Each time the Taliban commander cracks a leather strap against the forcibly restrained Pakistani girl, she lets out another blood-chilling wail.

The flogging occurs more than 30 times, according to a YouTube video.

It is excruciating to see and hear, and some NPR listeners objected strongly when Morning Edition did a story on April 7 that aired the anguished screams of a teenager whose alleged crime was appearing in public with a man who was not her husband.

"This is the kind of gratuitous exploitation of someone's personal terror and helplessness that I would expect from those less concerned with the story than with the ratings," emailed Lael Isola. "Thanks for that bit of horror that will stay in my mind today."

Another listener was equally offended.

"It was completely unnecessary to air the footage of that poor girl's screams," wrote Christina Brown. "Worse still was the plug that they were about to be heard. I am sure the full story of her beating was terrible but I was no longer listening. I was disappointed to see NPR stoop to such sensational journalism tactics."

The young Pakistani was said to be 17. NPR correspondent Philip Reeves' piece explored the video's impact in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where the local government was working on a peace accord with the Taliban (that accord was ratified after the piece aired.) Some Swat residents feel their leaders should have nothing to do with the Taliban; others want their government to make peace with them.

Either way, many in Pakistan were appalled by the video.

"The video of the girl's flogging angered and disgusted many Pakistanis, particularly women," Reeves told me in an email. "There have been many, many unfilmed incidents from Swat of atrocities by the Taliban, including beheadings. But this incident drove home the brutality of the Taliban's vigilante in a manner that others did not. It made a huge impact at a crucial time when the country and the international community are debating whether Pakistani authorities should be making peace with the Taliban, or attempting to eradicate them with force."

Could Reeves' piece have been as effective without the audio of her screams?

I think not. To my mind, the screams define the word flogging in a way that saying or printing the word never could. They create an authentic, intimate experience of what a flogging might actually be like. One winces each time the strap smacks across the young girl's body -- even though she is fully clothed.

The use of the screams in the piece does what good journalism should do: Put the listener there. Her wailing makes the listener see and feel something that, most Americans, thankfully, will never experience.

"That may be painful to the listener, but this is a story with significant implications," said Bob Steele, a DePauw University journalism professor. "The story was produced in a thoughtful way. They used enough of the natural sounds of the woman being flogged to capture the moment, but they didn't overuse it."

Steele also pointed out that the video was made public in Pakistan, and had a huge impact on Pakistanis, particularly those living in the Swat Valley. Because the United States is so intensely involved in Pakistani affairs, American listeners needed to hear it -- not just hear about it.

NPR's goal was not to be sensationalistic, as some charged. The audience hears only the final product -- and isn't privy to the discussion beforehand. Reeves and his U.S. editor did not reflexively add the audio for the shock factor. There was deliberation behind the decision.

"I did indeed put a lot of thought into whether the video might upset people," said Reeves, who is normally based in New Delhi. "I also thought about it in the context of other 'difficult' audio that we often gather in areas of conflict, such as the terrible weeping of relatives who have lost loved ones in a suicide bombing. I have many times used that kind of audio before --with restraint -- and have never received a complaint, even though the pain it conveys, and the crime it describes, is immeasurably greater."

Reeves thinks many women living in Swat would be upset with NPR if it didn't run the video.

The other complaint was that NPR should have given listeners a stronger warning about the cruelty they were about to hear. They wanted NPR to say: "Warning. You are about to hear an actual flogging."

But Morning Edition substitute host Ari Shapiro did warn listeners when he began the 4 1/2-minute piece with: "In Pakistan, a brutal beating caught on video has ignited a ferocious debate. The Taliban flogged a teenage girl. You will hear the footage in a moment."

I always advocate in favor of warnings with enough time to prepare listeners where warranted. In this case, while the warning could have been more explicit, it did alert the listeners that something unsettling was about to be aired.

My issue with the piece was that Reeves talked over the screaming, using parts of it as background sound. The audio was much too powerful, and needed to be heard by itself.

"In any radio story it's always good to have a 'nat' sound," said Nafisa Safarova, a radio reporter from Uzbekistan who I asked to listen to the piece. "In this case, the reporter could use a shorter bite. It fits the opening, but there was no need in fading and bringing the sound up again. Because it's not Beethoven to play and keep the music under your narration. It's a screaming child. You describe the flogging, give a brief 'nat' sound and go to the next graph."

