Former foreign editor John Felton conducts quarterly, independent, reviews of NPR's Israeli-Palestinian coverage. His first-quarter 2013 report is now available online.

Felton reviewed the 81 radio stories, interviews and other reports that aired on NPR's daily radio shows from January through March, as well as 34 blogs, news stories and other reports carried exclusively on NPR's website.

Main news events in the region during the period were the Israeli elections in January (and the subsequent formation of a new government) and President Obama's visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan in March.

In his assessment, Felton found that NPR gave its listeners and readers generally accurate and fair coverage of these and other events. During the quarter Larry Abramson, normally the Washington-based national security correspondent, filled in as NPR's Jerusalem correspondent, pending the arrival of Emily Harris, who took over the post in April. NPR has not had a permanent Jerusalem correspondent since the summer of 2012.

Felton did chide NPR reporters and shows for relying too often on Washington-based experts and analysts to explain events in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He suggested that listeners, and readers of the website, should instead hear more from people in the region.

I encourage you to read the complete review. Quarterly reviews going back to 2008 are also available online.

John Felton prepares the quarterly evaluations. He has covered international affairs and U.S. foreign policy for more than 30 years. His book, The Contemporary Middle East: A Documentary History, was published by CQ Press in 2007. A former foreign affairs reporter for Congressional Quarterly and foreign editor at NPR, he has been a freelance writer and editor since 1995.

After the last month, many of us understandably are pope-ed out.

"It feels like NPR now stands for National Papal Radio. I am exhausted by the coverage of the pope," wrote Sean O'Brien of Charlottesville, Va., one of the more than 200 people who sent messages of complaint.

"I have found myself turning off the radio rather than listen to yet another story about the selection of the next pope, what they wear, who makes their clothes, what the last Pope thought, why he resigned, yada, yada, yada," Paula Szabo from Ormond Beach, Fl., wrote.

NPR aired 69 stories since Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation Feb. 11 and Pope Francis was selected as his successor Wednesday. That averages out to about two radio magazine or call-in segments per day, not including the steady drumbeat of shorter items delivered by hourly newscasts that are not transcribed.

Most of the complaints have concerned the 47 stories that aired in the four weeks between the day after Benedict announced his resignation and the morning before Francis was announced — a period during which there was less major news about the subject and more "horse-race" speculation about who might be selected. Here are a few of the headlines from the Web versions of those NPR stories:

A Rough Guide To The Papal Conclave
Pope Benedict XVI Will Have To Give Up Red Shoes, Shoulder Cape
The Americans Who Might Be Pope
No Clear Frontrunner For Next Pope On The Eve Of Cardinals' Conclave
Anxiety Befalls Vatican As Cardinals Gather
Pope Apps And Websites Help You Stay Up To Speed On Papal Selection

There were few criticisms of any one story. More typical was the view of Carmen Reid from Santa Barbara, Calif., who wrote: "Just let me know when and if they decide, that is enough."

The amount of NPR's coverage of the Roman Catholic Church has been a long-running source of grumbling — almost all of it maintaining that there is too much. I have looked at this issue before. In a study that I did with NPR's library, however, I found that the perception among many of us was wrong. In 2011, for example, stories mentioning Catholicism came in fourth, among religions or denominations.

Islam: 148
Christianity: 63
Judaism: 55
Catholicism: 39
Buddhism: 14
Mormonism: 12
Protestant: 6
Amish: 2
Hinduism: 1

The number of stories, in other words, seemed at least partly to reflect genuine news. The troubles in the Muslim world put Islam way ahead as number one. That said, the number of Catholic stories over the last month is almost double the 39 that ran in all of 2011.

I asked Stu Seidel, managing editor of standards and practices, to explain why NPR has been covering the pope selection process so closely. He explained:

The Roman Catholic Church has more than one billion followers around the world, with more than 50 million of them living in the United States. The teachings and policies of the church are woven into the fabric of nearly every society on earth. Those teachings and policies have profound influence on American politics and society. Comprehensive reporting on the leadership and future of the Roman Catholic Church is integral to understanding the world around us. To give short-shrift to the selection of a new Pope would be to ignore the church's role, a role that reaches far beyond just the millions and millions of Catholics in our society and around the world.

