 21, 2009. It called for the Rendon Group of Washington, D.C., to be paid $1,550,283.37 to provide “public relations services” for one year in support of military Public Affairs in Afghanistan.

But on Jan. 28, the date that contract took effect, another transaction listed at usaspending.gov appears to have taken place, also for $1,550,283.37.

That latter listing differed in some notable respects, however.

“Miscellaneous items” replaced “public relations services.” “Media analyst” replaced “news monitoring and media analysis.” And there was no mention of Rendon, only “miscellaneous foreign contractors” in the space marked “vendor name.” It was also labeled a same-day “purchase order,” instead of a one-year “delivery order.”

Most notably, although the “date signed” was given as Jan. 28, 2009, which was the effective date of the Jan. 21 contract, the later transaction was not processed by the Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan until Oct. 5, 2009 – more than a month after the military said it had canceled the 12-month Rendon deal with five months to go.

The two listings are not a coincidence of like dollar amounts.

While the Jan. 28 listing had its own Procurement Instrument Identifier number, it referenced the PIID number for the Jan. 21 contract. And at a related federal contracting Web site, fpds.gov, a data field for the Jan. 28 document labeled “contractor name from contract” gave the name “Rendon Group,” although the vendor was still identified as “miscellaneous foreign contractors.”

Rendon’s contracts manager, Gary L. Miconi, told me by e-mail that all this was news to him – “We have never seen or signed” the Jan. 28 document – and he insisted that his firm only does business under its own name.

If there is some routine or benign explanation for the Jan. 28 contract listing, it is puzzling that no official has offered it during the considerable time I have pressed for it.

SOSi and Rendon

SOSi’s Web site, which says the company has 1,200 employees worldwide, was recently advertising a number of “journalist/public affairs” positions to assist military Public Affairs in Afghanistan with monitoring and analyzing news coverage and with “media engagements.”

SOSi currently has a broad contract for “Foreign Media Analysis: Print Media” that dates to June 2006 and accounts for a total of $52.5 million spread over 43 listings at usaspending.gov that appear to apply to operations in multiple venues.

I provided Shanks with that contract number via e-mail last month and called his attention to one of those 43 transactions: $1.6 million on Jan. 27, 2010, the day Rendon’s $1.5 million contract would have expired.

After checking with contract officials, he did not dispute the contract number, but he discounted the significance of the date and amount.

“Not sure where these figures came from, but SOSi’s initial contract with ISAF/USFOR-A was for approximately $4.7 m[illion],” he said by e-mail, noting elsewhere that he was referring to June 2009. “After a recently approved modification to increase advisement, translation and technical support, the contract’s value rose to $9.1 m[illion].”

This past February and again in June, Shanks told me that SOSi had taken up some of the slack when Rendon departed. But even more recently he said that after checking with contract officials, he had concluded that he had misspoken on that point.

“I was incorrect to assert that SOSi quickly stepped in after Rendon’s departure in that capacity,” he wrote.

Shanks has been consistent, however, in saying that SOSi does not provide the sort of “positive/negative/neutral” assessments of journalists’ work that Rendon had sometimes delivered and that Stars and Stripes and other critics had pilloried.

“SOSi’s contract and its effort have always been focused squarely on strategic communication/Public Affairs advisement, technical support and media monitoring, with emphasis on clipping Afghan media reports,” he said.

Shanks said the military assumed primary responsibility for vetting journalists’ requests for credentials, interviews and embeds with the troops after Rendon left.

SOSi, IO, PsyOp, PA, IG

In September 2008, New York-based SOSi (pronounced SOH-see) was one of four prominent U.S. firms awarded what proved to be controversial Information Operations contracts for Iraq, the others being the Lincoln Group (Washington), Leonie Industries (Los Angeles) and MPRI/L-3 Services (metropolitan-area Washington).

Last summer, the Defense Department’s Inspector General issued a report that found no ill intent but nonetheless faulted the military because the contracts did not observe the legal stonewall between PsyOp and Public Affairs and held the potential “unintended consequence” of targeting Americans with Psychological Operations.

“It is essential to the success of the new Iraqi Government and the Coalition mission,” the contracts had stated, “that both communicate effectively with our strategic audiences (i.e., Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international, and U.S. audiences) to gain widespread acceptance of their core themes and messages.”

The Inspector General wrote that “although we did not obtain any evidence that Psychological Operations were intended for a U.S. audience, the contract language did not clearly differentiate between Psychological Operations and Public Affairs, as required by doctrine, creating the appearance that Psychological Operations were associated with a U.S. audience.”

Citing “joint doctrine,” the IG defined PsyOp as “selective information” intended “to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals.”

Public Affairs is “truthful and factual unclassified information” intended for audiences that may include Americans.

Information Operations are intended “to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp” an opponent’s “decision making while protecting our own.” Information Operations can incorporate PsyOp, but not Public Affairs.

The IG said objections had been raised during the contract-writing process after Public Affairs was added to the Statement of Work.

But rather than delete it, the IG said, the military instead retitled the proposal, from “Psychological Operations/Information Operations Services” to “media services,” and then “remove[d] nearly all references to PsyOp.”

All four contracts, which had a potential value of $300 million, were modified shortly after they took effect to delete references to “U.S. audiences.” But by then they had become such a headache that according to the IG, they were shelved not long after they were awarded.

Most notably, though the four contractors were all identified by name and the nature of their work was disclosed in some detail, the contract numbers the IG printed alongside their names all track back to “miscellaneous foreign contractors” at usaspending.gov. (For example, this is SOSi’s listing).

The public identification of the contractors does not appear to have been a security lapse on the part of the IG, whose report was published July 31, 2009.

Ten months earlier, on Oct. 3, 2008, Pentagon officials enthusiastically discussed the contracts in an article in The Washington Post that also named all four contractors and featured an interview with SOSi’s chief operating officer, Julian Setian, who noted that “we definitely believe this is a growth area in the DoD.”

‘I have no idea’

Spokesmen for the Defense Department, various military commands and the General Services Administration, which provides “miscellaneous foreign contractors” with a generic business ID number required for contract reports and with an office near the Pentagon to serve as their pro forma, proxy address, mostly either rebuffed, redirected or did not respond to repeated requests for information.

The frankest response came from Shanks, whom the Pentagon had instructed for a time to handle my queries. He told me by e-mail from Afghanistan that even after asking around, “I have no idea what the ‘miscellaneous foreign contractors’ is,” but that “all our current SOSi employees are U.S. citizens.”

The Pentagon did respond to a related query last year, when Aviation Week’s Aerospace Daily and Defense Report noticed “miscellaneous foreign contractors” near the top of the list in an analysis of Defense dollar recipients, in the company of titans like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

In its report on Sept. 1, 2009 (not currently available on the Web), Aerospace Daily quoted an e-mail from a Pentagon official it did not identify as explaining that the pseudonym was authorized:

() for classified contracts,

() to protect vendors, like translators, who might be put at risk if their work with the American military were made public,

() or to cover small overseas transactions with vendors who didn’t have a unique business ID, called a DUNS number, on file with the U.S. government – “the donkey-rental guy in the middle of the desert,” the official added by way of illustration.

