There was a little jewel on PBS last week, an hour-plus documentary called “The Way We Get By,” part of the long-running POV, or point of view, series. It was broadcast on Nov. 11, Veterans Day, and was about the… More »
In last week’s Ombudsman’s Column, I posted e-mails from some viewers who were upset with an episode of the venerable children’s program Sesame Street that had aired on Oct. 29 and dealt with one of the program’s colorful creations, the… More »
One of the most interesting aspects of this peculiar job is that you hear from viewers about lots of things that surprise you. I expect to hear regularly about The NewsHour, Frontline, Bill Moyers Journal, NOW, Tavis Smiley or Washington… More »
This week’s mailbag produced half-a-dozen or so letters from viewers who were angry at what they saw as PBS promotion of children being vaccinated against the flu virus, and in some cases, the H1N1 strain of that virus. Their ire… More »
Most of the e-mails to the ombudsman this week came in reaction to last week’s column dealing with Frontline’s Oct. 13 documentary about Afghanistan with the controversial title, “Obama’s War,” and with the controversial use of footage of a fatally… More »
The long-running PBS documentary series Frontline aired its new season premiere this week, an hour-long look at the now eight-year-old war in Afghanistan that carried the controversial title, “Obama’s War.” I’ll come back to that title a little further down… More »
As I was saying, we would wait until the completion of the six-part, 12-hour Ken Burns series on “The National Parks” before pulling together a representative sampling of viewer observations sent to the ombudsman’s inbox. Not surprisingly, this makes for… More »
Not About ‘The Parks’ The sweeping, six-part, 12-hour documentary series by Ken Burns, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” is still running at the time of this posting, so I’m going to save some of this week’s mail commenting on… More »
What follows is more of a grab bag rather than an ombudsman’s mailbag. Included are a couple of unusual but not widely known episodes that unfolded last week that I thought might be of interest more broadly to PBS viewers…. More »
Most of the mail that accumulated while I was away focused on two segments of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. One aired on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and dealt with a new and strongly-worded report from the United Nations about the… More »
I’ll be away from the office until Sept. 18, but will be checking in electronically from time-to-time and my assistant, Marcia Apperson, will be here to handle your inquiries. You can continue to contact us at ombudsman@pbs.org or 703-739-5290…. More »
Last Friday, Aug. 28, was the last broadcast of “Reading Rainbow,” among the most venerable and durable children’s weekday series within PBS’s long history of high-quality programming for young people. It has had an extraordinary run — 26 years and… More »
‘The Moderator, Not the Judge’ The headline on this column is from an answer I got from Linda Winslow, the executive producer of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In the mailbag this week, not surprisingly, were a number of e-mails… More »
What follows is a sampling of the mail that landed here while I was away last week. There are lots of subjects covered so this gets pretty long. First come some follow-ups to the July 29 column that dealt with… More »
(Ombudsman’s Note: I’ll be away from the office until Aug. 10 but my assistant, Marcia Apperson, will be here and you can continue to contact us at ombudsman@pbs.org or by phone at 703-739-5290.) Two PBS programs in recent days struck… More »
This week’s mailbag found viewers taking some pretty clear stands on three recent programs or segments. Last week’s column featured an assault on the host of the weekly Bill Moyers Journal by conservative commentator Brent Bozell. It included some lengthy… More »
It was relatively quiet around the ombudsman’s office last week; not many e-mails from viewers. But if you listened closely you could hear the sound of one icon getting smashed, and another coming under attack. For example, Bill Moyers ended… More »
I’m sure a lot of people liked the annual Capitol Fourth concert broadcast by PBS on July 4th from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. But you can’t tell that from this week’s Ombudsman’s Mailbag. Viewers who wrote to… More »
Here’s a sampling of mail from viewers reacting to recent PBS programs and decisions that have been the subject of ombudsman’s columns in the past week dealing with broadcasts of NOW on PBS about anti-abortion actions, and about the PBS… More »
Among the other things that unfolded within or on PBS during the time I was away earlier this month were two provocative and hard-hitting reports on the weekly public affairs program NOW on PBS — one asking the question: “Are… More »
While I was away last week, the PBS Board reached an important decision. It was both a compromise, yet also uncompromising in an important way. On June 16, the Board approved, as a requirement for station membership, a recommendation from… More »
I’ll be away from the office until June 22, but will be checking in electronically from time-to-time and my assistant, Marcia Apperson, will be here to handle your inquiries. You can continue to contact us at ombudsman@pbs.org or 703-739-5290…. More »
Some Not So Old Business What follows are some more letters and lengthier correspondence dealing with two recent programs that sparked both a good deal of interest and, unexpectedly, a fair amount of controversy. The first group consists of another… More »