I agree with the editors, as much as I was personally tired of so many stories, too. Note: I am nominally a Catholic — and sometimes not even that — though I devour stories on doctrine across all religions.

To expand on Seidel's comment, Catholicism is the largest single denomination in the country. An extensive study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in 2007 found that 24 percent of American adults self-identify as Catholic. A Nielsen study in 2011 concluded that nearly 19 percent of the visitors to the NPR website said that they were Catholic. NPR's story selection should not rigidly reflect the breakdown of its audience and the nation, but as a public medium and a service, it should be influenced by both.

Some listeners also asked if NPR would cover the transition of other religious leaders as closely as it has covered the pope. This is a logical question. We all know that neither NPR nor the mainstream media in general has done so in the past. I don't think that they will or should do so in the future.

It's not that other religions are not of equal or greater importance. Among Christians, there are more Protestants than Catholics in the United States. In a 2010 Pew study, Catholics made up half of the 2.2 billion Christians worldwide. There were more Muslims — 1.6 billion — and almost as many Hindus — 1 billion. (Among world religions, Buddhists came in fourth, with 488 million followers.)

None of these religions, however, are united in a single institution with a single head, as is the Catholic denomination. No other denomination or sect in any of the religions, meanwhile, is as large as the Catholic one. This institutional factor alone gives the pope far more global influence than any other single religious leader.

Catholic charities, for example, are active in almost every country in the world, and many national councils of bishops are potent political and social forces. In meeting with Muslim and Jewish leaders from conflicted countries, meanwhile, the pope virtually takes on a role of speaking for Christianity and Western culture.

Still, once we get past the requisite follow-up stories on the new Pope Francis, I hope that we might get a break in papal stories for a while.

Assistant Lori Grisham contributed to this report.

It was a short comment stuck in the middle of a 13-second item in a 10 a.m. hourly newscast. The editor said the purpose was to give a break to the intensive coverage of the search for a new Roman Catholic pope, who had not yet been selected, by giving attention to another of the world's great religions, Hinduism.

Many Hindus, however, were neither appreciative nor amused.

"The biggest annual religious event in Nepal is underway," intoned anchor Paul Brown. "A stream of pilgrims passes by naked ascetics puffing on cannabis pipes. The Shivaratri festival brings an estimated one million Hindus to an ancient Kathmandu temple each year."

By placing so much emphasis on the naked ascetics smoking dope, one assumes that this is a central part of the festival. It is not. The ascetics and the marijuana are a small sideshow, according to the letter writers, the Hindu American Foundation and online research done by intern Kiran Alvi.

"As an American Hindu, I found your story this morning on Shivaratri unspeakably offensive," wrote Terence Coe of Stamford, Conn. "Shivaratri is one of the most sacred events of the year for Hindus who worship the Lord in the form of Shiva, and is marked by prayer, fasting, and celebration of the Lord's glories. Your dismissal of it as a bunch of people gathering to watch naked men get stoned is so foul that I have no words for it."

Hindus, who make up the world's third largest religion, celebrate Maha Shivaratri, one of the religion's holiest days, in February or March, depending on the community. They celebrate it everywhere, and not just in Nepal.

According to Jay Kansara, associate director of the Hindu American Foundation in Washington, D.C., observers keep fasts; gather at temples; practice yoga and meditation; and hold night-long vigils, chanting sacred texts and offering prayers.

He said that the story "trivializes" the tradition and was "sensationalist journalism."

I took the complaints to the executive producer of newscasts, Robert Garcia, who responded:

I've talked to our anchor, Paul Brown. First of all, we apologize to anyone who took offense from the story because our intention was quite the opposite. We have been doing so much coverage of the Papal conclave that Paul wanted to remind our audience there are other major religions out there and that some of them are celebrating and honoring significant dates on their calendars.

In describing one small aspect of the Hindu observation of Shivaratri, we did not mean to imply that was the extent of the rituals or in any way, cast aspersions on those who practice the religion. It was, in fact, an effort to share with the listening audience the diversity of religious expression in our world. We regret and are rather shocked that our effort in that regard was so hurtful to some, but I completely understand the sensitivities involved. We certainly never meant to be disrespectful to practitioners of one of the largest religious faiths on the planet.