But none of those criteria – nor others contained in the GSA’s published contract regulations – appears to apply to the four established, American-based companies identified in the IG’s report on “Information Operations Contracts in Iraq.”

Nor do they appear to apply to the controversial $1.5 million Rendon contract, which officials have consistently maintained was not classified and which was awarded to a prominent Washington firm with a DUNS number, a Web site that makes no bones about its business, and an established public face in the person of John W. Rendon Jr., a self-described “information warrior” who once served as an aide to President Jimmy Carter and as a senior Democratic Party official.

Liberal use of generic identifiers like “miscellaneous foreign contractors” has drawn sharp but little-noticed criticism from such disparate entities as Amnesty International, which believes they have cloaked arms sales, and the American Small Business League, which believes big contractors use them to steal business set aside for companies of more modest scale.

But I have not seen the issue raised before with regard to public relations/Public Affairs contracts.

Pulling down the blinds

During the last month of the 2009 fiscal year, which were also the 30 days following the announced Sept. 1 cancellation of the Rendon contract, the Bagram contracting center awarded $4.3 million in “public relations services” contracts to four Afghan firms all designated “miscellaneous foreign contractors.”

Three do not appear to have DUNS numbers nor tout their work for the Americans, so they won’t be identified here. But the fourth, Wise Strategic Communication, does on both counts.

Yet every one of its contracts is listed under “miscellaneous foreign contractors,” though a top executive told me that the firm, like Rendon, was unaware that this was so.

Over several months last year, Wise advertised online for skilled professionals to work on a spectrum of information and media-related projects for clients in Afghanistan that it said included the U.S. Army and the Defense and State Departments.

A senior executive, whose name I am withholding out perhaps an excess of caution, recently told me by e-mail and phone that none of the firm’s current U.S. work is classified and that it maintains a standing policy of keeping persuasive projects (IO and PsyOp) apart from informative ones (PA) for all its clients, which Wise says also include the U.N. and the Afghan government.

Speaking from Washington, the executive said Wise’s current efforts are focused on research, polling and “holistic communications,” which the company defines as a comprehensive approach intended to “achieve sustained behavioral change on the target audience(s).”

The executive is European and the company is listed as Afghan-owned. But other than those international credentials, Wise does not appear to differ from the other firms named in this column.

It has a DUNS number and representation in Washington, and its company Web site and online job advertising are robust about what the firm does and for whom.

I emphasize that everything in this column comes from public sources and no military, administration or corporate official waved me off by telling me that I was inquiring about classified or restricted matters.

Nonetheless, since detailed information was shared with various government officials in the course of making and explaining these inquiries, data that had been publicly accessible before has now been made more difficult or even impossible to find.

For example, a lengthy query e-mailed to Pentagon press officers on June 12 noted that SOSi had “numerous” contracts listed on usaspending.gov as “miscellaneous foreign contractors.”

They had been included in a long list of SOSi contracts generated by putting SOS International’s name into the usaspending.gov search engine.

A few days after that June 12 inquiry, all those “miscellaneous” contracts were gone from the results when the search was repeated.

And the blinds were not drawn solely on SOSi contracts.

When Wise Strategic Communication was put into the search window on May 28, usaspending.gov returned 14 transactions between June 2009 and January 2010 totaling $2.8 million, all in the name “miscellaneous foreign contractors.” (I made a printout.)

That same search now yields nothing – zero contracts, zero dollars.

Wise Strategic Communication has ceased to exist at usaspending.gov.

Nor has any other search of a company name since turned up “miscellaneous foreign contractors” listings like Rendon’s unexplained Jan. 28 purchase order, as was the case in February, when it surfaced in a search for all Rendon contracts. It is now excluded from search results for Rendon contracts.

‘Widespread inconsistencies’

The recent curtailment of usaspending.gov’s search capabilities makes it more difficult to track not only a company’s contracts – or to learn if it even has any – but can also misrepresent the total amount of federal contract dollars it has received.

For example, the 2008 Washington Post article noted that SOSi had won a $200 million Defense contract in 2006. The company had also issued a press release about it that year.

But a name search for SOSi at usaspending.gov now returns a total of just over $130 million in all government contracts for the last 10 years.

SOSi contracts that had been included under the heading “miscellaneous foreign contractors” no longer appear in search results using SOSi’s name, even if they had been disclosed by the company and discussed by Pentagon officials.

Similarly, a declassified 2007 DoD Inspector General report found that the Rendon Group had received $81.1 million in Defense contracts alone over the six previous years.

But a recent search of Rendon’s name at usaspending.gov turned up just $74.3 million in contracts from all government agencies for the last 10 years – and omitted the unexplained Jan. 28, 2009, entry and two others like it for that same year that had previously been included in previous contract searches. (I made a copy before things changed.)

Contracts under the name “miscellaneous foreign contractors” are still accessible in usaspending.gov’s database, but there no longer appears to be any ready, reliable way there to link them to identifiable vendors.

Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the site.

This spring, even before the tinkering with the search engine, an audit by the Government Accountability Office found that usaspending.gov, which is managed by the Office of Management and Budget but dependent on data from individual agencies, could be unreliable and that there were “numerous…widespread inconsistencies” and “gaps in the required information.”

“Not everything that should have been reported was reported,” the GAO official who led the inquiry, David A. Powner, told the Los Angeles Times, “and that which was reported was not always accurate.”

The study did not mention “miscellaneous foreign contractors.”

Congressional concerns

Late last month, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon plans to spend nearly $1 billion next year on PsyOp worldwide. Contractors would get about 40 percent of that money over all and 95 percent of the $180 million earmarked for Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the IG noted last July, PsyOp/IO is supposed to be kept distinct from Public Affairs activities that can reach American eyes and ears. Yet there is no bar to the same company getting separate contracts to perform both simultaneously.

The Post also reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee had expressed concern about the Pentagon’s “ability to oversee adequately and manage appropriately the large sums of money flowing into a variety of Information Operations programs.”

That sentiment dovetailed with the IG’s finding last July that at least with regard to the Iraq contracts it had reviewed, “an internal control weakness exists in the oversight of the media services contracts.”

To that end, the Senate committee’s proposed version of the 2011 Defense Authorization Act would require Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to review and report within 90 days of enactment “on the organizational structure and policy guidance of the Department of Defense with respect to Information Operations,” including the proper role of Public Affairs and “the use, management and oversight of contractors.”

Without a reliable mechanism to track dollars and vendors, it will be difficult for anyone other than people inside the government to know who should be held to account for preserving – or crossing – the line between operations intended to sway audiences and activities intended to inform them, as well as just determining who major government contractors are.