Last Wednesday, I posted a column dealing with viewer response to the Sunday night, May 24, nationally televised 20th annual National Memorial Day Concert from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. The column focused, in particular, on a segment… More »
Last Sunday evening, May 24, the annual National Memorial Day Concert from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., was broadcast live to the nation on PBS. It was the 20th anniversary of this 90-minute musical, dramatic… More »
This week’s Mailbag brings something old and something new. The new stuff involves lots of e-mails that amount to pre-emptive strikes by viewers on both sides of a tough and touchy decision that faces the PBS Board of Directors next… More »
An ambitious and, I thought, powerful and illuminating five-part series on the relentlessly tragic yet often stirring history of the American Indian unfolded on PBS stations for 90 minutes on consecutive Monday evenings from April 13 through May 11. This… More »
This week’s mailbag centers on responses and reactions to the last two ombudsman’s columns. One of them was last week dealing with a report on FOX News about the use of material from the Al Jazeera English news network by… More »
A story on FOXNews.com last week, headlined “Al Jazeera’s Presence on PBS Alarms Some” by Eric Shawn, apparently did alarm some of those who saw the story. Although only four people wrote to me, and all of the e-mails appeared… More »
Last week’s Ombudsman’s Mailbag included a segment on the March 31 broadcast of “Sick Around America” on PBS’s flagship documentary series, Frontline. The program dealt with health care in this country and the letters to me were uniformly critical of… More »
Note: This column contains a correction posted on April 6. Viewer response to two programs dominated the mailbag this week. Most of the mail and certainly the strongest sentiments - all of them critical - focused on last Friday’s (March… More »
March Madness means basketball for most Americans but it also means madness over Pledge Drive programming for some PBS watchers. I’ve written about this issue several times over the past three years and one of the viewers who wrote to… More »
Here’s a brief collection of observations from viewers that landed in our inbox this past week or so. The mail focused on two main issues: 1) further commentary on the two-part series broadcast on Masterpiece Classic in February of the… More »
A two-part, three-hour, miniseries production of the Charles Dickens classic “Oliver Twist” that appeared on PBS’s “Masterpiece Classic” on Feb. 15 and 22 produced some sharply critical comments from several viewers. Not surprisingly, they are focused on the character known… More »
Welcome to another collection of viewer commentaries and observations that landed in the ombudsman’s mailbag during the past week or so. This one is a double feature, and that makes it rather long. First comes a sampling of reaction to… More »
In Wednesday’s New York Times, a headline on page A5 read: “To Some Sri Lankan Ears, Dissonant Undertones in an Acclaimed Rapper’s Music.” The story, from the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo by correspondent Thomas Fuller, began: “To many Americans,… More »
This week’s Mailbag includes commentaries from viewers on a range of PBS offerings from NOVA’s “The Spy Factory” to the Mark Twain Prize posthumously honoring comedian George Carlin — who remained bleeped on PBS even though he is no longer… More »
Welcome to another — very long — Mailbag filled with a sampling of viewer commentaries on lots of programs and presentations. Aside from the letters below, there were several hundred more letters from viewers sharply critical of the Bill Moyers… More »
At the close of the weekly Bill Moyers Journal last Friday evening (Jan. 9), the host of that usually stimulating and frequently provocative program reflected on the continuing violence in Gaza between the forces of Israel and Hamas. He did… More »
Another round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict brings still more death and destruction to those caught in its path, still more gut-wrenching images on television, and always more letters from viewers who have strong feelings about how this long-playing human tragedy is… More »
Welcome to a quick, year-end mailbag; a sampling of reactions to some recent ombudsman’s columns and some letters from earlier in the month that I didn’t have a chance to post. Here are the letters: Regarding that NOW poll back… More »
Last month, Jim Lehrer, the editor, part-owner, father and anchor of PBS’s flagship news offering, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, was honored by Oklahoma University’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications for another one of his accomplishments: a role model… More »
What is broadly described as the “Armenian Genocide” — the epic saga of what many, but not all, historians and many, but not all, countries describe as the genocide against the Armenians carried out by the Young Turks of the… More »
While I was away during the Thanksgiving holiday, a couple of related things happened. Venezuela held important state and local elections around the country on Sunday, Nov. 23, and PBS’s Frontline series broadcast a 90-minute documentary about that country’s controversial… More »
