Ombudsmania!

(AP)

Today, Public Eye continues its semi-regular look at the issues at play in Print MediaLand, at least the ones that seem worth passing along. (As sometimes these things get too insider-y even for us.) So keep your hands inside the car at all times, and we're off:

Call The Media – Tell Them To Leave Us Alone

Maybe it's the fact we like Deborah Howell. Maybe it's the fact that she's violently agreeing with a point we made days earlier. (Maybe I'm just like my father: too bold.) But this week's Washington Post column addresses the concerns of a reader who wrote:

"I'm sure I'm not the only one to see the irony in The Post running a front-page story" on an athlete who "is now plagued with unwanted attention because her photo was posted without her permission . . . Her name and the city where she lives [are] in the story along with the Web site where her picture was first posted . . . Did anybody discuss whether running this story was proper, given the circumstances and the potential for harm?"

Local readers usually get my attention first, but I wanted to know the answer to this query from Paul Turner of Spokane: "Why, in print editions, [does] Spokane require the state designation while cities such as Boise and Syracuse do not?" Ashley Halsey, associate Metro editor and weather map guru. said, "Because there's a Spokane in Missouri."

Good News and Bad News in Iraq

Derek Donovan in Kansas City dealt this week with the delicate issue of balancing good news from Iraq with the bad, in responding to a reader:

Last Monday, Kevin Wood sent an e-mail about an Iraq story that he thought deserved more prominent play. On Page A-15, The Star ran a Washington Post article about a U.S. raid on an al-Qaida hideout northeast of Baghdad. A small refer on Page A-1 pointed readers inside.

Soldiers freed 41 kidnap victims, some of whom had broken bones and signs of torture, according to a spokesman for Gen. David Petraeus.

Wood contrasted the play of the story with the Abu Ghraib scandal, which has been mentioned more than 680 times in all sections of the paper, including Sports and FYI.

War Returns Home

Kate Parry at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune took to task the copy editor who added the title "Did war's demons follow Iraq veteran in I-94 chase?" to a story about an Iraq veteran who went on a shooting rampage. Given the fact that the story never fully answered the question, she proferred:

Several readers complained the story was straining to tie another sad incident to the Iraq war. I thought it was an angle worth pursuing, but when the facts didn't fall into place, an editor should have applied the brakes and held it for more reporting or recasting.

Many Sacramento Bee readers thought that a couple of cartoons pushed the bounds of taste and propriety on Memorial Day. According to the Bee's Armando Acuna:

More specifically, most were critical of The Bee's Rex Babin for using the Tomb of the Unknowns as the focal point of his editorial cartoon and of the Doonesbury cartoon strip by Garry Trudeau that listed names of Americans killed in Iraq since April 26 of last year.

While I understand how the war evokes strong emotions, it is the ultimate political act and, as such, fair game for editorial cartoonists, including -- and perhaps more so -- on Memorial Day weekend.