For example, the recent GAO report also noted that usaspending.gov fails to list subcontractors, as it is required to do, furthering clouding the picture of who is doing what and getting what in the byzantine, trillion-dollar world of federal contracting.

None of this should be read as urging the disclosure of legitimately classified work or the identification of anonymous vendors who could be put in danger. Nor is it quarreling with the legitimate and laudable goals of Information Operations aimed at harrying enemies and protecting allies and friendly forces.

But when there is no legitimate need for secrecy, a strong argument can be made that the contract process ought to be accessible and transparent, as Congress intended, especially with regard to efforts designed to inform or to shape the public mind as carried out by big companies that speak loud and proud about their prowess at doing just that.

Journalists at Stars and Stripes, as at news outlets elsewhere, depend heavily on Public Affairs operations to either get or seek confirmation of information for their news reports.

The “free flow of information” to Stars and Stripes readers can be compromised as much by subtle means as by overt interference, by a whisper as much as a shout.

Understanding who is responsible for particular information and their possible motives in providing – or not providing – it is crucial to assessing its integrity and reliability.

Yet the trend seems headed the other way, and not just by virtue of the new restrictions at usaspending.gov.

On July 1, the Defense Department issued rules to tighten the flow of information from the military and the Pentagon to the news media, the public and the Congress.

Last summer’s cancellation of the $1.5 million Rendon contract was not the end of a big story, just the turning of a page.

This is the fourth part of a review of Stars and Stripes’ coverage of the Rendon Group’s media-analysis work for the military in Afghanistan. Previous installments were published  Feb. 12, Feb. 24 and March 17.

This column was originally published in Stars and Stripes on July 12, 2010.

True indeed, but that single reference to “the photographer” drew an angry response from a reader who knew something of what the cameraman had experienced. Desmond Davis served in the Army Film and Photographic Unit and chastised the Observer for failing to give credit to a colleague who risked his life to take what the US press had called “the greatest picture of the war”.

He was Jim Mapham, who, by 1944, had already recorded the Eighth Army’s triumph at El Alamein and been made Field Marshal Montgomery’s official photographer. This picture is just one of a portfolio of images captured by Sgt Mapham throughout that extraordinary day which now lies in the Imperial War Museum’s huge photographic archive.

The shutter clicked at 8.32am as “Queen Red” beach near La Brèche, Hermanville-sur-Mer, came under shell and mortar fire. In the foreground and on the right are sappers of 84 Field Company Royal Engineers. Behind them, heavily laden medical orderlies of 8 Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps (some of whom are treating wounded men) prepare to move off the beach. In the background, men of the 1st Battalion, the Suffolk Regiment and No 4 Army Commando swarm ashore from landing craft.

The IWM has identified the sappers in the foreground as Jimmy Leask (left, glancing up at Sgt Mapham’s camera) and Cyril Hawkins, while on the right, walking towards the camera, is Fred Sadler of the same platoon. All three men survived the war; they appear in another archive photograph taken when they reached the Rhine.

Jim Mapham was one of seven cameramen of the AFPU who went in on D-Day: Sgt Ian Grant, Sgt Christie, Sgt Norman Clague (killed), Sgt Desmond O’Neill (wounded), Sgt Billie Greenhalgh (wounded) and Sgt George Laws. Their work forms an extraordinary record of the invasion and is still widely used by the media – but rarely credited.

Robert Capa, the famous Hungarian photographer, was also on the beaches that morning, pinned down in the waves by enemy fire. But while he clambered on to a landing craft to get his pictures back to London, Sgt Mapham moved inland with the invasion force and linked up with the Resistance before entering Germany to record the collapse of the Third Reich.

The horrors of the Belsen concentration camp came under Mapham’s unflinching eye before he went with Monty to Lüneburg Heath for the signing of the peace treaty. Hostilities over, Mapham continued to accompany Montgomery. When they travelled by rail, Monty rode in Hitler’s personal coach and Mapham rode in Goering’s.

After witnessing so many tragedies and triumphs, Jim Mapham returned to the relative tranquillity of the Leicester Mercury, where he was chief photographer until he died in 1968, aged only 59, a man forever remembered for one click of the shutter.

This column was originally published in The Observer on July 11, 2010.

And, in a letter to the editor printed Saturday, another reader, Len Czarnecki, wrote the definitions of three words, “illegal,” “trespass” and “immigrant,” and added: “Those of you in the media who report on this topic need to get your facts correct and use the proper terminology.”

Such complaints aren’t new and haven’t been ignored by the Express-News.

First, Mr. Marshall, the Express-News no longer refers to people who enter this country illegally, or who overstay legal visas, as “undocumented.” The newspaper’s Ethics and Practices Committee two years ago adopted the term “unauthorized immigrants” to describe people who don’t have the proper paperwork to live here.

It doesn’t have the bite of illegal immigrant or illegal alien, the federal nomenclature, but it doesn’t have the sanitizing effect of “undocumented,” which implies that said immigrant just misplaced his papers. Which really isn’t accurate because most of them have some documentation — just not the ones they need to be here legally.

So does that make them illegal? This is where it gets dicey, not for people like Marshall and Czarnecki, but for people in my business. We don’t call someone a murderer or an extortionist, even if he confessed, until he is proved guilty. So it’s the “accused” killer or “alleged” thief until a judge and jury take away the adjective.

So why shouldn’t a Mexican who wades the Rio Grande and is nabbed by the Border Patrol have the same constitutional protections? We don’t call folks on this side of the river who hire immigrants with a wink at federal law “illegal” employers.

That said, Express-News Editor Robert Rivard asked our ethics committee to revisit this terminology issue — to provide clarity for our people who write and edit stories on immigration reform, illegal immigration and related topics. Our panel, after much discussion, decided to replace the “Unauthorized immigrant” entry in our Ethics and Practices Policy with:

Illegal immigration: The movement of people into the United States who do not have proper documentation.

As with other violations of the law, all suggestions that individuals have broken immigration laws must be attributed. The correct way to describe a person’s immigration status, when such information is relevant, is to say a person is in the country illegally – citing the source of your information. For example: “Police said the man is in the United States illegally,” or, “Border Patrol agents said they detained 40 men who were in the country illegally.”

Do not use “illegal” as a noun.

This incorporates some objections to the previously suggested language, yet it is broad enough to allow reporters and editors flexibility in the wording we use in covering what is a decidedly emotional issue. The change is effective immediately.

“We know the semantical debate won’t come to an end with this change,” Rivard said.

Marshall, Czarnecki and most readers, of course, will call the unfortunate souls of the Third World who have been lured here by jobs, as generations of immigrants have, whatever they want to call them. But ours is not a “politically correct” stance; it’s what we feel is the right stance, legally and journalistically.

This column was originally published in the San Antonio Express-News on July 4, 2010.

Thanks to an otherwise innocuous piece of plastic called a vuvuzela, no topic has been more buzzworthy than the network’s coverage of the 2010 World Cup.

