A section of well-meaning readers hauled me over the coals for my last column, “ When outrage precedes verification ” (Oct. 9, 2017). Some felt the column was a slap on the wrist. Some were convinced that the false story of the Mumbai ‘molestation’ deserved savage treatment, but I pulled my punches. A couple of senior journalists felt that talking about a grave journalistic mistake as well as criticism on social media in the same column took the sting out of my criticism of the reporter and of editorial supervision. Another reader even deducted an “inherent reticence bordering on self-censorship.”
Role of a news ombudsman
I would like to place my work in context. Among the first documents I read when I was invited to become this newspaper’s Readers’ Editor were the UNESCO consultation papers on self-regulation, which had contributions from respected news ombudsmen. The key elements were: protecting the media from political censorship, economic dependence, and expensive litigation; being an educational tool to both journalists and the public though vigilant media literacy; and, finally, being a tool for media accountability to ensure trust. Serving ombudsmen also stressed a two-way role: help readers know how the newspaper works and become the critical voice of the public internally. These papers explained that a news ombudsman neither washes dirty linen in public nor is an in-house apologist, but is the “conscience of news reporting.”
In the first year of my job, I had to work out a method to deal with two important questions. One, how to write a weekly column that is not clouded by my own anger at various political, economic and social issues? I get mails written in intemperate language. To read them without getting angry at their unreasonable tone and tenor forced me to look for tools from other disciplines. Two, how to effect corrections and clarifications without impinging on the rights of the Editor? Where does the independence of the ombudsman end and where does it begin to encroach on the Editor’s prerogatives? The Terms of Reference is a document that is subject to interpretation, and an inadvertent overreach may spoil the delicate balance that is essential for self-regulation to work.
One of our foremost contemporary philosophers, Martha C. Nussbaum, not only helped me contextualise anger, but also realise its flaws and limitations. In her John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford, she saw the limited instrumental usefulness of anger: “Anger is necessary, when one is wronged, to the protection of dignity and self-respect; anger at wrongdoing is essential to taking the wrongdoer seriously rather than treating him or her like a child or a person of diminished responsibility, and it is an essential part of combating injustice.” But she argued that this limited usefulness does not remove its normative inappropriateness. She came up with an interesting term: “the road of payback.” In this road, the mistake “is the thinking that the suffering of the wrongdoer somehow restores, or contributes to restore, the important thing that was damaged.” It is rather difficult to grasp the full import of this idea, let alone practice it. I cannot say that I have overcome my easy proclivity to anger, but as a news ombudsman, I unfailingly try to focus on restoring something that was damaged rather than focus on the wrongdoer.
A fine line
I could arrive at this decision partly because I was also trying to ascertain the line that separates my responsibility from that of the Editor. For instance, I decide which mistakes need a correction and which ones also need a clarification. I carry corrections on the editorial page if the mistake appeared in print in more than three editions. If it appeared in a single edition or two editions, I ensure that the correction appears on the city page.
However, I never arrogate the power to express regret or apologise on behalf of the newspaper. That is the sole discretion of the Editor. An explicit rule that I learnt from the UNESCO papers is: “Ombudsmen are not — and should not be — given powers to sanction.” The ombudsman’s accountability is towards the readers where mistakes are corrected in a visible manner. The in-house follow-up action, including the quantum of penalty, is the exclusive preserve of the Editor. This clear separation of powers not only ensures accountability but also prevents conflict of interest.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
