Among the many complaints logged in the last week was one from a Chelmsford woman unhappy with, of all things, the Ombudsman column. Whatever happened, she asked, to letting readers speak for themselves, with ”quotes from actual people?”
No problem, Mrs. Dunn. Here is an unvarnished sampling of some of the critiques sent in recently.
It’s called a… what?
Stephen Krensky of Lexington was reading the Jan. 9 review of the Avril Lavigne concert at the Orpheum when he was stopped by the description of what the young audience was wearing: ”skinny ties, wifebeaters, loose trousers, and pin-straight hair.” Wifebeater? For those who don’t know, it’s like a tank top or muscle shirt, only more hip.
”What bothered me is it conveys a certain acceptability for the term,” said Krensky, a writer who lives in Lexington. ”It’s not OK for the Globe to be sanctioning this – I don’t care how hip the term is.”
Ombud note: Krensky’s comment prompted in-house discussion about the role of a newspaper in echoing words that – accepted as they may be in pop culture – are rooted in stereotype or born of a misplaced glibness. In general, the Globe steers clear of such phrases, preferring, say, ”boom box” to ”ghetto blaster.” In the case of ”wifebeater,” the post-publication consensus seems to be that, from now on, the phrase is best reserved for articles on domestic violence.
Check the label
Reader Ed Duzenberry objected to the labels assigned various partisans in a Jan. 9 article on nominations to the US Court of Appeals. The piece refers to White House nominees Charles Pickering of Mississippi and Priscilla Owen of Texas as ”conservative” judges, notes Duzenberry, but refers to Senators Charles Schumer and Edward Kennedy, two critics of the nominations, as ”just plain Democrats” rather than as, say, ”liberal” Democrats.
”Let’s see some balance here,” he wrote.
Ombud note: It’s a good reminder that such labels should be applied with political parity in mind.
Speaking of the Kennedys
Stories on the Kennedy family are almost certain to bring a response, and the Jan. 5 Globe magazine cover story on the senior senator from Massachusetts was no exception. Reader complaints, and some Weblog chatter, focused on two sentences: ”If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.”
”Has your newspaper yet apologized to both the Kopechne family and the American public for the unimaginable insult of having her comforted by her murderer?” demanded reader Brady Westwater.
Ombud note: The point made by writer Charles P. Pierce, while misunderstood or unappreciated by some readers, was brutally ironic: that Kennedy’s work on behalf of the elderly has enhanced benefits for the nation’s senior citizens – and Kopechne would have become one of them.
Headed the wrong way?
The headline on Page A12 last Tuesday – ”Two Palestinians are killed by Israelis in Gaza bus attack” – brought new complaints about Middle East coverage.
”That headline so doesn’t indicate what the story is about,” said one reader. Indeed, what that headline does not make clear is that the Palestinians, not the Israelis, were the ones doing the attacking when shot by Israeli soldiers.
Ombud note: While headline writing on deadline is one of the toughest jobs at the paper, headlines about the Middle East cannot afford to be ambiguous; it will almost always be seen as intentional unfairness.
Too much
Finally, the Globe’s reporting of a recent death prompted a cry of ”Shame!” from reader Anna Reel. The background: In a Jan. 4 story in City & Region, authorities identified the nude body of a 33-year-old woman found in a cranberry bog in Halifax. A day later, the Globe noted in passing that identification had been aided by matching her fingerprints with those in a ”database of convicts.” The following day, a third story focused on the woman’s ”extensive criminal record” including 12 arrests for prostitution and two for trespassing and theft.
”Was there any need in reporting her every transgression for the last three years?” Reel asked. ”It served no purpose other than the public humiliation of the grieving family.” The story, she added, ”seemed to take lurid journalism to a new height.”
Ombud note: The woman’s past will certainly be relevant if the death is ruled a murder, but not if she died of natural causes or suicide. (Examiners found no trauma to the body; the toxicology report is pending.) Although late word of a suspect in the case made a murder declaration seem more likely, the noncompetitive nature of this story, unlike many, would have made it easy to hold the criminal history until its relevance was clear.
The ombudsman represents the readers. Her opinions and conclusions are her own.