Literally.

Broadcasting a major sporting event — be it the Super Bowl, the World Series or the Indianapolis 500 — is a massive challenge to the production talents and technology of any media organization. The number of cameras, microphones, replay units and other technical elements multiply over what’s considered “normal” for those sports, as do announcers and analysts. The production team must quickly acclimatize to this expansion and not let more become less.

Move an event outside the United States and the complexity can increase geometrically. Further add that events transpire over extended periods of time at different venues — think of the Olympics — and the degree of difficulty soars even higher. Now, have the venues span an entire country, factor in a six-hour time change from the U.S. and mix in the fact you’re covering the most popular sport in the world, but of secondary interest in the U.S. … and that’s the World Cup.

With ESPN’s coverage building toward Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands on ABC, the contests on the pitch have been exciting, ratings are up dramatically over the 2006 Cup coverage and reception to the network’s efforts has basically been complimentary. More than 300 ESPN staffers were dispatched to South Africa to generate virtually around-the-clock coverage for television, radio, the Web and mobile, feeding media platforms around the world. The U.S.-Ghana match attracted an audience of 14.9 million on ABC, the second-largest American audience for soccer (behind only the 19 million viewers who watched the U.S. women win the championship in 1999).

The ombudsman’s mailbag reflected increased interest and overwhelmingly positive critical reaction: “Outstanding doesn’t even begin to describe how well ESPN is doing” … “Camera coverage is superb” … “Much improved over 2006″ … “Good, knowledgeable, understated commentary” … “It has been spectacular and I’m eager for more” … “Never realized how exciting soccer can be” … “Glued to the matches and commentary” … “I was a casual observer — now I’m a fan.”

Of course, there was one notable exception — the now infamous and persistent buzz of the vuvuzelas. Viewers simply hated it: “A never-ending torture” … “Intolerable” … “Annoying beyond belief” … “Produces headaches in minutes” … “A great way to dampen American enthusiasm for watching soccer” … “Continuous blaring makes listening painful” … “Please, please, please filter out the buzz.”

The vuvuzela craze in South Africa had its inception in 1992. Originally fashioned from discarded tin cans, the homemade instrument morphed into a 2-foot-long plastic horn that, blown like a trumpet, emits an ear-splitting buzz. A brewing company in South Africa started mass producing them for commercial promotions, and it took the nation’s soccer fans by storm. It has become, as a BBC journalist described it, “the recognized sound of football in South Africa.”

After the country hosted soccer’s Confederation Cup in 2009, there were numerous calls from broadcasters around the globe to ban the vuvuzela from the 2010 World Cup. The annoying sound was deemed an outlandish impediment to enjoying soccer telecasts. But FIFA president Sepp Blatter strongly backed their use, reiterating that position in a Twitter post in the first week of the World Cup: “I have always said that Africa has a different rhythm, a different sound. I don’t see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country.” He then added, “Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?”

There’s no question the fans in the stands get a charge out of what otherwise sounds like a swarm of bees, and there’s nothing new about noise making at soccer events. A century ago, there were wooden rattles spun by the handle that made a clacking sound. These same rattles were used in World War I to signal gas attacks. Through the years, sports fans’ eardrums have been assaulted by whistles, ThunderStix, cowbells and air horns — some now banned.

But nothing comes close to the irritation of the vuvuzela on television.

Many of you wondered why ESPN didn’t simply make it stop. From the network’s point of view, there were a few options, but none of the choices was a good one.

• Producers could have dialed back most of the natural sound from the stadium, but there still would have been the incessant buzz — and any sense of the electricity and excitement in the stands would be lost.

• They could have offered an “announcers only” feed with no natural sound on an SAP channel, with the regular mix played on the main channel. But that would have been an expanded technological challenge, and the announcers would have sounded as though they were commenting in a hollow phone booth.

• The network could have killed the natural sound from the stadium and used sound effects (prerecorded crowd cheering), crossing over to the live stadium sound when a goal was scored. But, of course, that would have been phony.

A good sports production team is always trying to electronically transport the viewer to the stadium. What transpires in the arena is as much a part of the event as what happens on the field. The locations, sights and sounds are major characters in the storyline of any contest, with audio and with video.

“Our sound mix is authentic to the venue,” said Jed Drake, senior vice president and executive producer of ESPN’s World Cup coverage. “We have spent years growing to understand as much [about] this culture as possible, all with the specific intention of bringing that exploration to our viewers. We concluded that the vuvuzela is simply another part of South African culture.

“The sound that it makes is what you hear when you go to any football match here. It would be disingenuous of us to try to create a ‘work-around’ solution reducing the vuvuzela. We are guests of this host country; we are not here to alter what these games actually sound like.”

Authentic or not, the vuvuzelas drowned out much of what audiences around the world enjoy about soccer. There’s the dueling chorus of chants by team supporters, the fans uniting to sing supportive songs, the roars of approval and whistles of displeasure, the constant rumble of the crowd that seems to lull itself into near silence as a critical moment approaches, only to erupt into a roar or groan that signals the success or failure of a shot.

That’s a considerable sacrifice in exchange for a never-ending screech. I think ESPN made the right choice for the right reason on the vuvuzelas. I’m also glad that my TV had its mute button available when the cacophony became unbearable. Fans in the stands didn’t have that auditory option.

The World Cup ends this week, but the scary question remains: Will the vuvuzela craze travel? They were hot-selling items to visitors from all countries at the Cup, most of whom seemed to get a kick out of blowing the infernal instrument that drove viewers crazy. And the brewer that helped popularize the horns in South Africa is also a major supplier of beer in America.

Could a vuvuzela be coming to an event near you?

One sports organization has already taken action. The UFC has banned them from its mixed martial arts events. As UFC president Dana White said last week: “Vuvuzelas make the most horrific sound I’ve ever heard. I’d rather let Brock [Lesnar] punch me in the face than hear 15,000 people blow on those things.”

Will the commissioners of our sports alphabet soup — NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and NCAA — take similar stances? Was the auditory agony of the World Cup a one-off or just the opening volley from the South African buzz heard ’round the world?

Like most of you, I hate the vuvuzelas but am still mesmerized by the telecasts. The coverage is excellent. The pictures are crystal clear, and the replays appear quicker than usual — a tribute to production’s decisiveness. The announcers are enthusiastic yet restrained. The importance and ambience of the event is well documented, and there’s a real emphasis on sense of place. The vuvuzelas notwithstanding, the enthusiasm of the crowd is a central part of the storytelling, as is the feel for the unique culture of the host country.

The mailbag repeatedly noted appreciation for the fact that the coverage wasn’t “dumbed down.” ESPN’s producers chose to aim the broadcasts at aficionados and not turn them into tutorials (as they were criticized for doing in the past).

