The Organisation of News Ombudsmen held its 25th anniversary conference in London, hosted by the Guardian, this week. Possibly the most significant thing that delegates did Ill explain why I think so was to vote to hold the conference next year in São Paulo, Brazil. In doing so they departed from the practice of holding their conferences alternately inside and outside the United States, and more usually of holding two out of every three annual meetings in the United States.
The reasons for the development of this pattern are not hard to find. The Organisation of News Ombudsmen, ONO, began in the United States. It is registered in the state of California and has to a very significant degree been developed by ombudsmen, readers representatives and public editors, across the United States, extending into Canada. However, there are still fewer than 60 ombudsmen in the US among well over 1,000 newspapers alone, despite the lead set by such titles as the LA Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune.
In that context my American colleagues have felt the need to balance outreach against the clear need to tend their own garden. It is easy too, to hang on to the idea of the United States as a land of abundance with newspapers, television and radio networks wealthy enough to send their ombudsmen more or less anywhere in the world at whatever cost. In fact, economic realities, perhaps more than any other factor, often drastically thin out the number of US delegates when the conference is held outside North America.
Over the years, ONO has increasingly opened its doors to ombudsmen appointed by news organisations in other parts of the world, or offered associate membership to the representatives of organisations that are seeking to foster forms of self-regulation in the news media elsewhere in the world. At intervals the conference has gone, just in recent years, to Paris, Istanbul and now to London, still in global terms fairly closely huddled. The demand is for the conference to be held more frequently outside the United States, or even that this should be discounted as a factor altogether and that, rather like the Olympic bid, the conference should go to the home city of the most persuasive bidding ombudsman, with need a factor taken into account.
Next year the initial suggestion was that it should return to the United States, to San Francisco, which subsequently withdrew, to be replaced by Portland, Oregon. This year, however, delegates at the members meeting, once they became aware that São Paulo wanted to host the conference, made it as plain as they could that that was where they wanted the conference to go. The ONO conference has never been held in South America. The delegate from Portland, Michael Arrieta-Walden, now the vice-president of ONO, bowed out gracefully, in favour of the delegate from São Paulo, Brazil, Marcelo Beraba. Their warm handshake may not sound like much to you but in terms of the development of ONO as a truly international organisation I believe it was a significant moment.
Marcelo Beraba, the ombudsman on the daily Fohla de São Paulo, now a board member of ONO, whom I met in Lima in March at a conference on media self-regulation, argued both the need and opportunity for growth in Latin America. He said a survey which he conducted, with help from an associate member of Ono in Mexico, Gerardo Albarrn, saw a possible total of 19 ombudsman in eight countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia (where Ono already has members), Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Six of them would be in Brazil: three in newspapers, two in radio stations, and one recently introduced, Osvaldo Martins of TV Cultura in São Paulo, who was also at the conference here in London.
Beraba listed his reasons why the conference should be held in São Paulo: because the institution of ombudsmen is rare or non-existent in the countries where it is most needed; because it is an essentially American and European institution that needs the participation of others with different cultural perspectives; to support a Latin American journalism that is as fragile as its democracies; because more than ever educated society is pressing for media with more balance, quality and diversity; because self-regulation is a shield against government control and direction.
Ono is being invited to extend its horizon. Id bet my bottom dollar that it will.
Ian Mayes is the newly elected president of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen.
