Meet the ombud

One of the first problems identified by the newly established bureau of accuracy and fair play on the New York World almost a century ago was the constant rescuing of ships’ cats.

The bureau had been established by legendary newspaper publisher Ralph Pulitzer. Its first director, Isaac D White, noticed that in half a dozen accounts of shipwrecks, the ship’s cat was rescued. White called in the maritime reporter, and asked him, ”What’s with the cats?” — or words to that effect.

According to Cassandra Tate, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, the reporter responded: ”One of those wrecked ships had a cat, and the crew went back to save it. I made the cat the feature of my story, while the other reporters failed to mention the cat, and were called down by their city editors for being beaten. The next time there was a shipwreck there was no cat but the other ship news reporters did not wish to take chances, and put the cat in. I wrote the report, leaving out the cat, and then I was severely chided for being beaten. Now when there is a shipwreck, all of us always put in a cat.”

Pulitzer established the bureau in 1913 to deal with blurring between ”that which is true and that which is false”. Over the years many news organisations in the United States, Britain, Turkey, France and other countries have established ombuds, sometimes called public or readers’ editors.

In South Africa there are very few, despite the spate of scandals that have bedeviled journalism in the last little while. The best known is the press ombudsman, currently Ed Linington, who hears complaints about all newspapers under his jurisdiction. One or two news organisations have an ”internal ombud”.

The Mail & Guardian has now joined that small club and has asked me to come in, keep an eye on the standards of journalism and begin a dialogue with readers.

In concrete terms, it means that readers can complain to me if they feel the paper has slipped in any way. They can, of course, still exercise all the other rights they have: writing letters, complaining to Linington’s office or even the courts. I will listen, investigate if necessary and then recommend a course of action to the paper.

Once a month I will write a column that may deal with particular complaints or highlight an issue on the paper or in journalism more generally. Sometimes, it may be useful to explain how a particular report came about — the ways of journalists are often unnecessarily opaque. We expect others to be transparent, and could do a lot more to explain our own methods.

I will do all of this independently of the paper’s editorial or management structures. In other words, I’ll call it as I see it.

An office like this must be independent. Yavuz Baydar, reader representative at the Turkish paper Milliyet, writes: ”The more confidently a reader can appeal to an independent arbitrator, referee if you like, within the paper, the greater the credit that is likely to accrue to the paper.”

My allegiance is to excellent journalism: fair, accurate, insightful and well written. The M&G already has a well-deserved name for great reporting, and I hope this new venture will further strengthen that reputation. That way, everyone benefits: readers, publishers and journalists.

So let’s talk about ship’s cats, and journalism.

Terms of reference

The Mail & Guardian’s ombud will represent the public to the paper, and will provide a view of the paper’s adherence to journalistic standards and practices. It will also help make the M&G’s journalism more transparent, by explaining and clarifying where appropriate. The ombud’s independence is guaranteed by the paper.

This means that the ombud: