This survey of ombudsmen was part of a broader project investigating different systems of media accountability. It grew out of my interest in alternatives to the bureaucratic systems of media accountability that operate in many public broadcasters.

I was particularly interested in models of accountability that work on the culture of media organisations to strengthen the awareness of journalistic standards and audience expectations – such as news ombudsmen who publicly assess and comment on their own organisation’s performance and engage with their audience.

The survey was designed to collect the ombudsman’s view of their role and their effectiveness.

Brief questionnaires were distributed to those who attended the ONO Conference in Harvard 2007 . A total of 37 valid responses from working ombudsmen were collected.

The survey put a series of open ended questions that invited the ombudsmen to define the important aspects of their role, the nature of complaints, their impact on the newsroom, the major obstacles they face and the nature of their interaction with their organisation’s readers/audience.

The survey also included a series of 5 point scales that asked the respondents to assess the importance of public activities (such as columns) to their role, the relative importance of “the role of the audience” and “professional codes and experience” in establishing standards for journalism, and the importance that journalists within their organisations attach to the ombudsman role .

Who are the ombudsmen?
A few years after the formation of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen, a survey of ONO members by James Ettema and Theodore Glasser found that ombudsmen were veteran journalists with an average of almost 20 years editing experience as well as ten years reporting and an average age of 55.

My 2007 did not collect detailed professional histories but asked each respondent to outline their background and experience. The results indicate that ombudsmen are largely drawn from the senior ranks of journalism. More than half the ombudsmen surveyed (52%) identified themselves as former editors or news managers and another third (35%) nominated roles as senior journalists.

Almost eighty percent of those surveyed (29 ombudsmen) were newspaper ombudsmen. Eight others worked in the broadcast media with half that number employed by public broadcasters.

The gender split of the respondents was largely in line with that of ONO members in 2007, with 65% of those surveyed male, compared with 68% of ONO members .

Twelve of the ombudsmen surveyed (31%) had held their current positions for five years or more; 8 (21%) had been in their position for one year or less.

The ombudsman’s role
The ombudsmen were asked to nominate “the most important aspects” of their role. Their open-ended responses were then grouped.

The most common category of response, nominated by three-quarters of the ombudsmen, was interacting with the audience or readership. Ombudsmen described this role as variously “fielding reader concerns”, acting as “a channel of communication” or, more prosaically, as “a contact point for readers through phone, emails and blog”.

The next most common response, nominated by more than half the ombudsmen, was to “investigate complaints and provide independent criticism”.

The third was to act as a liaison between the audience and their organisation’s journalists and editors and the fourth, also nominated by more than half the ombudsmen, to provide commentary on issues of readership or audience concern and encourage discussion of these issues.

Smaller proportions of the survey group nominated ensuring that corrections were made, educating the public on journalism and maintaining high standards of journalism.

Public commentary
More than eighty-five per cent of the ombudsmen reported that they published or broadcast a regular commentary, and 74% reported that they did so at least once a week.

Almost all the newspaper ombudsmen published their commentary in their newspaper (and a few also wrote separate internal reports for the newsroom).

A small number of ombudsmen (4) only published comments and reports on an ad hoc basis or in formal reports. Three of these were drawn from public broadcasting and followed a model were they functioned as appeal ombudsmen: considering complaints only when a complainant was dissatisfied with the initial response from their organisation’s first line complaint handling procedures. The fourth, a newspaper ombudsman, wrote internal reports but has no public column.

Broadcast ombudsmen differ from their newspaper colleagues in that they are often excluded from broadcasting their findings on the main medium of their organisations. Only a minority had space on the airwaves for their comments. The rest were confined to web pages and official publications.

When asked about the importance of this public commentary role the overwhelming majority of the ombudsmen, including those whose public commentary was limited, asserted that it was important or very important (89%).

Forty per cent of ombudsmen reported that they used a blog to interact with their readers and another 22% indicated that they planned to begin one soon.

Most who had a blog found it useful, citing increased interaction with the audience as the major advantage, but a significant minority of those using blogs said that it wasn’t useful. Some of those with blogs and some without suggested that the blog interaction was “too time consuming”. As Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell told the ONO conference: “I hardly have time to go to the bathroom. Start a blog?”

The Washington Post ombudsman is one of a group of five who reported more than 1000 contacts from readers or audience every week. Ten ombudsmen in all (29%) reported 500 or more contacts per week. Around half (49%) reported less that 200 contacts per week.

In general the ombudsmen regarded these contacts as representative of their audience (55% of ombudsmen believed that less than one in ten of the complaints they received was generated by lobby or interest groups campaigns).