However, when the audience swelled from its 2.8 million average to almost 15 million for the U.S.-Ghana match, the announcers could have been a bit more inclusive and explanatory of the sport’s intricacies for the uninitiated who wanted to be part of the big event. Also, the network could have been more aggressive in using the drop-down graphic under the on-screen scoreboard to personalize the players beyond the information dispensed by the commentators.

But those are nitpicks. The mailbag gave almost universal high marks to the announcers. Surprisingly, there were few complaints about British accents; however, one Scottish commentator got good grades for insight, but his brogue became almost indecipherable as the excitement on the pitch increased. Also, some of the U.S. analysts involved in ESPN’s coverage were deemed too provincial and not as knowledgeable as their European and Latino counterparts.

Ratings exceeded the previous World Cup by 50 percent, and traffic on ESPN.com exploded. ESPN3, the network’s broadband channel, broke all viewership records, with more than a half-million viewers watching daily on their computers. Was the network surprised by the popularity of its presentation?

“The ratings on television have exceeded our expectations,” said John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content. “The usage on Internet and mobile platforms shattered our forecasts. We estimate that fully one-third of the viewership on this World Cup has been out-of-home. The World Cup has provided the most significant validation to date that our ‘best screen available’ philosophy [essentially, TV at home, computer at work, mobile if you're on the go] most effectively serves the contemporary sports fan.”

If you start preparing three years in advance, deploy some of your most talented people, promote the event both to a wide external audience and inside your own corporate culture … well, good things can happen. The mailbag reflected that. But, as Drake added, “We can always do better.” Words to live by.

Not my brother’s keeper

ESPN had a successful run during the NBA playoffs, with ratings for the Finals between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers especially impressive. The championship series, won by the Lakers in seven games, averaged more than 14 million viewers per game — and Game 7 attracted more than 28 million.

But it was the Orlando-Boston series that caught the attention of the mailbag critics. E-mailers questioned the wisdom of ESPN tasking Jeff Van Gundy to provide analysis on games involving his brother Stan, coach of the Orlando Magic: “No fan of any team can expect anyone to be objective and unbiased if his brother is one of the coaches” … “If this doesn’t strike you as ludicrous, what does?” … “A stunning lack of objectivity” … “Poorly thought out” … “Absurdly pro-Orlando” … “I don’t blame Van Gundy — I’d root for my brother, too” … “Why in the world would ESPN executives even think to expose themselves to this kind of conflict?”

We put those questions to Norby Williamson, ESPN’s executive vice president for studio and remote production.

“We clearly understand that a segment of fans would feel that a conflict and bias might be present,” Williamson said. “We took careful steps to be transparent to viewers. It was a tough decision, but we believed that keeping our team together would provide the best telecast. With four voices [including Van Gundy's], we believed that Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Doris Burke would provide balance, information and an objective mix to the telecast.

“When we took into account past performance, credibility in the sport, transparency with the audience and our overall obligation to viewers, we determined that allowing Jeff to work was the best approach. We thought this would provide the most informative and entertaining telecast.”

That raises more questions. Although the other three voices could provide balance if Van Gundy strayed, what added pressure does that apply to the booth when a fellow announcer is related to a participating coach? Could this additional concern break up the normal flow in the booth, causing the announcers to overcompensate for the need to be balanced? Will they fail to be as aggressively critical because of a subconscious desire not to offend a broadcasting partner?

Commenting live for two hours is tough enough without adding to the complexity. In this case, ESPN clearly felt the reward was worth the risk.

“We wanted to have our top announce team on our most important games,” said Bob Rauscher, ESPN’s coordinating producer for the NBA telecasts. “Having a former player [Jackson] and a former coach [Van Gundy] in the booth allows us to provide the viewer with different, diverse perspectives and multiple points of view as they break down the intricacies of the game. They also bring distinct personalities. What’s important is to remain transparent and professional — and we had confidence in Jeff’s ability to do just that.”

But transparency, though important, isn’t the sole criterion. Yes, you’ve acknowledged a conflict, but a major goal of any telecast is to provide a positive viewing experience for a broad audience. Van Gundy’s presence ran counter to that — at the very least, Celtics fans were challenged to accept that the announcing was unbiased. Watching a broadcast you perceive to be biased against “your” team can be infuriating and can cause you to question everything that’s said.

The flip side is that fans can read bias into almost anything said negatively about “their” teams. The most frequent comments to the mailbag concern announcer bias. Some make valid, cogent, astute observations. Others can be chalked up to overzealous team loyalty — no crime for a real fan.

But charges of bias can’t simply be sloughed off by Bristol as the rantings of fanatics. In today’s media landscape, viewers don’t tune in to games for the announcers. They come for the event itself — and the commentators either add to their pleasure … or detract from it. Over time, most fans develop favorites and whipping boys. It’s difficult to change a negative impression into a positive one, but for announcers, positive reactions can go sour quickly.

Interestingly, although the Van Gundy conflict was front and center in the mailbag, there was no reference to that of Magic Johnson, who worked for ESPN as a studio analyst. His partial ownership of the Lakers was also transparently disclosed … yet not a peep of protest. Perhaps viewers accepted Johnson’s bias because his entire professional basketball identity is linked to the Lakers and/or because his involvement in the broadcasts was limited to pregame/halftime/postgame appearances as part of a roundtable discussion. Van Gundy’s identity, however, is that of a former coach, and his role was to provide commentary throughout an entire game. Perhaps one of the mailbag messages is that a higher bar of objectivity is required for in-game commentators.

ESPN’s decision to use Van Gundy resides in that elusive gray area. The network justified it with transparency and the desire to put its best talent on the court — solid arguments. But if the goal is to engage a wider audience, was the agita worthwhile?

Whether the telecast was actually biased is subjective, but that’s immaterial. Van Gundy’s mere presence created the appearance of conflict for many viewers. Fans didn’t tune in to hear his comments, and they didn’t tune out because of his conflict. But they came for just one reason: to watch the game. Conflicts such as these decrease the enjoyment for a not-inconsequential portion of the audience, and that is germane. Pretending it is not material is myopic.

Anatomy of an insult

Nothing is more galling for a sports fan than being engrossed in a live event only to have it hijacked in midflight. At 9:49 p.m. ET on June 25, ESPN did just that to 837,000 ardent fans watching the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. With less than two laps to go in the men’s 5,000-meter run, the network cut away to live coverage of the final three outs of a no-hitter pitched by Arizona’s Edwin Jackson. The track viewers were suddenly transported to the ninth inning of the Diamondbacks’ eventual 1-0 victory over Tampa Bay. The excitement was palpable as Jackson induced a strikeout and a fly out, gave up a walk, then got Jason Bartlett to ground out. Pandemonium ensued as Jackson etched his name into baseball history.

ESPN’s coup provided a memorable service … to baseball fans. Unfortunately, it was an insulting disservice to the track audience, and the mailbag quickly reflected that with a barrage of comments. Track viewers were livid. Some called it “unprofessional” and “arrogant” and “a slap in the face.” Others: “If I wanted to watch baseball I would have watched baseball” … “It shows no respect for track fans” … “I guess the U.S. championships was just filler programming until something better came along.”

