Newspaper Ombudsmanship in Canada: the Rise and Fall of an Accountability System
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Newspaper Ombudsmanship in Canada: The Rise and Fall of an Accountability System A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Journalism, Carleton University. By Carolina Quixada B.A. Communication, Federal University of Ceara (Brazil), 2006 B.A. Communication, University of Fortaleza (Brazil), 2002 © Carolina Quixada, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-79599-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-79599-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada ABSTRACT Ombudsmanship is one means of media accountability that newspapers have adopted around the world, yet in small numbers. Of the eleven Canadian papers that have instituted ombudsmanship as an accountability tool in the past, only one still holds the position: the Toronto Star. This thesis examines the rise, roles and demise of newspaper ombudsmanship in Canada. This thesis draws from 76 interviews, including current and former publishers, editors, reporters, and ombudsmen of the eleven papers, along with dozens of columns written by the latter. The findings are examined within the theoretical concepts of ombudsmanship and media accountability. It concludes that ombudsmen served as an adequate, beneficial channel of accountability for the audiences of the publications, but the newspapers are not likely to adopt the system for the foreseeable future, for the same reasons that led to their widespread demise. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my thanks to all my interviewees for taking the time to share their recollections with me. This project would have not been possible without their collaboration. Grateful thanks to the School of Journalism and Communication and the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, Carleton University, for the generous funding provided. Thanks to Professor Allan Thompson for the support he extended throughout the course and for his help in putting me in contact with the executive editors of the Toronto Star, where I started my research. Thanks to Professor Jeff Sallot, for whom I had the pleasure of working as a Research Assistant. The inspiration for this thesis arose from interviews I conducted with journalists regarding ethics as part of my tasks as his RA. My sincere thanks to Professor Peter Johansen for helping me in some many ways in this project. His suggestions guided me not only as a student but also as a researcher and journalist. When I asked him to be my supervisor, I knew I had chosen the best. Thanks to my MJ2 colleagues for sharing the challenges of this academic path: Gaaki Kigambo, Ebere Ahanihu, Yolande Cole, Amanda Pfeffer, Arthur Asiimwe, Ignatius Kabagambe, and especially Laurie Mackenzie, to whom I felt so connected that I would sometimes speak in Portuguese to her, thinking that she was also Brazilian. And thanks to my husband, Verilo Sampaio, for keeping the confidence that our "sabbatical year" in Canada, which included the dream of a master's degree, would be all right. That one year became almost five, and we are now a family of four. Our sons, Arthur and Pedro, are certainly the most unexpected and successful part of this great experience abroad. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv List of Tables vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Media Accountability 7 Accountability as a process 7 Responsibility vs. Accountability 9 Public accountability 11 Accountability in business 12 News media accountability 14 The power of the news media 16 Vast audience 19 Types and classification 20 The vulnerability within the systems 22 Press councils 23 Journalism reviews 26 Letters to the editor 27 Codes of ethics 27 Chapter 2: Ombudsmanship 29 A representative called ombudsman 29 The news ombudsman 31 The reach and expansion of newspaper ombudsmanship 35 The academic research 37 The PR thing 38 The in-house critic and its influence on journalism ethics 43 The ideal ombudsman and peer surveillance 44 Everything but ombudsmen 46 Chapter 3: National Context 49 Top executives' motives for ombudsmanship 52 Conditions of employment 61 Contract 61 Unlimited time frame 65 Job description 66 IV Chapter 4: Who Ombudsmen Are and What They Do 69 Who are they? 69 The tasks 73 Columns 77 The enforcement part of an ombudsman's job 78 Frequency 81 Topics 83 Styles and patterns 89 The effectiveness of the position 95 Other ombudsmen have their say 101 Chapter 5: The Fall of Newspaper Ombudsmanship 106 The reasons for termination 106 Toronto Star ombudsmanship not immune to problems 122 Interruptions in incumbency 122 Conflicts 123 Position guaranteed, at least for the moment 130 A new time that came along 131 Chapter 6: Conclusion 134 List of Sources 143 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: News ombudsmen worldwide 37 Table 2: Canadian newspaper ombudsmanship 51 Table 3: Ombudsmen who held the job over four years 66 Table 4: Canadian papers' circulation at the time they employed an ombudsman.... 72 VI 1 INTRODUCTION On an early May morning in 2010, a 15-year-old Toronto teen was shot in the face. He died shortly after the incident: a murder. Two city reporters at the Toronto Star wrote about the case that afternoon. Their story appeared on the front page of the paper next day: Police are investigating a possible gang connection in the shooting death of a 15-year-old boy Monday morning. The teen was shot in the face around 2 a.m. after he answered the door of an apartment above DJ Records and Clothing at 2508 Eglinton Ave. W. near Keele St. He was taken to Sunnybrook hospital, where he was pronounced dead, EMS officials said. He would have been 16 on July 17. It was Toronto's 16th homicide of the year.x Although police declined to release the victim's name, the reporters identified him later in the story as Devante Beard. They based their identification on witnesses, especially three teenagers who said at the scene the boy had been visiting them for a sleepover when the shooting happened. They also relied on other "friends" of the victim. But the reporters got the boy's name wrong. It was really Devonte Gondwe-Prosper. Devante Beard, whose name was wrongly identified, and his family had a hell of a time after the episode. The teen went to school, despite the erroneousness of the front page story; but, of course, he didn't have a regular day. He received a massive wave of questions from his colleagues and teachers. "I kept telling them I'm here, I'm alive. It was 1 Denise Balkissoon and Henry Stancu, "Gang connection investigated in killing of boy, 15," Toronto Star, May 18, 2010, p. 1. 2 very frustrating and I got very annoyed - and I started to feel depressed. I didn't know why the paper would put that in when it wasn't the truth," the boy complained. His mother, Charmaine Beard, was equally upset. "I had so many people calling me crying, everyone telling me my son is dead. If I had seen that in the paper and not known exactly where my son was, I would have had a nervous breakdown," she said. The Star learned it had made a serious mistake. Charmaine Beard called Kathy English, the Toronto Star's public editor (or ombudsman, as the post was called for several years), to complain. She was not happy. English investigated. She talked with many in the newsroom, especially Henry Stancu and Denise Balkissoon, the reporters who wrote the story, and city editor Graham Parley. She immediately wrote a correction for the paper's website. She then wrote an apology, publicized the next day,2 and dedicated her weekly column to the episode. In it, English gave the details of how and why this failure had occurred and the paper's perspective on this "unforgiveable mistake." She also quoted Charmaine and Devante Beard, as cited above. There was an absolute collapse in newsroom communication, as she put it in her column: Both reporters told me they believed they had communicated to the newsroom that the victim's identity was not yet verified.