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September 11, 2007

ESPN’s Ombudsman

ESPN’s ombudsman is a woman—Lee Anne Schreiber, former sports editor of the New York Times. Ms. Schreiber took over the ombudsman role in April from ESPN’s first ombudsman, George Solomon, at the end of his two-year term, and during her term Schreiber will write a column at least once a month on ESPN.com.

Schreiber’s job is to “…be the public representative to ESPN for a fixed two-year term. In her role, she will offer independent examination, critique and analysis of ESPN's programming and news coverage, both on television and in other media.”

Schreiber’s latest column is titled “Vick coverage shows ESPN at its best -- and less than best,” and she does a thorough job of detailing what ESPN did right and did wrong in its television coverage of Michael Vick’s indictment and subsequent guilty plea. The purpose of this post is not to critique or second guess Schreiber’s critique of ESPN’s Vick coverage but to examine the concept of major media outlets having an ombudsman.

First, I’m all for the idea, and ESPN should be praised for having the guts to have an ombudsman. ESPN is only one of two major broadcast or cable networks to employ a watchdog, the other being CBS’s Public Eye blog. I believe that ESPN’s two-year term ombudsman is a much better system that CBS’s, but at least CBS is trying.

Can you imagine the Fox News Channel or MSNBC publishing a critique of the fairness or accuracy of its news coverage and bloviators? By having an ombudsman, ESPN sends the signal that it cares about providing accurate, fair, and balanced coverage of sports. It gives this signal with action and behavior, not with Orwellian marketing slogans.

Fox News’s slogan is “fair and balanced…we report, you decide,” when the reality is just the opposite. It’s exactly like the situation in which someone begins a conversation with the phrase, “to tell you the truth…” You know that what follows is not the truth because that person is subconsciously aware that they need to convince you and themselves that the lie they are about to tell you is the truth. It’s a Freudian slip, which is what Fox News’ slogan is.

It’s also more difficult to be fair and balanced covering sports than to do so covering other types of news. ESPN has to cover news in sports that it pays huge rights fees to program—the NFL, for example, or, even more relevant, arena football. ESPN owns a minority interest in the Arena Football League and airs some of its games and its championship game. There has always been a cozy relationship between sports teams and media outlets that make it difficult to criticize a sport, a league, or stars. If a media outlet criticizes a sport and hurts its image, team owners can make it difficult for the medium to have access to its players. Owners want homers. If a media outlet consciously avoids criticism of a team or its stars and blathers nothing put praise, it can loose credibility with its audience. It’s a delicate balance.

ESPN’s ombudsman helps maintain that balance and keep its reporting journalistically sound. But, more important, it sends a message to its audience—on TV, on the Web, and on radio—that it is making an effort to be fair and balanced and that it is providing an open mechanism for getting feedback from its audience. Being open to feedback and to comments from an audience is important to younger, Web-savvy fans and to higher educated, upper income fans, which is good business because a credible medium provides a much better environment for advertising. There is a credibility rub-off factor from believable content to advertising.

For example, Monday’s Wall Street Journal’s lead story headline was “Petraeus Pledges Modest Pullout, But Little More.” The NY Post’s headline was “Gen. Dazzles Congress With Iraq Testimony.” Which newspaper is more credible? Which newspaper has more advertising? Can you imagine the NY Post or Fox News having an ombudsman whose job was to offer independent examination, critique and analysis of programming and news coverage? Of course not.

I’d like to see NBC, ABC, FOX, FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC all have an official ombudsman, and I’d like to see CBS strengthen its ombudsman function, Public Eye, to make it more journalistically serious and not so cute, and to promote it more heavily. ESPN’s ombudsman system is the best model for other media, especially TV. Who knows, if all of the major television news and sports media had a strong ombudsman, news coverage might improve. It might even spill over to local television news, but that really is too much to hope for.

Posted by Charles Warner at September 11, 2007 11:42 PM

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