The offense was compounded when, after a seven-minute baseball cut-in, the network went directly to “Baseball Tonight,” forcing the track audience to wait another 39 minutes to see a 60-second recap of the 5,000 and results of the 100-meter dash. You could not choreograph a better way to alienate an audience. The ESPN decision has repercussions, creating ill will and straining loyalty.

What was the rationale behind cutting away to the no-hit bid?

“We have created a habit and a brand equity with fans knowing that ESPN will carry the ultimate moment of a breaking news story, like a no-hitter,” said Len DeLuca, ESPN’s senior vice president for programming and acquisitions. “‘Baseball Tonight’ now has competition from the MLB Network, which was updating the Jackson situation throughout the game. Fans know about developing stories from Twitter, e-mail, mobile phones and from watching The Bottom Line on ESPN.

“We wanted to be there for the final half-inning. The decision to go was the right idea, but badly executed. We did a disservice to the track and field fan. We went too early. We should have finished the 5K race, thrown to the bottom of the ninth, promising an update of the track immediately following the cut-in. We were too slow in updating the track audience, and what we gave them was too little.’”

DeLuca offered no defensiveness or excuses as to why things went so terribly wrong, saying simply that the ESPN programming team “is tasked with guiding these types of decisions in live situations. Its mission is to serve the best interests of the fan. In this particular case, we did not adequately protect the track and field fan who had invested 105 minutes in the meet. The producers on ‘Baseball Tonight’ thought the Jackson story was the lead and wanted to run with it. Programming did not insist strongly enough that after the cut-in we go back to the track and field live, giving the results of the 5,000 and showing the entire 100-meter race before starting ‘Baseball Tonight.’”

Such decisions are made in the blink of an eye. Often, they’re determined by the strength and passion of the advocates in the control room. Programming’s responsibility is the orderly execution and flow of the various elements running on the network — in contrast, a producer’s perspective totally revolves around specific telecasts, whether event or studio productions (such as “Monday Night Football” or “SportsCenter”). These two groups interact smoothly hundreds of times each week, but there can be tension, and the discussions over decisions such as this can get loud and sometimes very heated.

The producers of the track event wanted to continue serving their viewers. The “Baseball Tonight” producers anticipated the excitement and audience the no-hitter could generate if carried over directly into their broadcast. Programming played Solomon, and in this case got steamrolled by the BBTN team.

Was the move worth it? From a ratings perspective, ESPN picked up 160,000 viewers during the cut-in (many of which likely came from the College World Series being shown at the same time on ESPN2). That would only be natural — they’re baseball fans. But for BBTN, the fastest-paced, cleanest show on television, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Many viewers didn’t stay. Just 20 minutes into the program, its audience had dropped from 1 million to 750,000.

The debacle appropriately precipitated days of debriefing and discussion, with DeLuca saying the network looks at the situation “as a learning experience. We’ll continue to take risks to serve our fans and remain competitive. For the track and field fans whom we offended, they have our pledge that this is a situation in which all parties feel chastened and we will do better in the future. Promise.”

In television, as in life, doing all the things you’re theoretically or technologically capable of doing isn’t always the wisest course. Yes, being the first to cover a major milestone is terrific, but at what cost? Topping the MLB Network in this instance irritated far more people than it exhilarated.

The more logical place for the cut-in was ESPN2, where baseball fans already were congregated for coverage of the College World Series, but the network’s contract with MLB allows this type of live update on ESPN’s prime channel only. Perhaps the best place to do cut-ins is ESPNEWS, where no scheduled live events would be displaced. Securing rights for those platforms would increase value to ESPN and to the audience, and might help in expanding the network’s cable footprint. Easier said than done, but money cures most evils in sports negotiations.

The simplest but least visually attractive solution would have been to split the screen and cover the no-hitter with audio/video while allowing the track audience to at least watch the conclusion of their events. Contractually, the network could have done it this way, but risked alienating, not serving, two audiences.

As the network continues to expand, conflicts like these will only multiply, which begs the question: When do you disregard an existing audience for something deemed more important?

On the major broadcast networks, scheduled programming is typically interrupted only by the worst of the worst — assassinations, national tragedies, monumental disasters, etc. In sports, a no-hitter is a landmark event — there have been only 224 in the past 110 years. But would ESPN have cut away to Jackson’s gem during “Monday Night Football,” an NBA playoff game or a World Cup match? ESPN would be contractually precluded from doing so in these high-powered sports. Should the track audience be treated any differently?

ESPN’s ratings success is periodically pumped up by the large audiences that follow the major sports. But the network’s viewership is also dependent on the aggregation of smaller audiences that appreciate programmatic diversity. Lower-rated programs far outnumber big events in 25,000 hours of programming. The loyal fans of these “niche sports” broaden ESPN’s reach, help make the network a must-carry in cable homes, contribute to advertising rates, and ultimately feed into “SportsCenter” and other staples of a 24-hour, multiplatform Goliath.

These viewers make a commitment to watch an ESPN program, and rightfully expect to see it to conclusion. Resentment runs deep when they can’t, and ESPN should reward that audience dedication by delivering on its programming promises.

Don’t dis my sport

Certain wounds continuously fester in the mailbag. One common complaint is the perception that ESPN, since ending its 21-year relationship to carry live NHL games, has consistently and intentionally short-changed the sport’s fans on “SportsCenter”: “The network only caters to its contract partners” … “Anti-hockey bias reigns supreme” … “Troubling and disrespectful to hockey” … “ESPN should cover all sports properly on ‘SportsCenter,’ regardless who they’re in bed with.”

We asked Mark Gross, ESPN’s senior vice president and managing editor of studio production, about the drumbeat of displeasure from hockey’s loyal fans.

“As we do with all stories, we make judgments on what we think the viewer is most interested in every single night,” Gross said, “and hockey is part of that equation. We regularly have NHL plays as part of the top 10, and also offer NHL highlights on ESPN.com and local ‘SportsCenters’ on our sites for New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles.”

When the ESPN contract with the NHL ended in 2005, game coverage moved to NBC and Versus — and ESPN canceled its “NHL Tonight” program. To maintain a credible NHL presence, the network extended former coach Barry Melrose’s contract and added ex-player Matthew Barnaby as an analyst. Both provide studio analysis of hockey for “SportsCenter.” ESPN.com also added two dedicated writers, Scott Burnside and Pierre LeBrun, to the NHL beat.

Gross defended the network’s commitment to insightful NHL coverage, citing several examples, including the length of highlights for major hockey events. On New Year’s Day, even with the college football bowl frenzy, Gross noted that the network ran a highlight from the NHL Winter Classic spanning nearly five minutes, “the second longest-treatment of any single game in the show that night.” On Super Bowl Sunday, “SportsCenter” ran a two-minute hockey highlight from the Pittsburgh-Washington showdown featuring Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin.

