The spring weather in Washington is fickle, alternating between high summer heat and cold winds off the Potomac, as 35 gray-haired media ombudsmen from twelve countries meet for the annual ONO conference.
And many cold, hard facts are presented in the wake of the layoff of 12 ombudsmen in the last year.
The reason is the increasingly troubled U.S. market, where newspapers’ sales are down (many have gone out of business) and they are losing enormous ad revenues, and Internet sites, blogs and Web TV are increasingly taking over.
Newspapers are closing their doors, the number of staff is being decimated, ombudsmen are being fired, laid off or transferred to other positions.
The Washington Post, for example, lost 40 million dollars in advertising revenue during just the first quarter of this year.
The U.S. ombudsmen are quite worried and the whole conference was colored by this anxiety but also by many discussions and suggestions about how media ombudsmen can survive and whether they will have a future? Most say yes, but it will hardly work in the future to just do things the old way, based on opinion columns and corrections.
How will ombudsmen adapt to be an important part of the new media landscape?
Of the 35 ombudsmen (all members of the ONO – the Organization of News Ombudsmen), 12 work for TV and other broadcast media. And Brazil’s Mara Gama works with the Internet.
Unfortunately, I am the only Swede now that Lilian Ohrstrom at the newspaper Dagens Nyheter has retired and not been replaced and Claes Elfsberg at the SVT channel has returned to his old anchor position on the Rapport television program without a successor.
But I have a few colleagues from the other Nordic countries – Tarmu Tammerk has been the ombudsman for the Estonian Public Broadcasting Company, ERR, for a good year, Jacob Mollerup at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation [radio], and Lars Bennike who is new in the job of Viewers’ Ombudsman at Denmark’s TV2. Both of those positions are mandated in the agreement with the Danish government.
Tarmu has one radio program per month. Jacob is on the radio now and then. Like most ombudsmen, Lars is relegated to the Web.
Consuela Cepeda m Colombia and I are the only ones who have our own television programs. Consuela’s program, which is broadcast late in the evening on Fridays, has 1.5 million viewers – really puts me to shame…
On the whole, the forms of employment, terms, and the official titles for ombudsmen differ from country to country. For example, there are ombudsmen who are hired for a set term, who are hired by the board of directors, and who cannot work at the company after their term as ombudsman is up.
Many ombudsmen are more lawyers than journalists and also have more legalistic job duties.
Most of them have a background similar to mine – they have worked at the company for a long time, many have held various management positions.
Washington is a tremendously friendly town. People are quicker to help out and help lost tourists find their way: “Over there at the next intersection is the subway, three blocks in that direction to the National Museum of the American Indian” (like so many museums in the U.S., an amazing place). But the city surrounding the important government and administration offices is very ugly with big, gigantic buildings that look like something from the former Eastern Bloc; one of the worst examples is the FBI building, which looks like an overgrown parking garage.
And down by the Potomac River, where the beautiful, glassy, new Swedish embassy is located. It is shady and green and very idyllic. Press Attache Stig Bergling gives my wife and me the tour and explains the thinking behind it – light and airy, clear, transparent and very Swedish, of course, with modern and functional art and different themes.
And in cozy Georgetown we can eat crab cakes at the restaurant where almost all of the presidents have had their own table and where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline. Yes, a lot of it has to do with the ombudsman’s new role, but what always makes the most difference is the everyday on-the-job experience.
A lot is the same everywhere in the world; the consumers – the viewers/listeners/readers – have similar complaints and opinions that have to do with ethics and morals and poor taste.
Everyone also agrees that an ombudsman must address: Errors – facts, names, conclusions, unfairness and bias. And spin.
Independently, the Estonian’s experiences are similar to mine when it comes to contact with the viewers/listeners. There is a blend of minor and major problems. A lot [of complaints] have to do with the background music being too loud, when a show is aired, who did what, what the various pieces of music are called, mistakes involving people’s names and places, subtitles, translation.
But also trickier things like impartiality (does the company take a political position?). TV4 viewers usually accuse TV4 of going too easy on both the left and the right), what can you joke about, what are the limits for what the audience, and especially children, can take when it comes to violence and sex at times of day when there’s a young audience in front of the TV.
The discussions about the shared experiences of ombudsmen and especially the future dominate. Professor and associate ONO member Ed Wasserman has many thoughts about the future, which entail including in ONO all sorts of media analysts and bloggers and thinkers who argue the ethics of war and morals and freedom of the press. And that all large news organizations should be urged to join the ONO: membership will confer on them a kind of seal of quality.
The last morning in Washington, in a conference room at the New York Times’ D.C. office on I Street, the emphasis is on getting more members to join.
There are over 100 ombudsmen globally, but only about 70 are in the ONO. The French, who have several TV ombudsmen, have left the organization. The main reason why U.S. ombudsmen dominate is that all the proceedings, discussions and presentations take place in English. Now a survey will be done to see who should join.
A brochure titled “What is the ONO and what is the point of the ONO?” will be printed.
There are new members out there, and the French, Spanish and Portuguese must be invited to join again. A number of media companies from various countries in Africa want ombudsmen and have requested help from the ONO.
And in a few weeks I will be meeting the newly appointed ombudsman for RTV in Slovenia, Misa Molk, here in Stockholm.
Next year will be the ONO conference’s 30th anniversary. It will be held in Capetown, South Africa.
