Do Cable TV News Channels Need An Ombudsman?

TV News is in trouble. Particularly cable TV News.

While the viewers remain and the revenue stream continues, there's a sense among many of us that the three major TV news channels are increasingly being pushed into partisan niches.

Whether it's accurate or not, all three news channels are perceived by some viewers as having an agenda. Critics look at the programming and claim there's a not-so-secret liberal or conservative bias, or that by examining the guests, you can uncover some hidden agenda to sabotage the war in Iraq or promote some new world order.

It doesn't help matters that CNN, FOX and MSNBC each increasingly rely on "experts" to fill their news blocks. Partisans from both sides fill the airwaves, emboldened with the knowledge that conflict and snappy quotes keep viewers in front of their TV sets.

The problem is that this all leads to an arms race of misrepresentations and incorrect information. Ann Coulter say something particularly egregious? Bring on Michael Moore to keep things "fair." And quicker than you can say "John Kerry's intern," mistakes have been made.

So how does a news channel say they've made a mistake?

One way is to bring in an ombudsman. A person whose job it is to respond to the concerns of the viewers, to correct the mistakes and tally the problems.

While the idea has a great deal of merit, it's not something that can be done lightly. An ombudsman who is seen as ineffective or as a house shill for the network is worse than having no one at all. The position requires someone of integrity and with a mandate from management.

The following guidelines seem to be a good place to start:

1) The ombudsman should have a regular, prominent on-air role.
Burying the segments in some little-watched timeslot defeats the purpose. If you're going to have any credibility, you need to air your mistakes. In prime time.



2) The ombudsman should be edited for journalistic reasons, not editorial ones.
An ombudsman should be honest and accurate, and it's not unreasonable to have someone from the network have at least some ability to step in if there is a problem. But the role should be limited and as a last result. The ombudsman should have the right to go on the air and discuss the disagreement. This is a transparent process and it should treated as such. And under no circumstance should comments be edited because of concerns that someone on the network might be upset. This isn't a PR role. An ombudsman brings clarity, not cheap ego gratification.



3) Management needs to publicly and prominently stand behind the ombudsman.
If this isn't the case, the entire thing will fall apart the first time one of the "stars" of the network is criticized.



4) The ombudsman should also talk about what's right with the network.
Sometimes viewers are wrong. They perceive a bias that doesn't exist, or see things that aren't there. And it's up to the ombudsman to also make that clear when it happens. This is a role of accuracy, no matter where that takes the ombudsman.



5) The ombudsman should be from outside of the New York-Washington D.C. axis.
There are a couple of important reasons for this. One is that most of the viewers don't come from the Beltway, so why should the ombudsman? The other is that it's much easier to be a voice of dissent when you're not friends with the people you're fact-checking.



6) The ombudsman should also be a presence online.
In today's environment, it's not enough to just do the regular broadcast bit. There should be a weblog, an online column answering comments that don't fit into the TV segments, online chats...everything possible to connect the network's viewers to the ombudsman and to each other.

Ironically, I believe adding an ombudsman to a news network would not just be the right thing to do, it would pay off in the ratings. It's a move that would garner a massive amount of publicity and force the other news channels into a defensive position.

So the big question is....which network jumps on this idea first?