Comment by dan-robertson
6 years ago
Historically many well regarded news sources have had a public editor[1] or ombudsman who takes complaints from readers and looks into matters of ethics. It is the public editor of the New York Times whom one would ideally complain to about something like this.
The New York Times didn’t have one for most of its history, though they had one from 2003 to 2017. Other cash-strapped newspapers have been removing or weakening the position too (eg the Washington post replaced their ombudsman position with a “readers’ representative” position; the guardian have a public editor who spends most of their time on holiday). Some broadcasters (eg npr, pbs) do have public editors.
"Cash-strapped" is a disingenuous way to describe them. The NYTimes is a $6 billion dollar media corporation with $800million in annual recurring revenue, and the Washington Post is owned by the richest man on the planet, whose company is currently worth 1.3 TRILLION dollars.
Neither of them can afford 200k a year for either a public editor or ombudsman?
There are many newspapers that do not have as much money as the New York Times or Washington post, and many of them struggle with tight margins.
It also seems likely that there would be other costs than the salary of a public editor: typically they would have a column which costs space on paper and the results of the editor’s opinions on ethics could increase other costs for the paper (higher standards, more discarded stories, being slower to print because of higher standards, possibly higher employee turnover or hiring difficulties or exposure to lawsuits)
All these seem like "fake becauses"[0].
Forget the rest, the NYTimes and the WaPo can certainly afford a team of public editors, if nothing else but for the long-term credibility of their own institutions, never mind the side benefit of keeping them honest.
[0]: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/01/28/the-fake-because/
Public editors have been for some years really just doing the same job as community managers in games companies. They're there as ablative armour for public criticism to hide people doing bad things and do not facilitate any change or improvement.
That's a really toxic model. Such editors/managers inevitably get toxic levels of abuse from a frustrated public (and suffer bad burnout and terrible real life consequences), bad things keep happening regardless and overall trust by the public goes down.