Meddlers or defenders of the truth? Schoolboy tell-tales or readers’ champions; heroes or villains?
Readers’ editors are controversial figures, but their influence in European newspapers is growing, with the US-born trend spreading to the UK and beyond. But do they actually help newspapers to do their job better, or are they a hindrance to good old-fashioned journalism?
Life in the newsroom used to be simple. Get what you can, find enough facts to slip your story past the lawyer, and publish. Never apologise, never explain. It was a bruising, macho world and the concerns of disgruntled readers rarely mattered enough to merit the attention of reporters.
Times have changed. In certain circumstances it is OK to say sorry, even without a solicitor’s letter on your desk demanding it. On some papers it is positively encouraged. Chief among these are the titles at the Guardian group.
"We are owned by the Scott Trust, any profits are ploughed back into the papers. We don’t have a proprietor, we can be rather more utopian in our approach than our commercial rivals," says Stephen Pritchard, readers’ editor of The Observer, part of the Guardian Group.
Pritchard explains the theory: "It is someone who represents the reader on a paper. You are there to listen to readers and to people who feel they have been misrepresented by the paper." The readers’ editor makes sure complaints are taken seriously.
"Newspapers hold other people to account all the time; politicians, councillors, corporations," says Pritchard. "We don’t hold ourselves to account very often."
The practice is not restricted to the quality press. The Daily Mirror has a readers’ editor, David Seymour, though he doubles as group political editor. Seymour believes that a readers’ editor, even one like him who is not as independent as the likes of Pritchard, is essential today.
"I think every newspaper should have a corrections and clarifications column," says Seymour. "I know of other newspapers that get things wrong and they know they have got it wrong and they won’t print any kind of correction or apology. That is not good for journalism."
Pritchard illustrates the value of a readers’ editor: "If someone complains about a story and says that they did not say something they are quoted as saying, then I can go and talk to that reporter, check their notes and find out exactly what happened," says Pritchard. "That more usually happens with organisations than with individuals. But don’t get the impression that I am on the side of every complaint made. Often we find that the person did say that and the complaint has no merit."
The Guardian recently had to deal with a controversial story by a reporter in China which severely overstated the extent of a physical attack on interpreter Lu Banglie, an attack to which the journalist was witness. Ian Mayes, the Guardian’s readers’ editor, says: "We had to publish a longer than usual article about that."
Just last week, Judith Miller resigned from The New York Times amid controversy surrounding her reporting of the build-up to the Iraq War and her involvement in the scandal surrounding the revealing of the identity of a CIA agent. Miller had earlier criticised the paper’s public editor Byron Calame for his statements on the subject. Calame declined an interview.
Most of a readers’ editor’s activity is in response to complaints from readers or the subjects of stories. Sometimes they act on their own initiative, bringing up issues of accuracy, balance or bias with reporters and editors directly.
"Journalists make mistakes. Subeditors make mistakes," says Seymour. "The fact that we recognise that and correct them makes us more, not less, trustworthy."
But does cataloguing your errors every day erode readers’ trust in your ability to do your job? The reverse is the case, according to Pritchard. "Nobody has ever written to us and said I’m never buying your paper again because it is always full of mistakes."
Newspapers are struggling to maintain the attention of readers amid increasing competition from other media. Consumers of media are getting used to having a more sophisticated relationship with their information providers than simply that of passive customer.
Seymour believes that this is fundamentally changing newspapers, but perhaps not quickly enough. "A lot of newspapers feel that there are particular places for readers, that they shouldn’t be in the paper outside the letters page," he says. "But if you look around at interactive TV, at people texting shows, you realise that a lot of newspapers have not worked out that you need to have two-way communications with readers."
Not all journalists are fans of the concept, though. "I don’t know what problem they are a solution for," says Harry Reid, editor of The Herald from 1997 to 2000. "I always believe, in a rather sentimental, old- fashioned way, that the relationship between a newspaper and a reader is one of trust and understanding.
"Journalists are already subject to huge legal restrictions, there are massive bars on what can be written in a newspaper already. Some of the more difficult ethical positions, no ombudsman could sort out. Look at the issue last week over the Scotland on Sunday editor," says Reid, referring to SoS editor Iain Martin’s intention to publish e-mail correspondence between himself and Conservative MSP Brian Monteith. "I’m not sure any ombudsman would be able to do anything about that to make matters any clearer."
Some argue that lofty ideals are hard to put into practice in a hectic newsroom. Mayes disagrees: "That sounds like an argument for a readers’ editor, not against. That makes it all the more important to have someone who stands back dispassionately from all that and looks at the decisions made."
One benefit of a readers’ editor is that that person acts as a filter for complaints. Many readers or subjects of stories are pushed into legal action by the traditional newspaper attitude of not backing down. If corrections are printed, many are happy and do not pursue further action.
Mayes says: "Our legal team tells me that because of the work I do their workload dropped by 30%. The newspaper is very happy with that, as are they. Now if you go into it with the attitude that it will save money it won’t work, you have to seriously want to get it right."
Some groups are more tenacious than that, though, and progress to legal action or the Press Complaints Commission even if they do get a correction. "If you do anything about animal rights, that lobby is very, very vociferous," says Pritchard. "You will always get letters."
Readers’ editors themselves believe that their work, ultimately, does not undermine journalists, but supports them. "Someone said that a broadsheet newspaper has something like two War and Peaces in it a day," says Seymour. "That there might only be 20 or 30 corrections to make a week is frankly amazing."
