Flogging the help: Let’s do it right

It’s time to re-think this “public editor” stuff.

Public editors, or ombudsmen as they were called for a time, investigate and write about coverage decisions and mistakes made at their own papers. It’s a great principle that’s not so hot in practice.

The New York Times had a monstrous example of such un-hot execution in Sunday’s Public Editor column about a mistake-ridden obituary for newsman Walter Cronkite.

Now, seven corrections on one obit–yes, that’s right, seven–is surely worthy of newsroom soul searching and public apologies. But when columnist Clark Hoyt answered his headline question of “How Could This Happen” with the following, my heart sank:

“The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not.”

He goes on to name names and examine the troubled history of the obit. His column exemplifies the problems with insider commentary on coverage and editing decisions.

Hoyt is no doubt a fine reporter and writer, qualified to investigate his peers. But it’s impossible for an editor, whatever distancing title has been given to him, to sound anything but superior and whiny when ratting out colleagues. At best, he comes off as an ass-kisser, tsk-tisking along with the reader about journalism’s disappointing decline. At worst, he makes the reader instinctively side with the poor slob who stepped in a cow pie when crossing a field full of the stuff.

Hoyt’s probing of the Cronkite mess reveals the many ways mistakes can be overlooked or added to a story in a busy newsroom, and that is useful for readers to understand. But when he goes on to reveal the reporter’s past history of errors, one has to ask: Who is served?

Now we can all associate the byline of this prolific veteran reporter with sloppy mistakes. We can wonder if her latest story somehow slipped by her copy-desk keeper. Having seen this reporter spend a day in stocks on the village green, do you trust The New York Times more? I don’t.

But you can be sure the NYT brass feel better. Now they can go about their business, feeling pleased that they got to the bottom of the mess and demonstrated that they can kick butt with the best of the real CEOs out there.

Outside writers, preferably from places like the Pew Foundation or other reputable media watchers, do a much better job of this sort of reporting. If a newspaper wants to come clean about errors, they can instruct their staff to cooperate when the media watchdogs call. The brass can provide time lines for the process: Reporter A wrote this and got it right, Editor B messed it up, Editor C caught that mistake and made another….and so on.

The best of all worlds would be a revolving 3-person panel made up of, say, a NYT insider, someone from Pew and a veteran journalist-turned-academic. Let ‘em loose to gather facts, forbid them from consulting with each other, then run their conclusions in side-by-side columns. Maybe even let that sloppy reporter have a say beyond the obligatory mea culpa, “This is my fault. There are no excuses.”

We could all learn from that kind of coverage.