Face to face with tragedy
Many of the images coming out of Haiti are disturbing, graphically showing the grim reality and magnitude of death, destruction, and human suffering caused by last month’s earthquake. For some readers of The New York Times, the photographs have been exploitive and sensationalistic.
“The numerous photographs printed in The Times showing the dead strewn about the streets of Port-au-Prince are unnecessary, unethical, unkind and inhumane,” wrote one reader. And another, “If this had happened in California, I cannot imagine a similar depiction of half-clothed bodies splayed out for the camera. What are you thinking?”
Yet other readers are grateful for the shocking pictures, even as they were deeply troubled by them. One reader suggested the images serve as motivation to spur people to take action — “How else can you motivate or inspire someone like me to donate money to help out in Haiti?”
The Times’ public editor, Clark Hoyt, notes that situations such as this present photographers and editors with the challenge of telling the unsanitized truth without crossing into the offensive and truly exploitive.
Why the letters page is still a male stronghold
Readers do not necessarily suspect a sexist conspiracy at the Observer, but they do wonder why the paper publishes more letters from men than from women. “Are letters from men more interesting and relevant and therefore more likely to be selected?” asked one reader.
According to Observer Readers’ Editor Stephen Pritchard, men write many more letters to the paper than women, so they probably stand a better chance of getting published. Additionally, the serial letter writers, those who write every week and sometimes every day, are exclusively male. Since most letters are written in response to pieces in the paper, Pritchard wonders if this says something about its content appealing more to men than women? “We’ll only know if many more women write to tell us.”
Noting ‘non-standard’ English troubles some readers
Kansas City Star readers prefer the newspaper avoid slang, jargon, abbreviations and improper English. Readers’ Representative Derek Donovan adds to that list neologism and terminology unique to certain professions. And when it comes to slang and dialects, things get more complex.
Informal language can enliven dull writing, but it should fit the situation appropriately. As Donovan notes, “There’s a good counter-argument that these informal usages are an undeniable part of everyone’s daily life, and journalism shouldn’t always shy away from them. But here, you have to pick and choose where it’s appropriate.”
ONO president promotes ombudsmanship in U.K.
ONO President Stephen Pritchard participated in the annual meeting of the UK Branch of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, a panel of expert speakers on technological and commercial trends in both electronic and print journalism over the first decade of the 21st century.
He said that apart from his counterpart at The Guardian there are no other ombudspersons in the British press, where they were common in major U.S. newspapers and there were now over 70 world-wide. News accountability, he said, was essential to maintain credibility.
Saying, ‘Yes,’ to courage in journalism, compassion and imagination
Jacqui Banaszynski, Knight Chair Professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, delivered a eulogy at the Washington, D.C., memorial service for Deborah Howell, former ombudsman for The Washington Post.
“We in journalism have lost a guiding star, “Banaszynski said. “But Deborah’s star sparkled at the center of a constellation that continues to grow and shine. Stories beget stories beget stories, and live on.
“So if I look down to find the bottom of my grief, I am looking the wrong way. I need to look up, into a universe that is infinite and eternal. And in that universe, I see not cold ash, but…
Memorials scheduled for former Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell
ONO president promotes ombudsmanship in U.K.
ONO President Stephen Pritchard participated in the annual meeting of the UK Branch of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, a panel of expert speakers on technological and commercial trends in both electronic and print journalism over the first decade of the 21st century.
He said that apart from his counterpart at The Guardian there are no other ombudspersons in the British press, where they were common in major U.S. newspapers and there were now over 70 world-wide. News accountability, he said, was essential to maintain credibility.
WebNewser comments on revamped Web site
WebNewser’s David Cohen spreads the word throughout the online journalism community about ONO’s revamped Web site and its potential for success.
Ombuds Blog comments on new Web site
The Ombuds Blog, a blog devoted to news and information about all sorts of organizational ombudsmen, has taken note of ONO’s revamped Web site. Tom Kosakowski of Los Angeles, Calif., the blog’s author, wrote “ONO promises that the new site will be an important source for media criticism and a necessary companion for navigating the news. ”
Ombudsman: Self-criticism in newspapers
By Jairo Faria Mendes
Master of Arts in communication and culture
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Few people know what an ombudsman is, but various of the biggest newspapers in the world have the column, as Le Monde (France); El Pa¡s (Spain); Washington Post, Boston Globe e Philadelphia Inquirer (USA); The London Free Press, Calgary Herald, Montreal Gazete, Toronto Star e Halifax Cronicle-Herald (Canada) for instance; and even the Russian newspapers Izvestiya, known as an official organ of the communist party of the extinguished USSR. About half of the Japanese newspapers have an ombudsman, among which the one with the biggest circulation…
Fighting the enemy within
(Andrew Finkel was until recently a Reagan–Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. He has also served as a correspondent based in Istanbul for a variety of international organisations including The Times, TIME, the Economist, and CNN. He is also one of the few foreigners to have written a regular column in the Turkish language media.)
By Andrew Finkel
IBI Global Journalist
Blaming the media when things go wrong may be an old political trick, but it is one that succeeded only too well in earning Turkey’s prime minister Tayyip Erdoðan an enthusiastic round of applause in a speech…
Death of the ombud? Only in Canada
By Jeffrey Dvorkin
ONO executive director
Are news ombuds an endangered specied. In North America, the answer now seems to be yes.
So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I agreed in May to become the first executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) in the midst of the largest economic downturn in the history of journalism.
Only a few years ago, newspapers and broadcasters around the US and Canada would point to their in-house ombuds (aka readers’ editor or public editor) as an example of openness and transparency with their readers, viewers and listeners.
In case the term is…
