The second annual Philip M. Foisie Memorial Lecture was delivered on May 6, 1997, at the Barcelona International Press Centre, Barcelona, Spain, by Jordan "Buzz" Rizer, director of the American Forces Information Service, the U.S. Defense Department agency that supports The European and Pacific Stars and Stripes newspapers.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am a publisher. As such, I have two important functions. Both are of equal importance and really relate to each other. The first is to provide for journalistic needs, both news and opinion, of our readers, a largely military audience. The second is to earn and manage the funds necessary to have a viable paper with quality content.

Let me first tell you how honored I am to be asked to deliver the Philip Foisie address. As the publisher of the Stars and Stripes overseas newspapers, I am directed to do my best to ensure that these are First Amendment newspapers and that they reflect the same content of newspapers at home. In trying to protect and preserve the newspapers, I believe that I act in the spirit of Phil Foisie.

Phil Foisie was the first foreign editor of the Washington Post and creator of that paper's foreign service. He initiated the Post's ombudsman position, edited the International Herald Tribune, and served as the first Ombudsman of The Stars and Stripes. Phil devoted his professional life and a good deal of his personal life to the advocacy for and defense of the First Amendment.

Someone once asked Phil what was his religion. He replied, "I am a journalist." I guess that means that God is a publisher. The Stars and Stripes are unique. Let me take a moment to tell you about them. They are independent First Amendment newspapers which are charged with informing their readers as fully, aggressively and as well as the newspapers that you represent.

European Stars and Stripes has nearly 50,000 readers daily and is delivered in nine countries. Pacific Stars and Stripes has a circulation of about 25,000 and is delivered in 11 countries spread halfway around the globe. No wonder they refer to it as "the ultimate paper route."

What really makes the two Stars and Stripes different is that they exist only through the efforts of the U.S. Government. Many of our employees receive pay and benefits via the government. Often they live in housing supplied by the military. They utilize the military exchanges and commissaries, their children attend Department of Defense schools. And yet, the papers remain fully independent.

Which is not to say that the unique situation doesn't cause some tension and occasional awkward moments. For those of you who work for traditional newspapers, imagine if your paper reported on corruption and incompetence in City Hall. And the Mayor knew that, nonetheless, he had to pay, feed and house your reporters and give them a raise for the expose of his incompetence. Such a paradox can give the Mayor conflicted feelings to say the least.

Given this awkward relationship, why would the government want to continue it? Because it believes in the importance of a free press and it knows that there is no other way to provide such a quality service to the troops.

Over the years, on many occasions, we have looked for other ways of providing quality newspapers to the troops. In a perfect world, the government would not be in this business. But the world is not perfect. We have learned that no business could deliver a daily newspaper to our farflung troops and no commercial enterprise would do so at a price that would be affordable to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Existing overseas English-language papers such as USA Today simply cannot do what Stripes does...and wouldn't provide the unique military information that our people value so much.

The relationship between the government and the newspaper is always a tricky one. Back in the late 1980s, a number of allegations arose claiming that there were efforts on the part of the military to inappropriately influence the content of Stars and Stripes. In order to minimize that possibility and to provide a mechanism for ensuring the independence of our papers, I recommended the creation of the Stars and Stripes ombudsman. Phil Foisie honored us by accepting that position.

What is the role of the ombudsman? He or she represents the reader -- examines the journalistic process -- and most of all -- he or she must love the publisher -- love the publisher enough to tell the paper -- in the paper -- when it is wrong. Richard Nixon might have completed his full term and lived on as an honored elder statesman if those around him loved him enough to tell him when he was wrong -- even if this inspired his wrath and deeply hurt him. Blind loyalty is just that. It is blind!

Of course, our ombudsman's role is not just to make sure that the government does right, but also ensures the reporters and editors perform their jobs with professionalism.

In all my many years, I have never met a group of people who had thinner skins than journalists -- but good journalists take their lumps and learn by their mistakes or live with their criticisms. Fairminded publishers and editors will print honest criticism even if they do not completely accept the criticism. I once heard someone say that "I not only deny the allegations, but I defy the alligators."

