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Saturday, August 30, 2008
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August 29, 2008
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 »
August 21, 2008
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 »
August 13, 2008
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 »
August 1, 2008
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 »
July 28, 2008
(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 »
July 18, 2008
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 »
July 11, 2008
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 »
July 3, 2008
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 »
June 27, 2008
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 »
June 20, 2008
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 »
June 10, 2008
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 »
June 4, 2008
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 »
May 23, 2008
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 »
May 15, 2008
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 »
May 8, 2008
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 »
May 1, 2008
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 »
April 24, 2008
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 »
April 18, 2008
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 »
April 11, 2008
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 »
April 4, 2008
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 »
March 27, 2008
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 »
March 21, 2008
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 »
March 18, 2008
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 »
March 7, 2008
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 »
February 27, 2008
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 »
February 22, 2008
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 »
February 14, 2008
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 »
February 8, 2008
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 »
February 1, 2008
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 »
January 25, 2008
‘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 »
January 18, 2008
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 »
January 11, 2008
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 »
January 4, 2008
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 »
December 20, 2007
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 »
December 14, 2007
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 »
December 7, 2007
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 »
November 30, 2007
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 »
November 20, 2007
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 »
November 16, 2007
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 »
November 14, 2007
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 »
November 2, 2007
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 »
October 26, 2007
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 »
October 19, 2007
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 »
October 12, 2007
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 »
October 5, 2007
“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 »
September 28, 2007
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 »
September 20, 2007
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 »
September 14, 2007
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 »
September 7, 2007
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 »
August 30, 2007
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 »
August 24, 2007
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 »
August 10, 2007
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 »
August 1, 2007
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 »
July 26, 2007
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 »
July 20, 2007
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 »
July 13, 2007
“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 »
July 6, 2007
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 »
June 29, 2007
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 »
June 22, 2007
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 »
June 15, 2007
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 »
June 8, 2007
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 »
June 1, 2007
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 »
May 17, 2007
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 »
May 9, 2007
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 »
May 4, 2007
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 »
April 26, 2007
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 »
April 18, 2007
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 »
April 10, 2007
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 »
March 29, 2007
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 »
March 23, 2007
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 »
March 16, 2007
“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 »
March 7, 2007
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 »
March 2, 2007
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 »
February 22, 2007
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 »
February 16, 2007
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 »
February 9, 2007
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 »
January 31, 2007
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 »
January 18, 2007
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 »
January 11, 2007
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 »
January 5, 2007
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 »
December 21, 2006
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 »
December 15, 2006
*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 »
December 8, 2006
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 »
November 30, 2006
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 »
November 16, 2006
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 »
November 10, 2006
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 »
November 3, 2006
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 »
October 23, 2006
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 »
October 13, 2006
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 »
October 6, 2006
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 »
October 3, 2006
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 »
September 22, 2006
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 »
September 8, 2006
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 »
September 1, 2006
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 »
August 23, 2006
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 »
August 16, 2006
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 »
August 11, 2006
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 »
August 3, 2006
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 »
July 26, 2006
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 »
July 7, 2006
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 »
July 3, 2006
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 »
June 14, 2006
“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 »
June 2, 2006
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 »
May 26, 2006
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 »
May 15, 2006
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 »
May 8, 2006
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 »
April 28, 2006
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 »
April 21, 2006
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 »
April 14, 2006
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 »
April 6, 2006
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 »
March 24, 2006
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 »
March 17, 2006
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 »
March 3, 2006
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 »
February 17, 2006
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 »
February 13, 2006
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 »
February 6, 2006
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 »
January 30, 2006
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 »
January 23, 2006
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 mentio | | | |