For what it's worth, Paul was so intrigued by the events in Nepal that he posted some incredible, beautiful photos from the Shivaratri observance on his Facebook page to which he received many positive responses from friends and colleagues who were learning of it for the first time.

In other words, a mistake was made. As the number of Hindus expands in the United States and India grows as a global power, we who are not Hindus will surely be learning more about a religion that for most Americans remains exotic, whatever it is that a handful of Nepalese ascetics do.

Intern Kiran Alvi contributed to this post.

My recent post on use of the world "elderly" struck a nerve among many in the over-60 set. Three of the responses were particularly eloquent and with very different views. One offers a French lesson from Quebec, another sees answers in her old pottery and the third is from a certain cantankerous Morning Edition sports commentator and prolific author who says we should all grow up.

I begin with the latter, Frank Deford:

Dear Middle-Aged Ed,

I simply could not believe the fuss over "elderly." Are we really getting so delusional we can't acknowledge the truth? And if some vain old idiots don't want to admit that they're old, it seems to me that neither NPR or the AP or any other journalistic entity should support them in their fantasy. Stop already with the kid gloves.

Elderly is not an optional description. Neither, for example, is kid. You may not feel what you regard as being elderly. You may think you feel like a kid, but if you're a 71-year-old midwife or the 74-year-old man writing you this letter, you are elderly. Get over it. I'm old because I'm not new. The only old-age-descriptive term I can't stand is "senior citizen," but that's just because it's so gummy, not because it's inaccurate. Please, NPR, call me elderly or call me old before you patronize me and call me a senior citizen. And if anybody calls me "seventy-four years young" I am going to hit them with my ear trumpet.

Here's the deal, as pronounced by my old seventy-year-old wife: If you take Social Security, if you take Medicare, you're elderly. You don't want people to call you elderly, don't take the money.

All best,

Old Frank

Catherine Rahal, of Montreal, offers a different view:

I, too, am 63 and I am struggling mightily with this question. I've got a web project on the go aimed at those over 65 and their families, and the issue of what to call us won't settle. When I forget something momentarily I confess to having a senior moment, and we all have a good laugh. I have, however, come to the conclusion that "old" is a very subjective description, particularly when talking about people in their 60s and 70s. I know people in their 50s who are much "older" than I am, and some in their 80s who seem on a par with me. I met a man yesterday, 10 months my senior, who seems considerably older, not least because he has had several health problems and wears two hearing aids, though I think his attitude towards life in general contributed to that impression as well.

Here in Canada there is a magazine for seniors called Zoomer - but the target audience is as young as late 40s, so it doesn't really hit that sweet spot for me. In French (I live in Quebec) the term "ainé" can mean not only senior, but also first born, and seems to my immigrant mind a softer description. I'd love to find an equivalent in English - some things just don't quite translate.

Perhaps our negative association with "elder" comes from the fact that we, the general population, no longer have the same degree of respect for that considerable life experience as in days of yore, so the descriptors have become somewhat pejorative rather than marks of respect.

Those of us that live well and long will in any case arrive at "old", but by that time we may be too old to worry about how we are described.

If you have any brainstorms about terminology, I would love to hear from you.

Glenna Auxier of Gainesville, Fla., says "old" is relative. But, she definitely prefers it over other choices:

I would rather be called old, than elderly. Old is a matter of perspective. My collection of pottery is old. I have friends who have antiques that are ancient. I don't like senior citizen or other such words.

Why is it that for all these years I have been a woman and now you must hook on some adjective to separate us?

To be called elderly, suggests to me and many friends who are also 65 years plus, a state of helplessness, inability to care for themselves and unable to contribute.

The sign you posted on your website shows two people with walking sticks, hunched over and says, "elderly people".

I will be 70 in June and I would never consider donating money to an organization that considered me "unable to contribute."

The NPR digital edition, site of the original headline that set off the debate, has come back with a full article of its own on the labeling tied to aging. Please feel free to continue the conversation.

Who are the "elderly"?

