Media: See our dirty linen: As news ombudsmen from across the world
meet this week, Ian Mayes celebrates press accountability
The Guardian – United Kingdom
May 23, 2005
IAN MAYES
The Guardian is host this week to the 25th anniversary conference of
the Organisation of News Ombudsmen, the aptly acronymed Ono. About 50
delegates, the majority of them with roles similar to mine as readers’
editor of the Guardian, are gathering in Farringdon Road, rather like
the members of a rare species meeting at the water hole. It is the
first time in the history of the organisation that the conference has
been held in London.
Delegates have come from all over the world: from the United States –
where the first ombudsman was appointed in 1967, in Louisville,
Kentucky – from Canada, from many parts of Europe, from South America,
South Africa and Australia. Speakers and observers come from Russia
and Armenia among other places. This will, I believe, be the first Ono
conference at which members from the US have been in a minority
compared with those from elsewhere.
Many of the world’s leading news organisations are now counted among
the members: the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times, Le Monde, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, France
Televisions.
Indeed, a notable area of growth in recent years has been among
television and radio news organisations, partly due to the work of the
current president of Ono, Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman for National
Public Radio in Washington. Broadcast news ombudsmen and other
representatives make up about a third of those attending this
conference. They show in various ways that correcting broadcast
journalism and offering greater public accessibility to broadcast
media do not present insuperable problems. One of the people due to
speak at the conference is Mark Byford, the deputy director general of
the BBC, who will be talking about the way in which the corporation’s
complaints procedures (without the appointment of an ombudsman) are
being revised in the aftermath of the Gilligan affair and Hutton
inquiry.
There are now three ombudsmen working on newspapers in Turkey, and –
following the lead of Politiken in Copenhagen – a growing number in
Scandinavia. It was Sweden, after all, which provided the word,
ombudsmen, applied to holders of the job both male and female, with
its general meaning of “independent referee”. South America is also an
area of growth. The membership of Ono demonstrates that this form of
self-regulation is adaptable to a wide variety of organisat ions,
large and small, in all branches of news media.
What we have in common is a desire for news organisations to be more
open and accountable, but more than that, we have been entrusted with
the means in our own organisations to make that happen, at least to
some extent. We wash the dirty linen in public, as one of my American
colleagues once put it, and the discovery we have generally made, when
surveys have been conducted, is that doing this significantly
increases public trust.
Essential features of the job for the great majority of us are that we
are guaranteed independence by the people who pay us, and that we have
a visible presence in our organisations – the readers, listeners,
viewers, know we are here and that we are not at the whim of
editors. In fact, the Scott Trust, the owners of the Guardian, took
steps very recently to ensure the continuity of the job here. They
will have a hand in the appointment of future holders of the job, they
will get an annual report from the readers’ editor about the way the
office is working, and they will require those reports to include an
account of resourcing. The idea is to protect the independence of the
post against any undercutting by an editor less enthusiastic about the
role than the present editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, and to
make sure that the job cannot simply be undermined by reducing the
resources available to it – essentially the money needed to provide a
worthwhile service.
Rusbridger’s wholehearted support for the principles on which the job
is based partly accounts for the choice of London for this
conference. In an article in the current issue of Newsweek, he says,
in effect, that troubled times with revenue, circulation or audiences,
make it more desirable to be open and accountable, not less so. I see
the role as an effort to build a new relationship with readers,
listeners and viewers in which increased trust is one of the potential
mutual benefits.
The 50 delegates at the conference represent about half the total
worldwide membership of Ono, so you can see it is a thin
scattering. The demand for the experience that Ono now contains within
its membership is, however, increasing, most conspicuously so from
parts of the world where the freedoms that we sometimes take for
granted are beset by huge difficulties. Ono does not campaign, but it
does try to help whenever and wherever it is invited to do so.
Ian Mayes is the readers’ editor of the Guardian and the
vice-president of Ono
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress