Getler renewed as ombudsman
PBS has renewed the contract of its first ombudsman, Michael Getler, whose initial two-year contract ended Nov. 15. In discussions with PBS President Paula Kerger and Chief Operating Officer Wayne Godwin, Getler suggested his contract be renewed one year at a time “to give everyone maximum flexibility,” he says. His new contract expires Nov. 15, 2008.
Getler says stations and producers are good about responding to viewer concerns, but an ombudsman can give the issues valuable kinds of additional attention. He says his column at PBS.org/ombudsman provides an independent assessment of PBS content and practices and publicly records the organization’s response to viewer concerns.
He believes more media organizations should have ombudsmen. “I think in today’s world, news consumers, public affairs consumers and documentary consumers sort of demand more openness on the part of the media.”
It’s not easy to measure the impact of an ombudsman’s work inside a media organization, he says, after two years in the role at PBS and five at the Washington Post. “If you write critically about something, people don’t normally come up and say ‘Thank you for that,’” he says. “But the most we can hope for is that we make them think about what they’re doing a little bit more. I’m sure that the column is pretty well-read within PBS and among viewers.”
Before his stint as the Post’s ombudsman, Getler was a reporter and editor at the newspaper for 26 years and executive editor of the International Herald Tribune based in Paris.
Web page posted Dec. 7, 2007
Copyright 2007 by Current Publishing Committee