I have spent most of this week in Paris at the annual conference of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen which I have just joined, a body with the wonderfully expressive acronym Ono. I imagined that its members would greet each other in salute with an open hand slapped to the forehead, as in “I don’t believe it”. One of the main reasons I joined was to meet others of the same species, occupying the fretful and often lonely ground between readers and listeners or viewers and their newspapers or broadcasting organisations. It turned out that most of the others feel a similar need to huddle together now and again.
One session of the conference, in fact, was to address the isolation and stress of the job, a job that Ono itself defines like this: “A news ombudsman receives and investigates complaints from newspaper readers or listeners or viewers of radio and television stations about accuracy, fairness, balance and good taste in news coverage. He or she recommends appropriate remedies or responses to correct or clarify news reports.”
Almost all the 35 ombudsmen who responded to a recent Ono survey said they felt isolated within their organisations. Many used the word “defensive” in describing the response of journalists to their approach. I quote from a summary of the findings: “All or almost all of the ombudsmen are aware of journalists’ aversion to public criticism. Some journalists also consider themselves intellectually superior toward the public.” These are symptoms of the culture that we have been trying to change at the Guardian.
Only a few ombudsmen thought they had no effect on the work of journalists. The majority thought that the feedback they provided from readers had increased respect for the individual and for privacy, and had increased sensitivity in other areas, for example in references to victims of violence.
Most of the ombudsmen (men and women), having expressed all their reservations, clearly loved the work and one or two, with distinguished and varied careers in journalism to their credit, said that it was the best and, in some ways, most rewarding job they had ever had.
Ombudsmen in journalism are a relatively new idea. The mass circulation Tokyo paper, Yomiuri Shimbun, has had a 28-member ombudsman committee to hear complaints and to liaise daily with editors since 1951. It is the largest newspaper in the world, with a circulation of more than 10m. One of its ombudsmen was at the conference in Paris.
The first newspaper ombudsman in the western hemisphere seems to have been appointed to serve the readers of the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times in 1967.
Ono was founded in 1980. It has more than 70 members, almost 50 of whom attended the Paris meeting. Ono has so far been largely an American organisation but is now making active efforts to foster the appointment of ombudsmen in other parts of the world. It has three members in the United Kingdom: me and the ombudsmen from the Sun and the News of the World, soon to be joined, I hope, by the recently appointed readers’ editors of the Observer and the Mirror.
Ono has been taking modest steps forward in Europe. The French newspaper Le Monde has had an ombudsman for a long time (by the way, its pages pass through five stages of proof reading before they are considered fit for publication). The host of the conference was France Tlvision, which now has ombudsmen in place and broadcasts a regular programme to discuss issues raised by viewers. One of the sessions was addressed by the Palestinian cameraman who, while filming for France Tlvision, took the controversial pictures of the Palestinian boy being shot as his father attempted to protect him.
Not every news organisation has an ombudsman. The New York Times, a most rigorous corrector of itself, does not. I have grown more rather than less convinced in the past three and a half years that it is a good idea to have one. I also believe that, if possible, the ombudsman should be placed in a position of declared and protected independence with a visible presence in his or her paper or broadcasting organisation. Newspapers, by admitting fallibility, increase trust.
It is worth having a look at the Ono website, where you will find out much more about the organisation and see representative articles by its members — www.newsombudsmen.org is the address.
