Ombudsmania!

(CBS/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:

The War of the Words

Words carry political weight. "Pro-choice" or "pro-life." "Gun rights." "Illegal immigrants." "Surge." And the Kansas City Star had to explain why it uses words like "militant" and "vigilante" to describe the Minutemen who watch America's border.

I can see these readers' point. But "militant" can also mean "aggressively active" or "strident," and I think many people would find much of the language at their Web site fits those descriptors. One article refers to the U.S. Senate as "traitorous," which is "putting a gun to the head of America's national security and repeatedly pulling the trigger."…

Then what about "vigilante?" Again to the dictionary, which says a vigilante is a group or individual volunteering to promote an interest, or to suppress and punish crime. That seems to me the exact definition of what the Minutemen claim as their purpose.

The MoveOn Petraeus ad continues to reverberate in the news industry, as the New York Times' ombudsman Clark Hoyt discussed the blowback he received when he said in last week's column that the Times erred in running the ad.

Many readers felt I wanted to limit a robust public debate on the war in Iraq. Far from it, I believe deeply in free speech and that there can't be too much debate about a war that so divides the country. But there's an important distinction between the right of people or organizations to say something and what The Times is willing to accept in its pages.

Hoyt raised a separate issue that ties well into how a newspaper can project credibility. "For The Times, there is another value: the protection of its brand as a newspaper that sets a high standard for civility."

He added a view that has drawn some criticism as a questionable stance on free speech: "I'd have demanded changes to eliminate 'Betray Us,' a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier."

Such editing is not unreasonable regarding political advertising, said Star-Telegram national advertising director Gary Cruse, because a paper's credibility is at stake in advertising as well as news content. An attack on Petraeus such as MoveOn.org's would be questionable, he said.

"All political ads I have been involved with were reviewed by the management team and sometimes by legal counsel before publishing," Cruse said, and such ads are not run at standby rates.

MoveOn.org has not approached the Star-Telegram about advertising, he said, but if it did, its ads would be subject to review and approval by Mike Winter, senior vice president/advertising, and Publisher Wesley R. Turner.

Talking about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is dicey. So's talking about Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly. But that doesn't stop Pam Platt in Louisville, who wrote about the media coverage of both provocateurs:

I bumfuzzled my nephew recently when I told him that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Well, this week I would tell him it means that I think both Iranian

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and FOX News host Bill O'Reilly got the shaft.

I also think hell just froze over because I never expected to write a sentence saying that. Although I do not equate the two (one's a real tyrant, the other occasionally acts like one on the airwaves), I am not a fan of either.

It is difficult to work up lather about their victimhood. Both are powerful men with big-time bully pulpits, and neither shrinks from cameras or microphones, or from sweeping proclamations, or from claiming he is misunderstood or taken out of context when people object to those proclamations.

But this time, this time -- and this is the broken-clock adage playing out -- I think they were right when they protested their public treatment -- Ahmadinejad by his hosts at Columbia University, O'Reilly by some in the news media.

We're familiar with the brand of journalism that states the obvious called "dog bites man." They there's the counterintuitive story sometimes referred to as "man bites dog" story.

Then there's a completely different form of journalism, as San Antonio Express-News ombudsman Bob Richter was forced to criticize:

The Express-News published a story in the Metro and State News section today on Page 2B that was of questionable importance and which had way more information than most readers wanted to read.

"It made me literally vomit," said Jeanette Haygood of Universal City, a 22-year subscriber.

Without regurgitating the details, the story under the headline, "Man suspected of having sex with dog," was about a man in Robstown who police arrested and charged with public lewdness and disorderly conduct.

With all the things going on in South Texas, why did we have to go into so much detail in reporting a two-week-old report that had little or no news value in the first place?