When respondents were asked to nominate the most common types of complaints they receive almost ninety percent include “bias” on their list. The next most common response was “errors of fact” (69%), then disagreement with the editorial choices and priorities of the organisation (28%), and ethical concerns (22%).

The role of the audience
The survey asked a series of questions on the importance of the audience view in assessing editorial decisions and in particular the comparative weight that ombudsmen give to the views of the audience compared to professional codes and their own editorial experience.

The ombudsmen were asked to rate the importance of each factor in setting appropriate standards for their organisations on a five-point scale (where “very important” had a value of 5, and “not at all important” had a value of 1). They clearly rated professional codes and their own experience more highly than the role of the audience in setting appropriate standards for their organisation.

A majority (57%) gave codes and expertise the highest rating on the five-point scale of importance. Nine in ten rated it in the top half of the scale of importance and the mean for the group was near the maximum at 4.6.

The mean for the role of the audience in setting standards was down the importance scale at 3.6. (On this scale a score of “3” is the middle point that would indicate respondents evenly spread from “very important” to “not important at all”.)

This greater weight to codes and expertise over the audience was confirmed when the ombudsmen were asked directly to compare the importance of the two. Only one ombudsman nominated audience views as the more important. When asked for a reason, the explanation was concise – “Because the ombudsman represents the readers.”

A majority of ombudsmen nominated codes and expertise as more important (51%), while a group almost as large refused to choose one or the other, arguing that both played a role (46%).

When asked for reasons, 7 in 10 of those who thought codes were more important said that the audience could be ill informed and narrow in their complaints. One third nominated the wisdom and experience that codes distil. However more than a quarter of those who favoured codes and expertise chose to acknowledge in their comments that the audience had a role in bringing new issues to the attention of ombudsmen.

The reasons offered by those who favoured some sort of balance between audience input and journalistic codes/expertise were, not surprisingly, more diverse: a majority recognised the role of the audience in raising new issues (57%) and the distilled wisdom of codes (50%). While a few mentioned the need to balance and measure audience comments in the context of codes, none suggested that the audience was likely to be “ill informed”.

The effectiveness of ombudsmen
The survey put a series of questions regarding the effectiveness and importance of the ombudsman’s work. The first question asked, “In your opinion what impact does your role have on the quality of journalism and ethical standards in your organisation?”

A small number (11%) said that their role had a positive impact on standards but did not specify any more detailed reasons and a similar number claimed that the ombudsman enhanced the reputation of their media organisation .

A few (8%) said that their role was ineffective or its impact minor.

The most common impact, nominated by half the ombudsmen (49%), was that they generated discussion of journalism and made journalists within their organisations more conscious of standards and quality.

One quarter (27%) said that the ombudsman made journalists conscious that their work was scrutinised and the same proportion claimed that journalists were better able to understand and respond to the concerns of the audience or readers because of the work of the ombudsman.

The ombudsmen were also asked: “What impact has your role and the resulting public and newsroom discussion of editorial and ethical standards had on the culture within your media organisation and how journalists regard their own work and standards?”

Again ombudsmen nominated the generation of discussion and suggested that their work made journalists more aware of the need to maintain standards, more conscious of the importance of editorial decision making and more aware of the views of their readers and audience.

The ombudsmen were also asked to assess how their own journalists judged the importance of their role: “How do journalists within your organisation regard the role of the ombudsman and the necessary scrutiny of their own work that it involves? They were given a five point scale to scale their colleagues view from “very important” to “not at all important”.

Of all the four similar scaled questions included in this survey this produced the lowest mean: just 3.4.

The results indicate that many ombudsmen see only limited support for their position among journalists in their organisations. In fact half the ombudsmen who responded believe that their colleagues regard their work as on or below that midpoint of importance.

This mixed evaluation of support within their own organisations for their work is also reflected in the ombudsmen’s reports on the major obstacles that they face in their work.

Fifteen of the ombudsmen (42%) nominated lack of management and editorial support and/or defensiveness amongst journalists as major obstacles describing their managers and colleagues as “reluctant to admit mistakes”, “defensive”, “negative” and “resistant”.

The other major obstacle that many ombudsmen reported (39%) was the volume of work they faced and of lack of time to complete it – suggesting perhaps a lack of priority to the ombudsmen role in their organisation but also the reality of reduced resources within media organisations.

Is it worth the trouble?
Statistical analysis of a small groups survey such as this is of limited use, but it is valuable to compare these results with earlier studies. Ombudsmen are after all among the more regularly surveyed groups in the media.

