Will NY Times' naming of 'public editor' energize media's self-scrutiny?

When the New York Times announced late last month that it would soon appoint its first "public editor" -- an ombudsman, in effect, who would review reader complaints, recommend corrective measures and write "independent, uncensored commentaries" on the paper's coverage "whenever he or she feels that it is warranted" -- I thought immediately of a conversation I had 22 years ago with Abe Rosenthal, then the executive editor of the New York Times.

"I do not believe in the ombudsman system," Rosenthal told me. "It's a red herring ... a PR gimmick ... a great way to get the editor off the hook."

Given that even now, only about 30 of the nation's more than 1,400 newspapers have ombudsmen or public editors or readers' representatives -- the titles and duties vary from paper to paper -- I have to assume that most editors agree with Rosenthal. Either that or they just don't want to provide a public forum for the scrutiny and criticism of their judgments and their journalism..

Frankly -- regretfully -- I'm inclined to think it's largely the latter.

I can still recall discussing this with Bill Thomas, then the editor of the Los Angeles Times, not long after my Rosenthal conversation. I had been writing about the media for six or eight years then, and I told Thomas I wondered why a particular editor whom I'd always found insightful and cooperative didn't have a medic critic or ombudsman at his paper.

Thomas laughed.

"I know you like him and you think he likes you and your work," Thomas said, "but the last time we had a drink together, he asked me, 'Why do you let that bearded pipsqueak Shaw second-guess you all the time on the front page of your own paper?' "

Thomas had originally asked me to write about the media -- including The Times -- because he thought news organizations had lost much of their credibility with the public during the late 1960s and early '70s when we'd begun to take a much more critical approach toward virtually every powerful institution in society except our own.

Thomas said he also wanted me to write about the media in a way that would "hold us as accountable as we hold the government and big business and the police and all those other institutions." He said he wanted stories that would help "demystify us to the public -- explain what we do and how and why we do it and what our standards and limitations and decision-making processes are."