Two programs on PBS last week revived some ghosts; memories of people and events of years past that might still have relevance these days. In one case, that possibility made a few viewers wonder whether airing such a documentary at… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one deals only with responses to the issue raised in last week’s column about the timing of PBS’s special election night coverage on Nov. 4. I’ll be away later this week so I’m posting… More »
Last Tuesday was a historic night in lots of ways; for the United States, for Barack Obama, and for Americans who turned on their televisions for many hours to watch the returns roll in from an extraordinary election. The Associated… More »
Welcome to another collection of mail from viewers about PBS programs. Actually, this isn’t much of a collection since most of the mail I received was about one program, a two-hour documentary called “Heat” from Frontline that aired on Oct…. More »
In last week’s mini-posting I mentioned, very briefly, a new 90-minute documentary film titled “Torturing Democracy” that had been offered to PBS but stirred some controversy before it had aired. The New York Times, on Oct. 16, had first reported… More »
* This posting was revised on Friday based on new information I’m away from the office until Oct. 21. So this isn’t a column, and that headline isn’t about baseball. Rather, it is about a new 90-minute documentary film (that… More »
As sometimes happens in the week-by-week life of an ombudsman, if you defend — or are perceived to be defending — someone who is under attack by critics, then the fire turns on you the following week. So a good… More »
One of the most useful lessons I learned during many years as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post was what we sometimes called “the doctrine of no surprises.” At other times, it was described in harsher terms. The… More »
Maybe it’s just another sign of the new world of media, but two events on PBS.org — the online component of the Public Broadcasting Service — rather than on television, produced the proverbial ton of e-mail and online controversy for… More »
Pledging, Polling and Palin Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was the focus of a lot of the messages in the Ombudsman’s Mailbag this week, but not because of anything she had said or done. Rather, it was… More »
As the 2008 election draws closer and closer, the ombudsman’s mailbag, not surprisingly, is filled more and more with messages from viewers who are upset over one thing or another about political coverage on PBS. And because the five-nights-a-week NewsHour… More »
Last week’s long mailbag was centered on viewer reaction to PBS coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. There was a lot of mail, and much of it was complimentary to the coverage by Jim Lehrer and the staff… More »
Warning to Readers: This is a very long Mailbag. PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer this week was the only broadcast network program to devote all its prime time hours to coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag, a regular sampling of viewer comments and observations about PBS programs, and of reactions to the ombudsman’s column. This week’s mail was dominated by a continuing and rather heavy flow of e-mail from viewers reacting… More »
There is a legitimate debate underway within journalistic circles, and in that part of the online blogging world that keeps tabs on journalism, about whether the major news organizations in this country did the right thing, or the wrong thing,… More »
Last week’s column about a segment on the NewsHour moderated by Margaret Warner with guests Max Boot and Lawrence Korb — informal campaign advisers, respectively, to Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama — included several letters that were sharply critical… More »
(Ombudsman’s Note: This column was scheduled to appear at its usual time last Friday, July 25, but posting was delayed until Monday, July 28, due to technical problems at pbs.org.) The headline of this column is lifted from a song… More »
The mail from viewers this week focused on the new, the old and the continuing. The majority of comments dealt with a new program. They had less to do with typical ombudsman’s issues of journalistic standards or editorial integrity. Rather,… More »
Welcome to another collection of viewer responses to what they saw and heard on PBS in recent days. This week, most of the mail, and certainly most of the heat, was generated by Part II of a three-part series titled… More »
As so often happens when even small mistakes or missteps are made, the cover-up turns out to be worse than the crime. It can be even more perplexing when it is not clear that a crime actually was committed. This… More »
Last week’s Ombudsman’s Mailbag centered on a couple of letters from viewers about the June 13 edition of “Bill Moyers Journal” that focused on the theme of “inequality in America.” I thought two of the letters, especially, captured the on-going… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag, a sampling of comments from viewers during the past week. The volume, as measured in numbers, was down a bit compared to our normal flow of incoming e-mail and calls. But the volume, as in… More »
Is this a great time to be an ombudsman, or what? Yes, it is a good time but a lot of the action was elsewhere last week, although several PBS viewers in certain parts of the country were upset —… More »
I was out of the office last week, attending the annual gathering of news ombudsmen. It was held this year, fittingly, in Stockholm, Sweden, home of the word, and the birthplace of this strange occupation. According to the Web site… More »
