[Assam] The Ian Mayes Lecture 'The news ombudsman' - The Hindu

[Ram Sarangapani]

Thanks KC for forwarding those links. I have seen the photo of the vulture
and the child before- possibily in these columns. Great stuff, I agree.

Yes, there is a lot of controversy about how the media acts one way today
and another tomorrow. We are also conflicted when we perceive bias or
hostility from certain newspapers/reporters.

And quite often these perceptions are hardened when people believe there is
track record.

Now, one may be logically correct in assuming that the media's role is to
just report what they see - come what may, and that they are NOT responsible
to make things better (as in this child's case -help it, or in the case of
the young woman - to clothe her).

As logical as this may be, I think, sometimes, there is a bigger calling
...that of humanity and that of sensitivity. Things oughtn't be so cut &
dried.  After all, the media exists because of their readership. And when we
are able to help (despite our professions), we ought to.

To not do so would tantamount to missing the forest for the trees.

To cite as an example there are so many cases of  German & American soldiers
in WW II where they have helped out each other. They acted upon this (as my
Christian friends would tell me - its the Christian thing to do:))
inspite of their professions as soldiers, or strict guidelines against
aiding/abetting the enemy.

BUT....we have to be careful in our analyses:
For the media, they ought to take a lot of care in making sure that they
don't wade into sensationalism at the expense of truth.

And.... we as readers ought to expect this of the media - that they may not
report only things we like.

Well! I may be wrong.. but thats my 2 poisa

--Ram da

>Ram-da,  photojournalism have always been in the realm
>of controversy.  There are tonns of information in the
>net on this.
>I just picked up one such case.
>This (Vulture and Child) is one such photo which also
>won a pulitzer prize.  The second link gives the
>details of controversy.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5241442