More than 20 years ago Ettema and Glassner identified what they called ambiguity in the roles and perceptions of media ombudsmen.

By asking their respondents to rate aspects of their roles as ombudsmen, they found a consistent emphasis on public relations activities such as feedback (e.g. “Sensitize reporters and editors to readers concerns.”) as well as persuasive activities (e.g. “Change the way readers see the newspaper.”)

Ettema and Glassner reported that ombudsmen regarded these activities as central to their jobs, but downplayed or refused to acknowledge their public relations role.

They concluded that there was an ambiguity about the role of ombudsman that prevents even those who occupy the role from defining it clearly.

“Perhaps this ambiguity itself, along with the anticipation of staff morale problems and a distaste for “mere public relations” has contributed to the failure of the ombudsman idea to take a firmer hold in American journalism.”

Glasser and Ettema also identified two distinct groups: “it is the degree to which ombudsmen perceive that they have a commission to criticise their paper which most clearly differentiates among them… In general, then, at least some public relations activity is nearly universal among ombudsmen, but press criticism activity is not – some ombudsmen clearly hold a much stronger commission to criticise than others.”

These same patterns are apparent in 2007.

Throughout the responses there is an almost universal acceptance of the importance of public relations activities but a narrower commitment to the ombudsman’s role as a critic and enforcer of standards. It seems it’s still the case that not all ombudsmen hold a strong “commission to criticise”.

Interestingly those who named public relations activities (such as interaction with the audience) as their first nominated aspect of the ombudsman’s role tended to be drawn from the longest serving ombudsmen, while the newer ombudsmen emphasised criticism activities (investigating complaints, ensuring corrections, public comment and discussion) as their choice.

Is there a causal relationship here?

One explanation might suggest that the newer ombudsmen are more naïve about the limitations of the position and that the more modest objectives of the older group reflect their greater experience of the realities of their role.

Another possibility is that the new group represents a shifting emphasis among ombudsmen with newcomers being more committed to accountability and a critical role.

A third explanation is that those who to take on a more critical role don’t last the distance. That the conflict their accountability role generates with their organisation prevents them from holding their position in the long term.

This of course raises the issue of the terms on which ombudsmen are employed – where they fit into the organisational structure and their security of tenure. It is worth noting that the group emphasising criticism roles includes a greater proportion of ombudsmen who have strong guarantees of independence and tenure, guarantees that are sometimes accompanied by mandated limited term appointments.

To flip the explanation then, it is possible that less rigorous structures attract a long term arrangement between the organisation and ombudsman that is comfortable for both parties but perhaps too comfortable to be built on robust criticism.

As stated, too much should not be made of differences within a small group survey, but what is clear from the overall survey is that ombudsmen are very conscious of the difficulties of their relationship with their organisation.

Ombudsmen believe that their work makes their editors and journalists more conscious of standards and public expectations, and that an ombudsman’s scrutiny probably has a positive impact on the quality of journalism.

“At the very least it maintains standards of accuracy. At the best it improves standards and makes readers and journalists think about ethics.”

“… people you criticise don’t tend to come by and say ‘thank you’, but I’m sure that the staff and readers read it, and that over time it has a beneficial effect on staff thinking and the quality of their journalism”

The ombudsmen are certainly not convinced that their colleagues appreciate their efforts.

Half the ombudsmen thought that the journalists in their organisations gave the ombudsman’s role a pass mark at best in terms of importance. And a large proportion cited lack of management support or resistance within their own organisations as obstacles to their work.

It’s not surprising that one ombudsman described his task, half jokingly perhaps, as “a lonely hell”.

The ombudsman inevitably works at the intersection of competing and contradictory demands.

Appointed by a media organisation to oversee and report on its own activities, responsible not only to the organisation but also to some broader public that it serves and to a set of principles (often ill-defined) that the organisation claims to uphold.

It’s a difficult space to work in but the contradictions and tensions can also offer some room to move and the opportunity to have a valuable impact on the quality of journalism within each organisation.

The ombudsman’s interaction with the audience need not be “mere public relations” (though faced with unreasonable complainants, a sceptical audience, distrustful colleagues, lack of resources and uncertain tenure, this PR role might look attractive).

The challenge for ombudsmen is to use the space and contradictions to use the power of their audience and the authority of experience and editorial standards to raise the quality of journalism inside their organisation.

Good ombudsmen give their readers and audiences a voice within their organisation by deciding when and how to use their own voice. They collect, organise, consider and amplify the criticisms and concerns of the audience into an effective mechanism that calls their own newspaper or broadcaster to account.

It’s a lonely job perhaps, but it’s worth doing well.