Ombudsmen with teeth needed

I began my corporate career as an auditor, and earned my credential as a Certified Internal Auditor long before legislative and accounting regulations placed heavy emphasis on internal controls. One of the lessons learned early on is that “fish stink from the head.” The moral and professional example and tone set by a corporation’s leaders told much about what one might find below.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that I’ve had such a fascination with the role played by ombudsmen in newspapers. I wrote, critically, here, here and here, about the failure of leading newspaper’s ombudsmen to question specific significant instances of outrageously poor reporting in their newspapers – mostly by omission of important, verified information. Such omissions, aside from revealing instances of inadequate reporting of full information deserved by the reader, also flowed from the liberal orthodoxy prevalent in mainstream journalism.

But, there’s another reason that may come into play: Most mainstream journalism is inherently “conservative” – and should be -- about the sourcing and the facts presented. Presentation of news information may not be as exact as accounting, but dual-entry and internal controls are paralleled in requirements for multiple verification and transparency (i.e., traceability to the full context).

An instance of this is the treatment of the latest charge made by Congressman Curt Weldon regarding Able Danger. For those unversed in the Able Danger issue – the seeming failure by the 9/11 Commission to consider the evidence unearthed by Weldon that an operation within American intelligence may have revealed the plane hijackers’ leader a year before the event – please see the extensive reporting by “Captain” Ed Morrissey. You’ll have to scan numerous posts but, if distracted by another subject he’s written about, you’ll be rewarded.

Fellow blogger Dana Pico, of CommonSensePoliticalThought, is exercised at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s not reporting that Philadelphia-area Congressman Weldon charges that part of the fault of not transmitting the Able Danger information to the 9/11 Commission is that a key staffer had formerly worked for Commission member Jamie Gorelick, whose Clinton-administration directives and influence in imposing a wall between intelligence agencies was one of the key weaknesses of American intelligence preparedness.

Pico points out, correctly, that the Philadelphia Inquirer’s motives are suspect, inasmuch as its editorial stance is even more stridently liberal than the New York Times, for example publishing 21 successive editorials in October 2004 endorsing John Kerry. Pico also points out that local newspapers usually go out of their way to publish reports from or about local representatives, as local voters are directly concerned.

However, as “Captain” Ed points out, he is unable to find a suspect connection between the Commission staffer and Gorelick.

The sole publisher of the allegation is NewsMax. NewsMax is a decidedly conservative online newspaper, the opinions from which are easy to agree with by conservatives. However, it never links to its source documents. Far too often for comfort, when I and others have gone to the difficulty of tracing the story, it is reported sufficiently out of context to not be a fully reliable rendition of the story. Thus, most reputable conservative bloggers tend to avoid NewsMax as a source.

Nonetheless, Congressman Weldon’s overall rendition and exposure of the ignored dangers in the Able Danger case has proven far more accurate than his detractors. Pico is correct to expect, at least, that the Philadelphia Inquirer report the allegation, given that context and Weldon’s importance to local voters.

Thus, a “conservative journalism” defense of the Philadelphia Inquirer is inappropriately inadequate to the matter of it ignoring the allegation entirely.

I searched the Philadelphia Inquirer website and the website of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. It appears that the Philadelphia Inquirer does not have an ombudsman.

Given that most ombudsmen are more house eunuchs than internal auditors of the truth, the editors of the Philadelphia Inquirer do not even present this channel to question their judgment. They may be more honest with their readers than newspapers that espouse consideration for their critical readers while treating them as nettlesome ignoramuses of the orthodoxies of mainstream reporting.

Corporate America, and America’s legislators and accounting profession, decided that it’s better to have real internal auditors with real teeth than not. It’s time that mainstream media caught up with real ombudsmen with real teeth.