Reeves said that time was a factor in his decision to narrate over the screams.

"I was eager to ensure that I had space to convey a key point -- which other reports had overlooked -- that a fair number of Pakistanis were horrified by the video but still want peace-making to continue in Swat," said Reeves. "So I opted to post the sound and track (the script) over it. I actually thought I was being restrained by keeping the section on the video fairly brief, and not making further use of the sound later in the piece."

What makes NPR's storytelling so powerful and compelling is the adroit use of sound. In this case, the story would have been much weaker -- and less effective -- without the screams.

END

Some visitors to NPR's website have noticed their posted comments have disappeared-- an absence they believe reveals volumes about the organization's editorial policy.

"Your 'moderators' have again censored my freedom of speech, using glaring double standards," write ones regular NPR.org user. "(They) are clearly crossing the lines between moderating and censoring a particular poster."

Yet often it's the posters who are in violation of ethical standards- not the moderators.

When creating an NPR community account, users are encouraged to read discussion guidelines which specifically state that NPR reserves the right to remove offensive comments, such as personal attacks. While technical glitches can sometimes be blamed for making comments disappear, most blog posts are removed because they violate those guidelines.

Comments can also be taken down as a result of complaints from other NPR.org users, who file abuse reports when they feel a post is inappropriate. If the digital team receives three reports for the same comment, the post is automatically removed and reviewed internally for adherence to the guidelines.

"Usually this happens because a user has posted something particularly offensive and the community has reacted to it appropriately," says Andy Carvin, NPR's 'social media swami.' "Sometimes, though, people will file abuse reports simply because they disagree with someone else, so we end up returning these comments to public view."

When a post is taken off the site, it is replaced by a removal notice. Users have the option to appeal to NPR if they feel they are unfairly censored, and comments can be re-posted after a moderator's evaluation.

To date, NPR.org hosts 82,000 members. Yet according to Carvin, only 1-2 percent of the roughly 1,500 posts-per-day are deleted. That includes observations which are removed if they are irrelevant or stray from a particular news story page.

Nevertheless, we do not live in an ideal world without machine failures, software glitches or Internet hang-ups. So the second culprit for disappearing comments is technical error, which sometimes causes posts to vanish and later reappear. Carvin says these instances are software bugs and developers are working to correct them.


Still have questions? You can read NPR's community FAQ page to find out more.

Chantal de la Rionda
Office of the Ombudsman

Almost 25 million people get their news on a weekly basis from NPR newscasts -- more than listen to the flagship news-magazine shows, Morning Edition or All Things Considered.

NPR carries 37 newscasts around the clock each day. In the morning and evening slots, newscasts air every 30 minutes. Otherwise, reports are hourly.

Since newscasts air across 768 public radio stations and overseas on Armed Forces Radio, there is more exposure in general to newscasts -- and more repeat exposure during the course of the day -- than any NPR show, said Lori Kaplan in NPR's audience research department.

This gives NPR's news segments significant weight and a great deal of journalistic responsibility. Network newscasters have to work hard to pack a lot of news into a five or nine-minute newscast. And they have to ensure news is fair and balanced, as NPR's ethics code demands.

It's not easy, particularly during this edge-of-the seat presidential campaign.

Lincoln Smith of Seattle believes that NPR newscasts are "consistently" unbalanced when it comes to presidential hopefuls, John McCain and Barack Obama.

"On almost every news break Obama gets much more air time, usually with sound bites from a speech," wrote Smith, "while McCain will often get nothing or one sentence which often comes off as being slanted."

Other listeners say the opposite: that NPR gives more air time to McCain.

Obama doesn't get more airtime than McCain, or vice versa, though it's easy to see why a listener -- who might hear just one or two newscasts a day -- would believe that's the case.

NPR newscasters are keenly aware of their responsibility to provide balance when airing news about McCain or Obama, said Greg Peppers, executive producer of NPR newscasts.

"The mandate is balance, balance, balance," Peppers said. "To be fair, it has to be even. It does a disservice to listeners to not be balanced."

If there's a story in a news segment on one candidate, Peppers wants something on the opponent, too. So if McCain's voice is on air, and Obama is taking the day off, Peppers said the newscaster should mention what Obama is doing that day.

It sounds good in theory.