The headline above was made famous by Jimmy Cannon, a well-known and widely-read New York sportswriter and columnist in the 1940s and ’50s. Lots of people, including me, sort of grew up reading his column. But every once in a… More »
Note: This column contains a correction posted on May 20. Each year, for the past several years, PBS puts out a press release that proclaims proudly that a new national poll by the respected Roper organization “shows that Americans consider… More »
If you are a devoted viewer of PBS, it was hard to miss endless shots of Navy jets taking off and landing on the deck of the USS Nimitz last week, part of a highly-promoted and, indeed, tantalizing series called… More »
This was a busy week at the ombudsman’s desk. Things started to heat up last Friday night after the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. was the guest for the full hour of Bill Moyers Journal. In case there is anyone… More »
Last Sunday, The New York Times published a very lengthy — even by Times’ standards — investigative article headlined, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.” The sub-headline read: “Courting Ex-Officers Tied to Military Contractors.” The 7,600-word article by reporter David… More »
Welcome to another collection of viewer responses to what they see and hear on PBS. Things were a little slow this past week; nothing that generated a great deal of mail. But what does arrive is always interesting. Here’s a… More »
I’m not sure what this column has to do, precisely, with PBS, except perhaps in one way: to help, somehow, to engage more young people in the news of our time and in the duty of citizens in a democracy…. More »
Welcome to another posting of viewer comments about recent programs or ombudsman columns. Much of the mail this week continued to focus on the two-part, four-and-a-half hour Frontline series titled “Bush’s War” that aired on March 24 and 25. It… More »
All of you TV watchers out there have surely seen, by now, that famous “red telephone” political advertisement run by Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It seeks to convey the idea that when that crisis phone rings, you want the… More »
Debating the War Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one comes close on the heels of Tuesday’s mailbag, mostly because this extraordinary election campaign season continues to generate a relentless stream of issues, controversies and interest among viewers. And, since… More »
I was away last week but the Ombudsman’s Mailbag filled up with commentaries on many subjects, and the viewers who wrote to me seemed to be in a critical mood about lots of things. The one that attracted the most… More »
Covering the Dems, the Economy and the Cost of the War Welcome to another edition of the Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one deals mostly with viewer comments, and some of my own, on recent coverage of the Democratic primary campaign, followed… More »
With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the headline above just about sums up viewer attitudes about PBS that landed in the ombudsman’s inbox this week. The comments came in the aftermath of a controversy that had been stirred up by… More »
There are, after all, other world-class newspapers like The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. And there are other papers that cover New York. But of course The New York Times is still necessary; more necessary… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. Just as a reminder for those who may have only recently tuned into this space, these “mailbags” are primarily collections of viewer commentaries about recent PBS programs, usually with some brief commentary from me and… More »
On a night like Super Tuesday, even one mistake projecting a winner in any of the 22 Democratic primary races and 21 Republican contests is too much for some television viewers. And you can’t blame them. This is serious business…. More »
Well, it wasn’t what you’d call gripping, edge-of-your-chair television, and it didn’t attract many letters to the ombudsman. But when correspondents for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer fanned out to five different states this week to talk to small groups… More »
‘Horseracism’ Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This week the inbox was filled mostly with e-mail from viewers critical of, and tired of, the so-called “horse race” journalism that goes into reporting who is, or seems to be, ahead in the… More »
It probably was inevitable that, with Sen. Barack Obama as a leading contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, race was somehow going to surface during the hard-fought primaries. That’s what happened earlier this month and PBS’s NewsHour with Jim… More »
The press, the pundits and the polls all got a big black eye this week after forecasting, with considerable certainty, a big victory for Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. Much has already been written and… More »
What happens, or should happen, when a guest on a popular TV opinion show goes beyond normally accepted criticism and launches into a harsh characterization of someone who is a revered prophet of a religion with about 12 million adherents,… More »
Not a Mailbag, not a Column Just a note, not too solemn, To thank you, dear readers, For letting me know What you thought about that show, And why, exactly, such a bomb Demanded the attention of the Omb. But… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. Here, without comment, is a sampling of letters from viewers reacting to last week’s column about programs aired on Bill Moyers Journal and NOW. There are also letters from some of you who objected to… More »