http://gec.tamucc.edu/article.pl?sid=07/02/07/194207&mode=nocomment




On 12/4/07, Ram Sarangapani <assamrs at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The last few weeks, many of us have been contemplating the role that the
> news media ought to have. Many have felt that news organizations have not
> lived up their mark and have been irresponsible in their reporting.
>
> Well, those interested might be interested in this lecture by Mayes. Mayes
> makes some very valid points, and this idea of a news ombudsman is quite
> intriguing.
>
> --Ram
>
> http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/nic/indialecture.htm
>
>  Lecture presented by The Hindu in New Delhi and Chennai, January 2006
>
> "The news ombudsman – a visible presence, an independent voice"
>
>  Ian Mayes
>
> Readers' Editor,
>
> *The Guardian* & President, Organisation of News Ombudsmen (ONO)
>
>
> The ombudsman works independently within news organisations at the
> interface between readers, listeners and viewers on the one hand, and
> journalists and editors on the other. I sometimes compare the position to
> that of a referee in a football game, one that can get pretty rough at
> times. He or she – the ombudsman, that is – represents a form of
> self-regulation that differs in one important respect from all others
> relevant to the media, such as the Press Complaints Commission in the United
> Kingdom, which apply across a whole industry. It is the only kind of
> self-regulation that has the effect of building trust between a specific
> news organisation and its readership or audience, through the systematic,
> impartial and public handling of complaints, and through the open discussion
> of issues raised by readers concerning its journalism. I would put it a
> little stronger than that and say that for any news organisation that
> recognises a responsibility to the society it serves, it offers a real
> chance to build a new, more open and responsive relationship with its
> readership or audience. It is also, incidentally, something which readers
> are increasingly demanding in the new electronic environment in which email
> and quick and easy access and response are expected.
>
> That the presence of an ombudsman fosters this relationship with positive
> benefit to the employer as well as to society at large seems to be supported
> both anecdotally by ombudsmen who believe that their activities strengthen
> trust and loyalty, and by more formal tests. In a recent survey of *
> Guardian* readers, for example, 75 per cent said they believed that the
> existence of an ombudsman made the paper more responsive to their complaints
> and queries.
>
> The appointment of an ombudsman is a unilateral act by the newspaper or
> broadcast outlet that sends a strong signal to readers, listeners or
> viewers. It represents a positive answer to this question: Why should a
> newspaper or news programme that by its nature is constantly calling on
> others to be accountable for their actions not be accountable for its own
> actions? I shall say more in a moment about the benefits, the side effects
> if you like, that may flow from the appointment of an ombudsman but I want
> to emphasise here that – in my opinion and experience – any benefits depend
> on the altruism of the initial motivation. You appoint an ombudsman because
> you want your news organisation to be an honest self-correcting institution
> with dedication to getting it right and no interest in getting it wrong. To
> put it a little higher, you want to feed into the arena of public debate
> accurate information upon which the citizen can rely when he or she is
> forming an opinion on the affairs of the day. The questions for an editor or
> individual journalist are: Would I say this if I was talking directly to an
> individual reader or, say, to a respected friend, rather than communicating
> through the medium of a newspaper or broadcast programme? If I slipped into
> error wouldn't I naturally correct it?
>
> Just before we come back down to the realities and pressures of day-to-day
> journalism let me quote Savonarola on the spirit of truth: "This is a moral
> rather than a legal duty, insomuch as it is certainly a debt of honesty owed
> by every man to his neighbour…" A debt of honesty owed by every man to his
> neighbour. Could we say that truth is a debt of honesty owed by every
> newspaper to its readers….?
>
> The first step along this road is, I suggest, a very simple one – one that
> may work better if accompanied by the appointment of an ombudsman but which
> does not absolutely need one. It is the voluntary, regular and systematic
> publication of corrections: an easy matter for newspapers and now made much
> easier for broadcasters of news through the happy advent of related
> websites. One only has to look at the way in which the BBC is now using its
> website for this purpose. Why has it been so difficult for news
> organisations to take this simple step? After all – if I may quote a Spanish
> proverb – he is always right who suspects that he is always making mistakes.
> I can only suppose it is because of the strength of the cultural fallacy –
> and the strength with which, historically, it has gripped journalism – that
> the frank admission of error somehow undermines authority. There is no
> evidence for that.
>
> Indeed there is mounting evidence that it has the opposite effect: the
> Danish newspaper, *Politiken*, in two surveys which produced similar
> results, found that for the majority of its readers trust was enhanced by
> the systematic publication of corrections, and only 3 per cent of those
> surveyed said that their confidence had been undermined. *The Guardian*,
> similarly, has found that the number of readers who say they trust its news
> reporting – more than 80 per cent – is significantly higher than the
> prevailing level in Britain, which falls into single figures for the
> so-called redtop tabloids.
>
> What I believe does undermine trust among readers, listeners or viewers is
> not the admission of error – even when the error is of an extremely serious
> nature – but the discovery or revelation or forced admission of a
> significant error that has gone uncorrected. An honest piece of advice to
> readers might be: never trust a newspaper which never appears to get
> anything wrong, and treat the others with the degree of skepticism your
> experience advises. Every journalist who has ever worked in newspapers knows
> that the portrait is incomplete and misleading without the warts. The same
> goes for radio and television news. It is product of the way we work. Last
> year *The Guardian* published more than 1,600 corrections. Some of the
> larger newspapers in the United States exceed 2,000. When I began this job,
> as the first ombudsman of this kind in the history of journalism in Britain,
> a colleague from a tabloid newspaper – one that very very rarely indeed
> carries corrections – said, "Tell them about the chaos!" The way to break
> free from the culture of denial – a denial of the realities of news
> production – is to acquire the habit of correcting as you go.
>
> To come back to the football analogy. The rules of the game, in Britain as
> in many other countries, are set by the industry regulator, in this case the
> Press Complaints Commission, the PCC. These rules are embodied in a document
> correctly called the editors' code – because this again, it is important to
> emphasise, is self-regulation. It is called the editors' code because the
> editors wrote it. It applies only to printed journalism. The institution of
> ombudsman is perfectly compatible with the PCC and similar organisations. At
> *The Guardian* the editors' code, or the PCC code as it is more usually
> called, is the rule book by which the game I referee is played. In fact, *The
> Guardian* has its own editorial code – published on its website – which
> incorporates the PCC code and extends it, for example to cover declarations
> of interest, the need for reporters to avoid outside activities,
> particularly political ones which are incompatible with their
> responsibilities to *The Guardian* and its readers, and so on. Many of
> these extra provisions, going beyond the PCC code, have come in response to
