Getler Talks With PBS

Former Washington Post and current PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler (are ombudsman gigs going to become like ambassadorships? You just spend the rest of your career jumping from one Embassy to the next?) sat down with PBS’ Jeffrey Brown and had a few interesting things to say about his experience at the Post:

JEFFREY BROWN: Does your experience with the Post suggest that the role having an ombudsman makes a difference? Does it make a difference to the content or does it make a difference to bringing the audience into a different relationship with the organizations?

MICHAEL GETLER: I think both. I think clearly readers in the case of the Post, viewers in the case of PBS like having someone there that they can complain to, that they can get a response from about substantive issues that they have with what’s been put on the air. It’s very hard to measure the internal impact on the news organization. I mean if you write something critical, the editor or producer is not going to come over and say gee, thanks for that. They are not going to do that.

Anyone think Dan Froomkin came over to thank current Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell for writing this? Or did Bob Woodward come over to thank Howell for writing this? (Probably not…getting him to come over to Post’s 15th St. offices is not easy we hear…).

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