Two of PBS’s flagship weekly public affairs programs — NOW with David Brancaccio and Bill Moyers Journal — air back-to-back on Friday evenings and last week’s offerings each drew a few complaints from viewers who felt they were “one-sided.” Only… More »
Here’s another Ombudsman’s Mailbag, this one recording observations from viewers about a variety of programs that aired since the last posting just before the Thanksgiving Day holiday break. Most of the mail, as has been the case in the last… More »
Last week’s Ombudsman’s Column dealt with the presentation on PBS of “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” and included comments from viewers in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 13 broadcast. The program generated a lot of reaction and mail,… More »
The e-mail from viewers was immediate and heavy, and the opinions intense. The subject was the two-hour documentary titled “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” that aired Tuesday night, Nov. 13, as part of the long-running and widely acclaimed PBS… More »
I was out of town for a couple of days last week, but wanted to keep in front of you comments, criticisms and compliments that landed in the ombudsman’s inbox in the past several days, and to offer a… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. Here’s a representative sampling of the e-mail from viewers — commenting on several different programs — that landed in the inbox since late last week. Labeling Ladies On tonight’s (Oct. 26) Washington Week, a panelist-reporter,… More »
Being a senior citizen, as well as an ombudsman, I watched the just-concluded PBS three-hour, two-part series, “The Mysterious Human Heart,” with an extra dose of interest. Even if you are feeling pretty good, these things always seem scary, triggering… More »
On the Frontline, Again. Frontline, the outstanding (my opinion as well as that of many others) documentary series marked the beginning of its 25th season this week with another look into the often-closed world in which Vice-President Dick Cheney operates…. More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. The inbox this week, as was the case last week, was dominated by viewer response to the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick epic documentary series, “The War.” Viewers continued to comment on the series, on some of… More »
“The War” is over. The Allies won. And so did PBS viewers. The epic 15-hour documentary — produced by filmmaker-extraordinaire Ken Burns, co-producer Lynn Novick and writer Geoffrey C. Ward and presented in seven nightly episodes stretching over the past… More »
This was a big week for PBS. On Monday night, the Public Broadcasting Service won 10 “Emmy” Awards in the News and Documentary category, more than any broadcast or cable television network. And the night before, the highly-touted and much-publicized… More »
PBS seemed to be making news this week rather than just broadcasting it. The news revolves around two debates, officially called “forums,” for 2008 presidential candidates — one in Iowa for Democrats and one in Maryland for Republicans. Both were… More »
The appearance in Washington this week of the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus, and his diplomatic sidekick, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, was among the most high-profile visits to the nation’s capital in… More »
The Ombudsman’s Mailbag this week was filled with e-mails focusing on one or the other of two PBS offerings. One was an hour-long program on Sept. 3 called “Inside America’s Empire,” in which journalist-author Robert D. Kaplan travels to smaller… More »
Last week’s ombudsman’s column about the closing segment of a Bill Moyers Journal and Moyers’ “closing thoughts” on the departure of top political strategist Karl Rove from the White House drew quite a bit of mail. Unlike last week, however,… More »
Over the last many years, reporters have grown fond of the once-secret tape recordings of White House conversations made by former President Richard Nixon. They are sometimes jokingly referred to as “the gift that keeps on giving,” not just because… More »
Here’s a sampling of letters from viewers that arrived while I was away last week. They focused on three offerings: the latest appearance on PBS of self-help guru Wayne Dyer, Ph.D., and on a couple of segments on the NewsHour… More »
Here’s some more mail about recent Bill Moyers Journal programs and the exchange between Moyers and me over the question of balance. If you can’t get enough of this, here’s a link to the original July 13 Moyers program dealing… More »
Last week’s posting was a combined ombudsman’s column and viewer mailbag that dealt primarily with the July 13th edition of “Bill Moyers Journal, which was headlined, “Tough Talk About Impeachment; Should Congress Start Proceedings?” There was a fair amount of… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. Actually, this is as much a column as it is a mailbag, as you will see. And if you read all the letters, it’s also quite long. This week, the inbox was loaded with viewer… More »
“We interrupt this program to bring you … a political message.” That line wasn’t actually broadcast on PBS this week, but that’s what several viewers thought happened while they were watching the July 9 airing of the “History… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag, this time with a representative sampling of mail from viewers during the last week in June and this holiday week in July. It includes reactions to the big, annual “Capitol Fourth” telecast on PBS of… More »