But including both candidates in a news segment does not always sound "even" or "balanced." Here's why. In some newscasts, a newscaster might, for example, use tape of Obama's voice at a campaign appearance and pair it with written copy the anchor reads aloud about McCain, sans a sound bite.

That can sound to the ear like Obama is receiving more attention -- even if more time is devoted to McCain.

"When you give one candidate's voice and not the other, it can really create some problems in terms of elevating the perspective of one," said Dhavan V. Shah, a University of Wisconsin professor who specializes in political communication. "For example, if NPR directly quotes [Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah] Palin and then a newscaster says that Obama repudiates what she said, what gets reinforced is hearing the Palin quote. That's what troubling when you are not letting candidates speak for themselves."

Another way listeners might think they hear bias is when a newscaster runs a brief story (known as a "spot") by an NPR correspondent traveling with one candidate, and balances it with a few written lines read aloud about the other candidate. Since a reporter spot (with a newscaster-read introduction) tends to be 1 minute, there's not much time left for the other candidate in a five-minute newscast that attempts to cover the top news of the nation and world.

NPR's 13 newscasters are all seasoned journalists trying to be as fair as possible given time constraints and campaign vagaries. Some days, a candidate makes no news, perhaps because he or she is taking the day off. Some days, newscasters have tape of one candidate and not the other. Some days, an NPR reporter assigned to one candidate files a spot from the road while the reporter with the other candidate is stuck on the press plane and can't file a story.

And because there are 37 newscasts each day, odds are that one of those situations will be in place for any single newscast. As a result, a listener hearing a newscast at 8 a.m. might hear Obama's voice but only newscast copy about McCain, while a listener at 8 p.m. might hear the opposite.

"There's no formal system but we are always trying to, at least, mention the other candidate if we have, say, a 50-second spot," said newscaster Jean Cochran, who began at NPR in 1981. "With the nature of news, it's never going to be 50-50. But I assure you we're not working to get any particular candidate elected."

Newscaster and producer Paul Brown, who's frequently on the air weekday mornings, noted that favoring one candidate over the other would be both journalistically unsound and counter-productive. "How on earth would it be in my interest at NPR to present any story unfairly?" he asked. "It would only hurt my credibility. I have no interest in favoring one side over the other. I'm sure what we do is far from perfect but you do your best."

What if NPR clocked minutes to make sure each candidate gets equal time on a newscast?

Brown doesn't favor that idea. "We are covering news," he said. "One candidate may say something very significant in four seconds that may take the other candidate 14 seconds to say."

Brown says he tries to make sure all the main candidates, and their major proposals, are represented. Last week, he noticed a discrepancy between coverage of Sarah Palin and her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.

"Since I really hadn't heard Biden's voice much, I went looking to see if I could find him addressing issues," said Brown, who found tape of Biden at a Florida rally. He then paired it with tape of Palin at a Pennsylvania rally. "Palin is making a lot of news because she's new and dramatic," he said. "But listeners need to hear from Biden too."

One way the newscast unit attempts to reach balance is to try to make up in the next newscast what wasn't in the current one.

"When I'm scheduling several newscasts ahead, if I have a reporter spot on one candidate, then I'll try to use the opposing candidate in the next hour," said senior producer Carol Anne Clark Kelly, who manages the newscasts after Morning Edition and before All Things Considered. "I look at the whole day but listeners may only hear one newscast."

NPR news executives often ask that listeners evaluate coverage over a long period and not make judgments based on one story or one newscast. That is a fair request when evaluating long-running Middle East coverage or NPR's overall presidential campaign coverage.

But it may not be realistic to expect listeners to evaluate newscasts over a long period of time.

In talking with the morning newscast team, Dave Mattingly suggested what could be a workable solution. Mattingly has spent 12 years as a morning newscasts producer. He acknowledges that sometimes, under the current system, the presidential campaign coverage in the newscasts can appear unbalanced.

"I can understand how it might sound when you hear a reporter on the road and you have a 'reader' [copy read by the newscaster] on the other candidate paired with it," said Mattingly. "But slighting a candidate is never done on purpose."

As an alternative, Mattingly suggested using tape from each candidate, along with a summary of news explaining the context of the tape [called a "write-around"] read by the newscast anchor. "To the listener's ear, a clip of each [candidate] with a write-around by the anchor probably sounds the most balanced," said Mattingly.