“That was also our second-longest highlight in the show, behind only the Super Bowl,” he said. “We increase our coverage during the most important part of the year. During the playoffs, Melrose and Barnaby join our ‘SportsCenter’ anchors every single day and night to make our highlights bigger, better and smarter.”

Not surprisingly, the mailbag regularly registers complaints from fans of different teams and sports about a lack of presence on “SportsCenter.” That’s logical — you’re fans. But some limiting realities are important to consider.

Mathematics dictates that you can’t show all the games. As the signature studio show for ESPN, “SportsCenter” contains roughly 45 minutes of programming inventory. On any given night, the program contains from 15 to 20 minutes of highlights that encapsulate on average 15 contests chosen from the roughly 25 to 35 games of the day. In April, when the NHL, NBA, MLB and colleges are all in season, the producers have to whittle the highlights down from 40 to 50 choices. On some Saturdays, there might be as many as 100 games from which to choose.

Editorial decisions are made based on the importance of a game, the excitement it generates, the notoriety that accompanies it, notable performance of an individual, etc. The editorial charge is not to parcel out these slots equally between leagues and teams. The producers make the decision based on their judgment of what’s important, newsworthy and entertaining and what “SportsCenter’s” audience most wants to see — and heated discussions often surround that process.

There’s little question that hockey got more attention on ESPN when the network carried the games and the sport had its own nightly show. Did the NHL occasionally get an undeserved preference on “SportsCenter” because of the network-league relationship? Probably, but at the same time, with a nightly NHL show, “SportsCenter” also might have considered using its slots for another sport.

The mission of “SportsCenter” is to recap the biggest stories of the day. If the show’s producers do any less, they haven’t fulfilled their promise to the viewer. And although that unfortunately leads to an existential truth — you’re not going to please all the people all the time — ESPN would be wise to continuously listen to sports fans and ensure its decisions are in sync with the desires of its audience.

Until next time …

This column was originally published on ESPN.com on July 8, 2010.

The audience ratings, however, show that the number of viewers does not correspond to the prestige which TV Cultura enjoys among the rich and the opinion makers of São Paulo and Brazil. This fact seems to confirm the common feeling among the brazilian media that these people prefer to talk and write about TV Cultura instead of actually watching it.

One could argue that the audience ratings are not important. Others would go far in saying that worrying about audience is the first step into the direction to the bad quality and to the low levels of culture and education. And some would simply say that there´s no reason to worry. The unique concern of public television, they say, is the high quality of the programming grid.

It could be that way in the United States, in the United Kingdom or in any other country of the European Union, where the average of culture and education is high and generally comes from the childhood. Not in Brazil.

Let me try to explain.

On one side we have, in Brazil, the commercial broadcasters, crucially dependent of the ratings. On the other, in São Paulo’s case, we have TV Cultura, with its ratings between 1 and 2 per cent, on average, during prime time, apparently satisfied with the fact of being watched barely by a fraction of the elite which ironically is the people that has access not only to the multiple choices of cable TV but to other alternatives of information and entertainment. The majority of the people is out of the frame. In addition to the fact of being squeezed between the commercial channels and their huge dispute for the ratings, TV Cultura has a series of internal obstacles that increase even more its distance from the common viewer.

One of these obstacles is the belief of TV Culturas’s producers that the common viewer is as cult and well-informed as them. The result of this misconception is the lack of measures to inspire and to seduce the viewer.  The producers don’t build bridges for the crossing of the viewer from the war of commercial TV to the contents of culture and citizenship of TV Cultura. There are many walls, instead.

Another obstacle is the fact that TV Cultura usually does not notice that its contents of quality, because of its more complex nature, require more creativity, more technology , more visual impact and less operational problems.

The systematic observation of the programming also gave me the opportunity to identify a sort of experimentalism with no criteria and intellectually arrogant that impregnated the environment of the corporation as time went by. Based on the “license” of the statutory commitment of the institution with the cultural diversity, the programming grid many times doesn’t take into consideration the crucial demands required by the television real communication. In many cases, these programs are documentaries originally produced for cinema and, due to the fact that they’re already paid by the government, they literally don’t need audience. Any king of audience.

My professional experience in TV Globo, Brazil’s largest TV network, taught me that we are not neither we will be british viewers, despite the fact that this condition is not necessarily a problem. Also differently from the newspaper’s readers, the brazilian viewer has a remote control on hand and is much more impatient and implacable than we could imagine. And sometimes he is right when he decides to change the channel.

Therefore the task of bring the common viewer to the contents of TV Cultura without ignore the technical lessons and powerful seduction of the commercial channels, cannot be considered, a priori, an impossible or an absurd task. Neither can be demonized as automatic shameful intellectual and artistic concession.  Yes, instead of sending the “ignorant ungrateful” viewer to the commercial rubbish and sleep in peace with the conscience, the producers and editors of TV Cultura have the obligation of increase the audience. Being a public television and having to deal with low budgets cannot exempt TV Cultura of its main mission. Neither is the fact of being a sort of playground of the elite, far from the majority of the citizen viewers and tax payers who, at the end of the day, are the ones who keep it working.

I was hired to open the bridges for these viewers and tax payers. And it is in their name that I will work until the end of this fantastic experience.

But in today’s newsroom, with its relentless online focus, editors get hourly reports on traffic to The Post’s Web site. When audience numbers dip below goals, devices are employed to draw visitors. Photos of Anna Chapman serve as a magnet for those searching for news about the attractive Russian spy. A photo gallery from Lindsay Lohan’s tearful court appearance creates a traffic bump (a click on each image counts as a page view). A gimmicky, unscientific “Post User Poll” invites readers to vote on Lohan’s jail term. Search requests from across the vast Web are monitored so editors know what users want most. One day last week, the hot search term was “LeBron.” Editors made sure the home page featured NBA superstar LeBron James as he prepared to announce which team he would join.

In the Internet age, readers rule. And with The Post’s future so dependent on growing its Web audience, why shouldn’t the customer be king?

But this relentless focus on giving readers what they want has exposed confusion and concern within The Post’s newsroom about journalistic standards. Many Web-focused staffers are more inclined to post a story that is not fully verified, simply because it’s the buzz on the Web and will draw traffic. Veterans, steeped in a print culture, worry that a fixation on traffic-driving celebrities will cheapen The Post brand and lessen its commitment to public service journalism. If traffic ends up guiding coverage, they wonder, will The Post choose not to pursue some important stories because they’re “dull”?

Ken Doctor, a Web-savvy news industry analyst, said using data to determine reader desires is invaluable. But “important to me, as someone who cares about journalism, is that these new tools not be left to those who don’t have a public-service aspect to their business.”