The Ombudsman’s Column on June 1, titled “At PBS, the Pressure Is On Before the TV Goes On,” dealt with two decisions that had just unfolded publicly in which editorial judgments by the Public Broadcasting Service on two future offerings… More »
Two recent PBS “documentaries,” both of which have been the subject of previous Ombudsman’s Columns, continue to draw a good deal of mail — some of it about the films and some of it about my columns. I put the… More »
When I was in elementary school back in the 1940s during World War II, we used to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. We faced the classroom flag and said: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United… More »
One of the good things about being an ombudsman is that you learn, at least I do, new things all the time. Last week’s lesson in how television and PBS work came to me in the form of e-mails and… More »
Normally, the Ombudsman’s column deals with viewer observations about programs that have aired on PBS affiliated-stations around the country. On one or two occasions in the past 18 months, it has also dealt with controversies that have arisen publicly about… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one is very long, so here’s a guide to what’s in it so you can pick, choose, skim, scan or devour the whole thing. The length is mostly because there were hundreds of e-mails… More »
The ombudsman’s inbox has been really busy lately — the saga of Ken Burns’ “The War” and Latino unhappiness about the film continues; 12 hours of “America at the Crossroads” has been aired; Bill Moyers came roaring back to PBS… More »
Like a lot of people who have followed the war in Iraq closely, and like a lot of journalists who understand that the press, with few exceptions, failed in its obligation to challenge tenaciously the administration’s case for war before… More »
It certainly qualifies as a TV epic and as among the more memorable and expensive events in the recent history of public television; PBS’s “America at a Crossroads,” a 12-hour, 11-part series that “explores the challenges confronting the post-9/11 world.”… More »
Race and ethnicity were on the air and in the air last week. Although the main event was the sudden banishment of Don Imus from his CBS radio and MSNBC television talk show platforms for his ugly racial and sexual… More »
I was away last week and a good deal of mail piled up in my inbox; so here is a catch-up column of viewer commentary. A lot of the correspondence was about the continuing controversy surrounding the forthcoming seven-night, 14½… More »
The four-part PBS Frontline series “News War” wrapped up on Tuesday night with a segment titled “War of Ideas.” In it, producer/reporter/narrator Greg Barker “travels to the Middle East to examine the rise of Arab satellite TV channels and their… More »
To millions of people, March Madness means the final throws and throes of the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament. To millions of PBS viewers, it also means Pledge Month. I’m sure that many of those viewers understand that PBS… More »
“The War” doesn’t even start for another six months, but the skirmishes around its flanks have been underway for some time now and they escalated in the past week or two. “The War,” of course, is not the one we… More »
For those of you out there who care about journalism and have been following what is happening to the news media in recent years, the litany of woes has become very familiar. Newspaper circulation and advertising revenues continue in a… More »
Like all good Marines, when attacked, they launch a strong counter-offensive. Last week’s ombudsman’s column was about a 90-minute documentary titled “The Marines” that aired in mid-February. Most of the mail from viewers at the time — and most of… More »
Most of the mail this week focused on a 90-minute documentary that aired Wednesday evening and was simply titled “The Marines.” The United States Marine Corps is one of the oldest and most widely revered American institutions. No matter what… More »
The biggest news on PBS last week was the first installment of a four-part, 4 ½-hour “Frontline” investigative series on the future of news. “News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin” premiered on Feb. 13 and will continue on Feb. 20… More »
Maybe it’s just the February blahs, but there was less than the average amount of viewer mail this past week, and no dominant themes emerged. There was what looked like a relatively small e-mail write-in campaign from critics questioning the… More »
This started out as an Ombudsman’s Mailbag, a collection of viewer comments on a fairly wide range of programs that had aired recently. There was little or no comment from me because there were no dominant or especially controversial themes… More »
Two PBS offerings this week, both of them on Tuesday evening, Jan. 16 — a 90-minute Frontline documentary provocatively titled “Hand of God,” and a 30-minute interview with President Bush by Jim Lehrer on the nightly NewsHour — produced a… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one is rather long. In fact, it is extremely long. You could even call it a “surge,” to use the word of the moment. This mailbag surge is mostly because there’s been a burst… More »
That little black-and-white PBS logo that you see on your TV screen — the one with the three facial silhouettes — is accompanied by the PBS motto, which is “Be more.” The idea, if you read the fine print, is… More »
For those of you hardcore readers of the ombudsman’s column who aren’t yet on your holiday break and are still tuned in, here are a few letters that arrived over the last couple of days. The first batch involves a… More »
*This column was amended on Dec. 26 and Dec. 27, 2006. See Ombudsman’s Note at end. In October 2003, a one-hour documentary film titled “Einstein’s Wife,” about the renowned physicist’s first wife, Mileva Maric, along with a companion Web site… More »
In the midst of a really big news week for all Americans, including the release and reaction to the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report, came one of the weirder bits of news involving PBS. On Dec. 6, it was announced… More »
The Jimmy and Judy Show On Tuesday evening, Nov. 28, former President Jimmy Carter was interviewed on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” by special correspondent Judy Woodruff. The subject was Carter’s latest book, the 21st he has authored, titled: “Palestine:… More »
On Nov. 10, Jim Lehrer, the host of PBS’s nightly “NewsHour,” was a featured speaker at the dedication of the new National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va. Also present was President Bush, who also spoke, the Marine… More »
For those of you who want a little diversion from politics, here’s one of those stories that journalists sometimes describe, jokingly, as “too good to check,” or “you couldn’t make this one up.” These are usually stories rich with irony… More »
Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This has been a relatively quiet week for the inbox. Maybe people are so fed up with what has seemed like an endless political campaign accompanied by endless and ugly political advertising that they just… More »
Sometimes issues that come to the attention of an ombudsman are clear cut: they do or do not violate an organization’s guidelines, or something important has been left out, or something is inaccurate or unfair. At other times, things are… More »
Michelle Walsh, a PBS viewer in Portland, Ore., e-mailed me last week with the following observation: “While listening to ‘Washington Week in Review,’ I was returned again and again to the politics of a current event (in this case, scandal… More »
While news organizations were focused heavily last week on the scandal surrounding Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), my inbox was filled with e-mails that were mainly about two other topics. One involves a new, critical study of the PBS’s nightly “NewsHour… More »
Fear of Fining The effect of confusion over the Federal Communication Commission’s controversial rulings on indecency issues — and concern over the recently enacted Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act that allows the FCC to impose fines of $325,000 on broadcasters who… More »
Like some eight million or so other Americans, I’ve been tuning in to watch the new “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” whenever I could these last few weeks, mostly to try to get a sense of how she was… More »
Welcome to another sampling of viewer and online reader comments that have landed in the Ombudsman’s Mailbag in the past week or two. The first batch deals with reaction to the last column, on Sept. 1, about the movement of… More »
The ombudsman’s column of Aug. 11 dealt with what has been a relatively small but steady number of complaints I get from viewers who are upset at what they see as a steady growth of “commercials,” corporate “advertisements” and “sponsorships,”… More »
In my Aug. 16 column, I wrote about a situation, first disclosed two days earlier by Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, who writes the popular “In The Loop” feature. This one involved PBS’s long-running, all-women, weekly current affairs panel show… More »
My friend and former colleague at The Washington Post, Al Kamen, revealed last Monday, Aug. 14, in his popular “In The Loop” column that an anonymous inquiry from one of his readers asked: “Please explain to your readers how a… More »
On Tuesday, Aug. 8, one of the big stories of the day was the shutting down, by oil giant British Petroleum, of production at the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska because of badly corroded pipelines that had not been… More »
Readers of this column could argue that, as a journalist, I missed the lead on my own column last week. If you read it, you would know that I started out, or led with, the situation in the Middle East…. More »
An online reader of the Ombudsman’s Column from Powder Springs, GA., dropped me a line on July 20 to note that, “The last comments published (on the ombudsman’s Web page) were on the Fourth of July celebration. The real fireworks… More »
Fireworks Set Off Fireworks As usual, there was a glorious fireworks display on the evening of July Fourth next to the National Mall in the nation’s capital. And, as usual, it was broadcast live by PBS as part of the… More »
What better time to talk about patriotism than the Fourth of July. I am a total sucker for this holiday, and for Memorial Day as well. Like many Americans, I really do pause to think about this day and what… More »
“Welcome to the broadcast. I’m Mary Matalin, former White House counselor, sitting in tonight for Charlie Rose.” That’s how the May 31 broadcast of “The Charlie Rose Show” began. For the roughly three million people a week who watch Mr…. More »
Striking a Chord It probably should not have been surprising that a great many viewers wrote this past week about the annual National Memorial Day Concert performed last Sunday, May 28, from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. The… More »