Peppers agrees it would be ideal to have both candidates' voices in a segment. "We often do in the form of actualities," he said. "However, we also have to put reporter spots on the air. The listener wants the reporter spots from the campaign trail. That's what brings listeners closer to the news."

Shah believes something like what Mattingly suggested might help NPR newscasts achieve better balance.

"How journalists frame and focus certain things can really sway how people think about it," said Shah. "The best model would be to use direct quotes from each candidate and roughly equal time as possible but then have the journalist" set the candidate statements in context.

The reality is that most listeners don't listen as closely as NPR's newscasters might hope. As listeners drive to work or go about their daily lives, they don't always distinguish between an anchor inside an NPR studio and a reporter covering a candidate in Ohio.

They listen, I think, far more closely for balance. And, for many listeners, balance means that the candidate they favor gets at least equal time with his opponent.

As interest in the election continues at an all-time high, the newscast unit should try to make Mattingly's suggestion that candidates do more talking its goal.

Continue reading "Balancing the Newscasts" >

No matter the medium, every news organization in America is trying now to figure out how to survive and thrive in the online world.

In NPR's case, the network is learning how to transfer what it does well -- radio storytelling -- to the visual medium of the web. This means that NPR staffers who write gripping radio scripts must now write newspaper-style for the web, which is a very different skill. It also means people who capture sound must also shoot video or take photographs to illustrate a story.

It's an exciting time of experimentation, but there can be public missteps. NPR's online version of an All Things Considered (ATC) report about low-income Americans and the economic downturn drew ridicule from the blogosphere for using an unflattering photo of two women in the story and an insensitive headline.

Continue reading "NPR LEARNS FROM A MISSTEP ON ITS WEB SITE " >

SEAN BELL UPDATE: May 20, 2008
Charges filed against a group of officers involved in the Bell shooting.

Last week, I was at a two-day workshop on how to better cover race and ethnicity. There won't be a column this week, but I am including an email that a listener sent me about race and the Sean Bell story. Bell was a young, unarmed African-American who New York City police killed hours before his wedding. On April 25, the three officers were acquitted. One officer was white; the other two black. Should NPR have mentioned the race of the officers?

Continue reading "RACIST COVERAGE? " >

Without YouTube or LiveLeak, the world might only hear or read about the disturbing new anti-Muslim, Dutch video, "Fitna."

Now just about anyone can see the 17-minute movie that some consider more inflammatory in Muslim-majority countries than the Danish cartoons that sparked riots in 2006.

In the pre-Internet world, the so-called mainstream media played the role of gatekeeper: determining with authority what the public did and did not need to know. Much more editorial censorship existed. But now the public can get any information it wants through the Web -- with or without the news media's guidance. Everything -- in good taste or bad -- gets out in cyberspace.

One issue that arises for NPR is whether the network should provide direct links to potentially offensive material it reports on.

Continue reading "SHOULD NPR LINK TO VIOLENT ANTI-MUSLIM VIDEO? " >

-- Alicia C. Shepard

NPR reporter Ari Shapiro received a mysterious-looking white envelope with no return address on Feb. 5. Its contents would help soldiers at Ft. Drum in New York.

"As soon as I opened it, I knew what it was," he said.

Inside was the kind of document that is a reporter's dream.

Continue reading "FT. DRUM, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING and ANONYMOUS SOURCES" >

--Alicia Shepard

Within the last day or two, an NPR correspondent or host has probably made a mistake on air. I don't know what it was, but I'm quite sure it happened.

Why? Because journalism is an imperfect craft and despite the highest standards and best intentions, mistakes can happen whether stories are produced under tight deadlines or even when the pressure is off.

No matter how hard we work to report accurately and fairly, we journalists- at NPR and across the news media- can and do get names wrong, make mistakes in news judgment, miss stories and sometimes fail to make that extra phone call. Errors of commission or omission can happen no matter how hard NPR journalists work to get you breaking news, help put the day's events in context or tell stories that may mesmerize you in ways that leave you smiling in delight.

After a year-long hiatus, NPR's Office of the Ombudsman is back in business with a weekly Wednesday column, radio appearances and talks. As the new ombudsman, my goal is to work with NPR staff to make its journalism more transparent and help explain to listeners the often seemingly mysterious way news decisions are made at NPR.

Continue reading "WELCOME TO MY WORLD" >