Journalism's last line of defense

A nervous news industry is killing off its ombudsmen. But after facing enraged NPR listeners when I had that role, I know the public has the most to lose.

By Jeffrey Dvorkin

Read more: Media, Middle East, The New York Times, Opinion

Feb. 12, 2008 | A few weeks ago, the Baltimore Sun announced that the long-held position of news ombudsman, or readers' editor, would be abolished. Paul Moore, who held the position with integrity and enthusiasm for almost four years, was shifted over into a management position to help run the paper.

No job in journalism should be forever, and change always has some advantages. But who should look after the interests and concerns of the readers? The Sun's publisher says that there will be plenty of opportunities for readers to express views and interact with the paper. A blog is coming, designed expressly for that purpose. I have my doubts.

For more than six years, from 2000 to 2006, I was the ombudsman at National Public Radio. I learned the value of answering my own phone and personally responding to e-mails as quickly as possible. Listeners (and I heard from more than 750,000 of them) were eager to interact with a live person. They wanted someone to answer their complaints, to provide more than a pro forma corporate response. They wanted to tell someone what they were hearing -- or not hearing -- on the radio. It wasn't always frolicsome and fun-filled. The worst was during the Second Intifada, when criticism of the media in general and NPR in particular became intense, and sometimes irrational.

The Middle East has always been a difficult story to cover. There is an intensity and unpredictability about this story that isn't found in other hot-button issues. At the beginning of the Intifada, my e-mails were running 6-to-1 accusing NPR's coverage of bias in favor of Israel. But in March 2003, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Passover seder just outside Tel Aviv, killing more than 40 people. Within a day, my mail switched and began to run 8-to-1 accusing NPR of being pro-Palestinian, even though the tone and volume of the reporting had not changed.

I think the shift was due to two factors: 1) the Patriot Act appeared to silence a lot of pro-Palestinian opinion. I suddenly stopped hearing from people with Middle Eastern names. 2) The Passover bombing marked the first time in the Intifada that Israelis were killed in a specifically Jewish (as opposed to Israeli) circumstance. For many NPR listeners, that raised the existential threat of anti-Semitism and many pro-Israel and Jewish listeners responded passionately.

Some of that passion was stoked by one particular lobby group, known as CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America). This group, based in Cambridge, Mass., was particularly effective in generating real anger around NPR's reporting. Its criticisms were occasionally right, but only occasionally.

On many occasions, I would ask an irate caller if he or she had heard the story in question. I would say that in 90 percent of cases, the answer was no. They were calling me because CAMERA had told them to.

As a consequence of its campaign against NPR, CAMERA acted as the enabler for some seriously disturbed people.

For several months in 2004, I would get phone calls left on my office voice mail every Sunday night. (I published my phone number and e-mail address on the NPR Web site.) The calls were so threatening that I contacted security, who notified the FBI. The calls were traced to a pay phone booth along I-95 in Connecticut. A state trooper parked outside the phone for a couple of Sunday nights and the calls eventually stopped.

I asked a CAMERA spokeswoman if she felt that CAMERA was in any way responsible for generating this kind of reaction. She denied it and blamed NPR for inciting it with "bad journalism."

Even so, CAMERA was useful in helping me help NPR journalists understand that their evenhanded reporting could be perceived as biased. As NPR reported the Israeli and the Palestinian violence and counterviolence, many listeners considered that to be "moral equivalence." As ombudsman I tried to explain that some listeners found that repugnant and that journalistic neutrality sounded like journalistic avoidance.

At the same time, I would explain to aggrieved listeners that NPR was not on either side in this instance. One listener exclaimed, "But I want you on my side." It was not an easy time to be a partisan listener, a truth-seeking journalist, or a neutral ombudsman. But overall, I think that -- for NPR -- having an ombudsman to catch the flak was better than a defensive silence, which is how many other news organizations dealt with criticism of their coverage.

In the end, NPR's coverage of the Intifada won several journalistic awards, but that cut no ice with the critics. It took a long time for NPR to surmount its reputation as National "Palestinian" Radio with some listeners.

Being the ombudsman was a seven-day-a-week job. I would check e-mails from home on the weekend, and on vacation. As a journalistic experience, it was always important, interesting and intense. I consider being NPR's ombudsman perhaps the best journalistic experience of my career. And I know a lot of listeners were deeply appreciative that NPR took a risk by creating and supporting the position, which occasionally and intentionally made NPR journalists and management squirm. Nothing personal, guys.

Other news organizations also saw the benefit of having an ombudsman, or readers' editor. The New York Times created the position but only as a consequence of the Jayson Blair incident, when a reporter fabricated stories and bylines. Senior editors departed and Dan Okrent was hired as the first of, so far, three readers' editors. This has brought enormous credit to the Times, which other newspapers seem disinclined to follow.

The Baltimore Sun isn't alone in abolishing this important and vital position. Over the past five years, a significant number of American news organizations have looked around their newsrooms and decided that having an ombudsman was a luxury the paper just couldn't afford. I think this is shortsighted and wrong.

Next page: I sense a certain resistance among online media to having an in-house ombudsman to act as an agent for the readers