Raju Narisetti, the managing editor in charge of the Web site, insisted The Post’s “brand and its ethics and rigor” are secure. He noted that expanding the audience exposes more people to The Post’s journalism, including its ambitious investigative projects. And he correctly cautioned that The Post’s “ability to fund and do good journalism is ultimately at risk” if it isn’t supported by a viable, sustainable online business.

The Post’s newspaper circulation has been steadily eroding while its online audience has remained flat in recent years. Increasing the Web audience is critical to attracting advertising to offset declines in print revenue. The Post has set an ambitious October goal of boosting online traffic 25 percent from a year earlier. Through June, total unique visitors were up 16.7 percent for the year.

From inside Narisetti’s glass-fronted office, a large computer screen constantly updates Web data for the staff to see. This “Daily Trending Report” shows about 100 measurements of Post online traffic for everything from stories to videos to blogs. Green arrows, pointing up, indicate gains. Red arrows, pointing down, signal declines. The pressure to hit targets is unrelenting. That’s what is fueling newsroom concern about standards.

Journalistic contrivances, such as celebrity photo galleries or cooked-up stories speculating whether Britain’s Prince William will marry, strike me as relatively harmless.

Of more concern is the view that partially reported stories can be posted online because, if inaccurate, they can be quickly updated or revised. Yet there’s some logic to doing this. Unlike newspapers, the Web is continuously updating and self-correcting. And if readers can’t reliably find hot-topic stories on The Post’s site, they’ll go elsewhere.

Online executive producer Katharine Zaleski said that “we should be as sure as we can be” before posting a story. But, she added, it’s critical that The Post’s site carry “what’s being talked about” even if stories aren’t fully developed.

That approach, at odds with traditional journalism, reflects the reality that newsrooms are moving into uncharted territory where online standards must evolve.

My advice to The Post: Lead the discussion.

There should be robust newsroom dialogue, of course. But as Doctor suggests, readers also should be invited into the conversation. On its site, The Post should explain how it uses metrics to shape content. Armed with that knowledge, readers can offer feedback.

The Post wants to know as much as possible about what its Web readers want. That should include what they think about preserving time-honored standards and ethics in the online world.

This column was originally published in the Washington Post on July 11, 2010.

The farmer was quoted by his first name in a story about Afghans cooperating with the Americans against the Taliban.

NPR’s military correspondent, Tom Bowman, has been embedded with different American military units this month trying to tell the story of the U.S. effort to drive the Taliban out of the Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan.

Bowman’s 7-minute piece last week on All Things Considered took listeners along on a five-day Green Beret patrol with Afghan commandos moving toward Ezabad, a village that is right in the middle of Taliban country.

“Over the coming months,” said Bowman on air, “Eli and his team hope to create an armed community watch program in the village as another line of defense against the Taliban. Similar watch groups are up and running in the farming areas north of Kandahar city. The Green Berets are working, literally, one village at a time.”

Eli is a 32-year-old Green Beret from Idaho who Bowman interviewed.  Bowman did not use Eli’s last name for security reasons.

But Bowman did name a farmer who Eli and his team were trying to recruit for an armed security watch against the Taliban.

BOWMAN: The farmer’s name is Nabi. He’s tall, thin and nervous. He squats on a mat inside his house, together with the soldiers. The Americans ask him about the Taliban. He says they slip into the village quietly. They intimidate the villagers. They’ll send what’s known as a night letter, a written threat to beat or kill anyone who supports the Americans.

NABI: (Through translator) They will drop night letters in the mosque and they told everybody, hey, I don’t want to see anybody help out American guys and, you know, staying with them and talking to them. So, I don’t want to see anybody around here doing that.

BOWMAN: Here in Ezabad, some of the villagers support the Taliban. Others are just scared and unwilling to choose sides. Eli asks Nabi to side with the Afghan government and join an armed security watch to help the village fight the Taliban. Nabi won’t commit. Eli isn’t about to let him off so easily.

ELI: Okay, hey, is he ever going to come have lunch with me and the men?

NABI: (Through translator) He says I’m not sure, but I’ll be there.

ELI: How about tomorrow so we can plan on it? At one 1:00?

Unidentified Man: (Speaking foreign language)

BOWMAN: Sure enough, the next day, Nabi visits the American compound and says he’ll join the armed community watch. It’s one small victory for the Green Berets.

Tom Bowman, NPR News, Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

Lt. Col. Kraig Kenworthy (USMC) called to say he was infuriated that NPR used the farmer’s first name. Kenworthy complained that by revealing the farmer’s name and location, Bowman had essentially put a target on his forehead that meant he would be made an example of by the Taliban.

Rather than minimize harm, Kenworthy said NPR demonstrated a “frivolity for life.”

Bowman, who is in Afghanistan on a 5-week assignment accompanying U.S. military units, replied by email that he had asked the Special Forces unit he was with if it would be ok to use the farmer’s first name.

“They said no problem,” said Bowman. “Again, this guy is taking part in a very PUBLIC effort: community watch program, where he will essentially take up arms against the Taliban, and walk around his village. This guy is in no way a secret source of some kind.”

Bowman and his editor, Bruce Auster, said this was not a tough call for them because people in the village of Ezabad already knew the farmer had decided to work with the Americans.

“This case did not raise the issue in the way other examples might,” said Auster. “The chief reason is that the farmer in the story was signing up for a very visible role with the Americans. People in the village where he lived would know about it. So we were not revealing anything that the man wasn’t making public himself.”

The Green Beret unit Bowman was with did not complain about the story after hearing it.

I asked J.D. Gordon, a retired Navy Commander and former Pentagon spokesman, if he felt NPR had endangered the farmer.

“At a quick glance, it does appear that NPR was within its rights to use the Afghan farmer’s first name in the story about the patrol with U.S. forces,” said Gordon. “Tom Bowman interviewed the farmer ‘on-the-record’ alongside the U.S. soldier, who also used a first name. If there was any objection to the interview or a request that his name not be used, the farmer could have made that abundantly clear at the time. Furthermore, Mr. Bowman states that he clarified his intent to use the farmer’s first name with the U.S. forces at the scene, who could have also raised an objection at that time.”

This is an example where NPR did discuss how to identify the farmer but thought it was important to humanize him by sharing his first name.

Cases such as this one require serious consideration. Not giving any information about the farmer (for example simply calling him “a farmer”) or identifying him only  by his first name would not have lent the kind of credibility that comes with a first and last name.

But, as Lt. Col. Kenworthy argued, in some cases giving any identifying information can make someone vulnerable to retaliation – and the Taliban have a long history of killing those perceived as cooperating with the Americans or the Afghan government.

Most important, in this case, is that Auster and Bowman thought about the potential impact, consulted with the military, and weighed all the relevant considerations. They are accountable for their decision, which was a reasonable one under the circumstances.

By the way, Bowman and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson have done some terrific reporting in Afghanistan often putting themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis. One might question some judgment calls, but overall they have given NPR listeners important information about a difficult, undercovered and troubling war.

This column was originally published on NPR.org on June 24, 2010.