I spent most of last week in Orlando at PBS’s third annual “Showcase” gathering, a coming together of several hundred people — station managers, producers, programmers and executives — from PBS-affiliated stations around the country and from headquarters in Arlington,… More »
Ranch for Sale, Needs Work Welcome to another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This is one that I did not expect to be posting, but two weeks after that eight-part, eight-hour, four-night “Texas Ranch House — 1867” series ran from May 1 through… More »
The mail this past week was dominated by viewer reaction to an eight-part, eight-hour series called “Texas Ranch House.” Set in 1867, each segment starts by explaining that, “This is the true story of 15 brave men and women who… More »
Another Opening, Another Show Welcome to another edition of the Ombudsman’s Mailbag. As is frequently the case, the issues that drew the most viewer mail and complaints to me last week are what one might fairly describe as downers; serious… More »
The year 2015 will mark the 100th anniversary of what many, but not all, historians and many, but not all, countries describe as the genocide against the Armenians carried out by the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire during World… More »
Here’s another Ombudsman’s Mailbag. This one includes a sampling of viewer and online reader response to the last three ombudsman’s columns and the issues they dealt with. The column posted on April 6 dealt with the Federal Communications Commission’s intention,… More »
Back on Jan. 30, I wrote a column headlined “The Lone Rangers.” The headline referred to the fact that although PBS has tens of millions of viewers every week, it is, as the first sentence of that earlier column explained,… More »
PBS, the public television service where I now work as the ombudsman, and The Washington Post newspaper, where I formerly did the same kind of work, have some important things in common. Both have informed, engaged audiences who care about… More »
On Monday evening, April 17, many PBS-affiliated television stations across the country — including nine of the top 10 TV markets — will air an hour-long documentary on “The Armenian Genocide” produced by the independent, New York-based filmmaker Andrew Goldberg…. More »
Last Friday, Feb. 24, I appeared as a guest on the PBS weekly television news magazine program “NOW with David Brancaccio.” It was a short segment at the end of the program. The first part of that segment was basically… More »
Welcome to another ombudsman’s mailbag. What follows is a sampling of e-mails from viewers and online readers in response to Monday’s column about the Feb. 7 interview with Vice President Dick Cheney on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” and also… More »
Once again, the press is in the middle of the news. This time it is the publication in Denmark’s largest daily newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, of a series of cartoons depicting Islam’s holiest figure, the prophet Muhammad. One of those depicts Muhammad… More »
Welcome to the Ombudsman’s mailbag, an occasional collection and sampling of emails from viewers and online readers responding to previous columns and other issues. This is the third mailbag since my first column appeared on Dec. 2, 2005. The previous… More »
It is often the case that a single viewer raises a question or challenge to PBS procedures that helps surface answers and explanations about how the complex organism that is PBS works, or doesn’t work. There were two examples of… More »
One thing that readers of this column need to keep in mind is that, for the most part, people write or call an ombudsman to complain rather than to compliment. I mention that because it is always on my mind… More »
Welcome, once again, to the Ombudsman’s mailbag, an occasional feature offering a sampling of letters in which PBS viewers and online readers comment on what the Ombudsman has had to say in previous columns. There was a fair amount of… More »
There was a slight, but noteworthy, change in the nightly NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last Wednesday night, Jan 4. The change relates to the recording of American military deaths in the war in Afghanistan, and it unfolded in two parts… More »
Many of the e-mails and telephone calls that I get each week deal with programs that I had not seen when they first aired. That’s natural because one can’t see everything live and because not all PBS programs air in… More »
Welcome to the Ombudsman’s mailbag. What follows is a sampling of the letters I have received from viewers in response to the first two columns I have written. This is something that I will try to continue with some regularity,… More »
On Friday evening, Nov. 18, one of PBS’s flagship public affairs programs, the weekly news magazine NOW with David Brancaccio, devoted a segment to a report on reconstruction efforts in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of… More »
One of the best and most respected programs offered by PBS — the continuing series of documentaries known as the “American Experience” — came in for some challenge in recent weeks from a small number of viewers and reviewers; really… More »
Greetings, and welcome to my maiden voyage as the first ombudsman in the 36-year history of the Public Broadcasting Service. To find out more about me and my mission you can click on two links: biography, and mission & approach…. More »