> points made by readers through my office as readers' editor or ombudsman.
>
> I have mentioned corrections at some length. Most newspaper ombudsmen and
> most of those working in the broadcast media now combine a responsibility
> for corrections with a regular (in my case weekly) column or programme in
> which it is possible to discuss issues raised by readers, particularly
> ethical issues, at greater length. The reporting of suicide was one subject
> I dealt with, in fact, in several columns. Another was the manipulation of
> pictures, including one that *The Guardian* used across its front page
> taken in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack in Atocha station
> in Madrid. One advantage of the regular appearance of such columns is that
> they create a kind of running debate on the ethics of what we do, making it
> easy and normal for that sort of discussion to take place. In fact my
> columns at *The Guardian* fall into three main categories: those dealing
> with ethical issues; those explaining how different parts of *The Guardian
> * work, recently, for instance, several columns explaining aspects of the
> change from broadsheet to the Berliner format and the philosophy behind it.
> The aim of columns in this category is to inform the questions and
> criticisms that readers level at the newspaper – theoretically regular
> readers of the column should be able to ask better, more searching
> questions. And the third category of columns is that dealing with questions
> about *The Guardian'*s use and misuse of the English language.
>
> I want to come very soon to the possible benefits to the newspaper that I
> mentioned at the beginning, but just before I do that let me insert a short
> historical note:
>
> The idea of having resident ombudsmen in news organisations, although
> still taken up by only a tiny minority of publications and broadcasting
> channels, has been around for a little over 50 years. It originated, in the
> principal form in which it now exists, in the United States in the 1960s. It
> has existed in Japan, in a somewhat different form, for much longer than
> that. Most of those now practising as ombudsmen, in newspapers, television
> and radio channels around the world, owe a good deal to the American model.
> Whether they are known as ombudsmen, readers' representatives, public
> editors, or – The term I believe I invented when I took up my appointment at
> *The Guardian* in 1997 – their functions are more or less as I have
> described. Most commonly, but not always, they are appointed from within the
> news organisation. Exceptions include *The Washington Post* and *The New
> York Times*, where the ombudsman may be someone who has distinguished
> himself or herself elsewhere in the industry. *The New York Times*, of
> course, appointed its first ombudsman fairly recently in the aftermath of
> the Jayson Blair affair. I remembered the words of its managing editor
> Joseph Lelyveld in a remark made to me before all that blew up. When I asked
> him why *The New York Times* had not appointed an ombudsman he said, "We
> are the ombudsmen." The editor of The Times in Britain made a similar remark
> apparently when appointing only a few months ago someone to write a weekly
> column dealing with the readers' complaints. He rejected the title "readers'
> editor" with the reported remark, "I am the readers' editor", and settled
> for "feedback editor."
>
> The title is not the main thing. The main things are independence and
> visibility to the readers, listeners, or viewers – there seems to me little
> point in having an ombudsman if no one knows that you have one. In *The
> Guardian* my contact details appear on every day of publication, once on
> page 2 and again with the daily corrections column on the leader page of the
> paper. This is where all the corrections always appear, no matter where in
> the paper the original mistake was published.
>
> So visibility is important, and so is independence. Many of those
> practising as news ombudsmen have their independence from the editor and his
> or her team guaranteed by their organisations. In some cases this is just
> verbal or something that has been established by practice, in others
> independence is guaranteed publicly and/or contractually. My independence is
> guaranteed by the owner of *The Guardian*, the Scott Trust, and my terms
> of reference are published on the Guardian website.
>
> The great majority of practising ombudsmen belong to an international
> organisation, the Organisation of News Ombudsmen (ONO), of which I am the
> current president. It has something approaching 100 members worldwide and
> recently celebrated its 25th anniversary at a conference I hosted in London.
> Next year, in May, the conference is to be held in Sao Paulo, hosted by the
> ombudsman on Folha de Sao Paulo, reflecting a growing interest in this form
> of self-regulation in that part of the world. It also reflects eagerness on
> the part of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen to foster that interest and
> to make the accumulated experience of its members freely available to those
> who believe they might find it helpful. Such is the level of interest over
> the past few years and continuing today that ONO has recently appointed
> Jeffrey Dvorkin, the immediate past president and the ombudsman for National
> Public Radio in Washington, outreach director of the organisation.
>
> The desire to enhance trust through self-regulation is often very strong
> in countries with a difficult or complex political situation or inheritance.
> I have been involved in several pilot schemes for media self-regulation in
> several Russian regions. A book of my columns, mainly those dealing with
> ethical issues, was published earlier this year in Russian by the Moscow
> Media Law and Policy Institution, and this, I am told, helped to persuade
> *Isvestia* to appoint an editor to write a weekly column discussing
> readers' complaints and the response of the relevant editors. For many
> reasons I believe this form of self-regulation is an idea whose time has
> come.
>
> Let me finally come to one of the welcome effects that the activities of
> an ombudsman can bring. The head of The Guardian's legal affairs department
> believes that the prompt action that I am able to take to deal with serious
> complaints reduces the number of people seeking to sue the paper for libel
> and defamation by between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. Her initial estimate
> was based on a comparison between her caseload in the year before my
> appointment, and that in my first year. She believes this effect continues,
> and something similar is reported by some of the other ombudsmen, from
> California to Istanbul. There is almost certainly also a reduction in the
> number of complaints going directly to, or going on to, the industry
> regulator where one exists. I certainly believe that I reduce the number of
> complaints relating to The Guardian that go to the Press Complaints
> Commission in Britain. Theoretically it is possible for a complaint against
> The Guardian to come first to me, then if not satisfied, to go to the Press
> Complaints Commission, and if still not satisfied, to go to law. In the
> eight years that I have been ombudsman at The Guardian I think only three or
> four people have gone through all three stages. On the rare occasions that
> they have done that and a complaint has been upheld, damages have been
> reduced because of the efforts already made to satisfy the complainant. It
> is worth saying here that the idea that the recognition of a justified
> complaint and the publication of a quick and sincere apology aggravate
> matters and prompt litigation is in my experience almost totally false.
> Other ombudsmen feel the same. All the evidence suggests it has the opposite
> effect.
>
> My view is that the greater the real and perceived independence of the
> ombudsman, the greater those benefits are likely to be. Thinking people want
> responsive, responsible and accountable news organisations. I believe
> ombudsmen are one way to achieve that.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
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