Do You Know Where Your Omsbudsman Is?



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THE PUBLIC EDITOR

It’s Been 11 Weeks.

Do You Know Where Your Ombudsman Is?

by Daniel Okrent, Ombudsman, The New York Times

15-February-2004

In the two and a half months since I stepped into this job, my mother isn’t the only person who has asked how it’s going. Many, many readers have written or called to express their pleasure, their disappointment, their conviction that I’m a fig leaf for Times management, their concern that management is not backing me up. Some want to know why I haven’t answered their messages, and others ask when I’m going to fire one or another of the paper’s columnists.

These and many other questions made me think I ought to sit for an interview about how this new adventure - for both The Times and me - is playing out. I could hardly have a Times reporter ask the questions, so I turned to the nearest available journalist: me.

Q. So, tell me, Dan. How are they treating you at The Times?

A. I’m glad you asked. It has been both better and worse than I expected -- better because a lot of people here believe that The Times should be as open to examination as those The Times itself examines each day; their welcome has been generous and heartening. What’s worse than I expected is the overt hostility from some of those who don’t want me here.

Q. Is it aimed at you, or at the job?

A. Both. One reporter ripped me up and down about how offensive it was that the staff had to endure public second-guessing, how it makes reporters vulnerable to further attack, how the hovering presence of an ombudsman can hinder aggressive reporting. When I objected -- “I don’t think your complaint’s with me; I didn’t invent this job” -- the reporter hissed, “You accepted it!”

Others have complained that as a former magazine writer and editor, I don’t know anything about newspapers; as a non-Times man, I don’t appreciate how The Times is different from all other media institutions; or as an idiot, I don’t know anything about anything. They may well be right. But all those deficiencies may enable me to ask the stupid questions no insider ever would.

Then there are the people in between, who say that I’m doing a good job and taking the right positions - except on those subjects in which they’re involved. Fair enough; in this regard, they’re just like a lot of the people The Times writes about.

Q. What about the bosses?

A. So far, everyone in the paper’s management has behaved well. Some have criticized me for specific acts (executive editor Bill Keller told The Washington Post that one of my columns was “ill informed”), but that’s their prerogative. As long as I have unhindered access to this space and to The New York Times on the Web (), as well as the right to say what I wish in e-mail correspondence and interviews, I have no complaints.

Q. How are you dealing with readers?

A. I’ve received more than 11,000 e-mail messages from readers. A majority have complaints about The Times, many of them substantive. Another source consists of people who don’t read The Times but write to me because they’ve been rallied by a Web-based organization.

For instance, the director of national letter-writing (a real title!) at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (Camera), sends out alerts about objectionable articles to the “Camera E-Mail Team,” with my address attached; other groups, like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, paste my name and address to the text of a complaint -- all that its constituents need to do is hit “send.”

When I answer the mail that pours in as a result, I do it only in the Web journal that I recently set up at .

All messages overheated by abusive language or intemperate accusations go into the bin otherwise reserved for solicitations from Nigerian billionaires. And I’ve found that answering someone who is writing from a position of unshakable ideological conviction is generally a futile endeavor for both of us.

Q. Why aren’t you addressing complaints about The Times’s reporting last year on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?

A. I determined early on that looking into articles published before I started in the job on Dec. 1 would make me disappear into an endless tunnel. Each day’s mail brings something new to address. If I were obliged to look backward, I’d never complete, say, my current examination of The Times Magazine’s Jan. 25 piece on sex slavery.

Q. Any advice for readers?

A. E-mail is better than the telephone. Keep your messages short. Check to see if I address your concern in my Web journal. Do not try to get me to prove my independence by daring me to investigate the secret pact the Sulzberger family has made with the Trilateral Commission and Pete Rose to take over the Grammy Awards.

Also, be wary of telephone calls that purport to be from this office. In December, the subject of a Times investigation hired a private detective to pose as my representative. She telephoned several people a Times reporter had interviewed, indicated there was a problem with the reporter’s work, and told the sources I wanted to review the questions the reporter had asked. If anything like this should happen to you, ask to return the call. If the number you’re given doesn’t begin with (212) 556-, don’t do it. Instead, send me an e-mail message immediately.

Last bit of advice: don’t call me “you,” as in “Why did you [or “your people”] put such-and-such on the front page?” I’m not The Times; I’m an independent contractor. I don’t attend editorial meetings, engage in personnel discussions, or review anything before it gets into print -- nor should I be able to. That’s why newspapers have editors.

Q. Speaking of editors, when are you going to write about the editors’ evident pro-Bush, anti-Republican, Likud-sponsored, Israel-hating bias?

A. Not soon. I’m reading carefully; I’m taking notes; a few readers have kindly offered to keep track of what they perceive to be bias. I’m going to wait until I’ve bird-dogged this one over time before I come to any conclusions.

Q. What about the editorial page and the columnists? You never write about them.

A. As it largely should be. Most correspondents who complain to me about opinions expressed in editorials or in the space, allotted regular columnists are likely to receive this reply: “Editorial writers and columnists are free to express whatever opinions they wish, and readers are free to disagree with them.”

However, some related issues that have come up have attracted my attention. One is whether (or how) The Times’s editorial positions determine its news coverage. Another is whether columnists should be free, as they are now, to decide whether and when to publish corrections of their own mistakes. One especially determined critic keeps asking, “whether there is such a thing as an unfair opinion.” (An e-mail note I received this week charged that one columnist “has crossed the line from acceptable or at least standard partisan nonsense to actual irresponsible journalism.”) These are all provocative questions, and I hope to be addressing each of them at some point -- the corrections policy first, certainly within the next couple of months.

Q. One critic said you write like “a pensioned insider,” while many of your readers would prefer you to attack wrongdoers with cracking whips and howling dogs. Why are you so, well, polite?

A. Because I’m interested in a conversation, not an argument. The purpose of my column, my Web journal, my e-mail messages to readers, and my very presence here is to open a window. Screaming won’t help; discussion may; transparency definitely will.

Q. Any last words?

A. Yes -- but they shouldn’t be mine. That’s why, starting next Sunday, this space will periodically be given over to readers’ letters about subjects I address in my columns. Letters most likely to be published are those that are brief, temperate and take a position different from or critical of my own. Somebody’s got to ombud the ombudsman.

The public editor serves as the readers’ representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this section.

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Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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