The primary role of the ombudsman is to serve as a judge. He or she represents the readers -- loves the publisher -- and respects the role of good and honest journalism.

The ombudsman is the guardian of the process! He or she must answer a baker's dozen of key questions. The questions are:

1. Should the paper have followed a particular story -- was it important for readers to know? Was it under-played or over-played?
2. Was the story inappropriately biased and why?
3. Was there an evident and honest attempt to obtain balance?
4. Was the story complete?
5. Were the quotes accurate and in context?
6. Was the public well served?
7. Did we properly protect the confidentiality of our sources?
8. Did we err by inappropriately quoting unnamed sources?
9. Did we leave "off the record" material....off the record?
10. Were the lead and headline backed up by the content of a story?
11. Did we unnecessarily violate the privacy or unnecessarily hurt any news subjects or sources?
12. Did we assume too much?
13. Did we fail to follow through?

Here's an example of a classical failure on the part of some of the largest dailies in the country.

In the 1980s, Illinois had a statewide election for governor and state offices. It was not until a few days before the election that the Democratic party and the press suddenly discovered that the candidates on the Democratic ticket from the attorney general on down were members of the self-styled Democrats of Lyndon Larouche party. The Democratic party then went public asking people to ignore the Democratic ballot and to "write-in" the names of the real Democratic candidates.

The party failed miserably -- but so did the press. Major papers in a major city with assigned political reporters -- who are supposed to be skeptical and search backgrounds and motives -- failed. Where was the process?

I have a rule for the Stars and Stripes newspapers. They should print the same stateside information and misinformation as the newspapers at home. Why misinformation? If we only print what I believe, we become censors. Pierre Salinger may be all wet with his assertions of U.S. Navy missiles knocking down TWA Flight 800, but the assertion is news and we printed it. We present it -- as much as we can -- and allow our readers to determine what to believe.

It is only through a free press that we can ensure that service men and women, their families, and defense department civilians who are deployed overseas do not lose their franchise. Although, they all have the right to vote, without a free press they do not have the information on which to base a vote.

Our ombudsman reviews a broad range of newspapers in the U.S. and compares the stateside coverage with our overseas papers. We strive to ensure that the selection of opinion pieces and editorial cartoons which appear in the papers is balanced. Since the publications are within the military, we do not produce our own editorials.

Let me be sure that you all understand that these are not military papers -- they do not represent the military or military leadership. They are written for and by U.S. citizens serving in areas where their hometown papers are not available in a timely way. Our reporters cover stories that effect them in their daily lives and in their environment. Our readers pay for their own newspapers.

The overseas based bureaus live and work with our service members. They tell the stories of military living and working conditions. The good and the bad. Some of our reporters, editors and photographers are active duty military, although most are civilians. Neither can report classified information -- information which could put our troops in danger or give away combat plans and operations. They can and do report on everything else. Many of these stories are not at all popular with the military leadership.

In recent years, for a variety of reasons, the two newspapers have been losing a lot of money. The number of troops overseas, the number of potential buyers, has dropped dramatically, and the bookstores that the papers once ran -- and from which they once got most of their revenue -- have been transferred to the military exchanges.

So, after much study at the direction of Congress, it has been directed that we consolidate the newspapers. Instead of having both papers do many of the same things, like the national news, sports and features, we will do that only once...in Washington. Using modem technology we will combine that with the special coverage produced in each theater and will send via satellite the made up pages to six printing sites around the world.

Under this plan we will reduce our overhead, produce more timely papers, serve our readers better and reduce our dependence on a taxpayer-provided subsidy.

As part of that process, we are shifting our ombudsman from a "civil service" position to a non-appropriated fund position to be located at the central operation in the National Press Building. We are in the midst of hiring a new ombudsman to follow in the footsteps of Phil Foisie, Bill Monroe and Phil Robbins.

Let's talk about a few examples where Stars and Stripes stories upset local military leaders. The European edition of Stars and Stripes uncovered and broke the story of serious problems in the operation and leadership of the special air missions unit which flew the plane on which Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was killed. Within the military, there was tremendous criticism of Stars and Stripes over its handling of this story. The paper was accused of inaccuracies, unfair reporting -- rushing to print, sensationalism -- "we should fire the reporter" -- "we should fire the editor," etc. Now comes the ombudsman! He examined all the evidence and information concerning this event. He was able to establish that the journalistic process was accurate and fair. The reporter tried to obtain the command's position on what happened and was stonewalled.

In my view, his review and column concerning this story established the credibility of the paper and the story.

Subsequently, the Air Force conducted a fair and honest investigation of the facts. There was a change of leadership -- a change in organization -- and a much safer way of transporting people in the European theater. They and the paper did their jobs.

The paper told the story -- it was locally denied -- the ombudsman found it to be accurate. Air Force leadership corrected the problem.

Another story: For many years the military has, through its post exchanges, been selling American brand autos to service members and their families overseas -- claiming they were saving them money and providing excellent service.

Stars and Stripes did an investigative report on what was really happening. The cars were being sold by a franchiser -- someone who paid the exchanges $100 for each car sold -- although the cars were sold slightly below list, all of the options including automatic transmissions and air conditioning were being sold at full price rather than a negotiable discounted price that a buyer in the states might get. There were also problems regarding warranties. Since these autos were sold overseas the owners were not protected as they would be for autos sold in the United States. The exchanges claimed that the reports were unfair. The franchiser filed a law suit in the German courts and obtained a German court gag order. The ombudsman reviewed the process which included an error in fact printed by the paper which did not change the overall characteristic of the article but did earn the paper a slap for incomplete and not fully accurate work.

Result: The franchise went out of business; overseas-based servicemen and women were not being taken advantage of; and the Exchanges, which brought serious command pressure to stop this series of stories, decided to change the way they handled cars. This was a serious loss in revenue to the military exchanges, which must support the military recreation programs, but a significant victory for the troops. And because of the slap for incomplete work the reporters are more careful in following through in their work.

But as I said, being an ombudsman is not just about defending the reporter at all costs. There is also the story of the reporter who was assigned to the Stars and Stripes bureau in the Pentagon. He was being criticized by his editor for being lazy in filing stories.

He subsequently filed a story during the period of several overseas base closings. He told his editor that he had advance information that two of the larger bases in Germany were going to be closed. After naming the bases, he was asked by his editor for his sources, since the paper was unable to obtain confirmation. At first refusing to divulge his sources to the editor, the reporter later named two deputy assistant secretaries of defense who he claimed gave the stories to him on background. The paper ran the story. The U.S. European command was shocked, the German government was shocked and the Pentagon leadership absolutely denied the story. The ombudsman investigated the process, found that the reporter had lied, and was trying to impress his editor that he had important sources and that he was aggressive. Neither of the deputy assistant secretaries had ever heard of the reporter's name and certainly never talked with him. The result was the reporter was fired. The paper now does a better check on the reporters to obtain confirmation before rushing into print.

My ombudsman also reports to the Congress even though he works for me. He has the right and responsibility to report any cases of news censorship or inappropriate command influence.

Because we have an ombudsman, our readers trust and buy our papers. Remember, the ombudsman represents readers, serves as an honest judge of the process and loves the publisher enough to make him or her angry.

We all loved Phil Foisie. Someone once said that if we had gone to central casting we could not have found a better first ombudsman. It was my pleasure to pin the Department of Defense Meritorious Service Medal on Phil's chest on behalf of a grateful nation, but I had to do it alone, in his office, with no one else present. He said that he found the role of ombudsman to be so sacred that he did not want anything to imply that there could be rewards for favors. We loved Phil Foisie because he helped us all be a little better because of his sense of honest, work, judgment, character and sincere beliefs regarding responsible journalism. He loved us enough to tell the truth even when we did not want to hear it.