Or let's get more personal. Who, when they get past the age of 60, wants to be called "elderly"? For you 20-something hot shots, this will be you, too, some day.

Dian Sparling, an actively working 71-year-old midwife, was horrified when a story about her carried a title online: "For Elderly Midwife, Delivering Babies Never Gets Old."

Ina Jaffe, the reporter who did the story as part of a series on Americans who increasingly forego retirement to stay in the workforce, was equally dismayed. She purposefully avoided calling Sparling "elderly" in her story, but had nothing to do with the headline.

Charged e-mails from Sparling and Jaffe sprang into my inbox at about the same time, the former to complain that she was "taken aback" and the latter to raise what she called a "teaching moment" for the staff. But Jaffe added this honest question: What do you call people today past 60 or 70, or even 80 or 90?

The question becomes ever more relevant as people remain active and energetic due to improved health and increasing longevity. My 90-year-old mother, for example, likes to rub it in that she can still touch her toes without bending her knees, while I can't.

Let's not castigate the poor headline writer, or even ask if he or she might be one of those snotty 20-somethings. The headline was later changed to, "For Midwife, 71, Delivering Babies Never Gets Old." Focusing instead on Jaffe's question, what I find in reaching out to experts is, well, a lot of disagreement over what term to use. But "elderly" was decidedly taboo.

Paula Span, an associate professor at Columbia Journalism School (where I am teaching this year) and writes for The New Old Age blog at The New York Times, replied to our cry for help:

Most of the time, we go with the inelegant and non-specific but also unobjectionable term "older adult." That's what I see most often now in gerontology and geriatric research.

Personally, I think I prefer "old people," in the same call-it-what-it-is spirit with which former ladies reclaimed "women" in the 1960s and former Negroes reclaimed "black people." However, this is distinctly a minority opinion. Most people don't want to be called old, even when they indisputably are by chronological age. I sneak the term in when I can. (It may or may not be relevant that I'm 63.)

Span also directed my researcher Lori Grisham to a column in the blog last spring by Judy Graham titled 'Elderly' No More. Perhaps my favorite comment in that piece was one from Ann Fishman, president of Generational Targeted Marketing. I like marketers because money rides on their social insights, pressuring them to be right. That pressure may be especially acute in the case of members of the giant baby boom generation, the oldest of whom are now in their mid-sixties. Fishman said of people 65 years and older: "For heavens' sake, don't call them anything."

Joanne Handy, the CEO of Leading Age California, a senior care advocacy group that represents more than 400 organizations for older adults, told us:

"Elderly" is definitely out as far as consumers. People seem to prefer three terms: "older adults," another is "seniors" and a third is "elders." Elders is more respectful than elderly, but it rubs some people the wrong way. It's so subjective.

Carol Crecy, the director of external affairs for the government's Administration for Community Living, wrote:

There is no one way of referring to older adults. For the most part, it depends on the culture of the group using the term. For example in the Native American programs we fund, the term "elders" is a sign of respect. At the Administration on Aging, we use a variety of terms: such as older adult, elderly, seniors, elders and older persons.

And then, of course, there is the AP Stylebook, which is used by NPR:

elderly Use this word carefully and sparingly. Do not refer to a person as elderly unless it is clearly relevant to the story.

It is appropriate in generic phrases that do not refer to specific individuals: concern for the elderly, a home for the elderly, etc.

If the intent is to show that an individual's faculties have deteriorated, cite a graphic example and give attribution for it. Use age when available and appropriate.

Apply the same principle to terms such as senior citizen.

There is, in other words, no one good answer. Adding another level of complication is that words change meaning over time. The sort-of favorite among the experts, "older people," may soon take on sour overtones. I see it coming. The problem is that we all want to live longer, but no one wants to be old, and certainly don't want to be called that.

In writing this column, I tried to follow the advice of the marketer: don't call them anything. It worked.

But I don't know if I can keep it up. NPR staffers and audience may have a better answer to Jaffe's question. Let's all talk.

Lori Grisham contributed to this post.

In the 1980s, psychologists at Stanford University studying student reaction to television stories on the 1983 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon discovered a curious phenomenon.

The killings were done by a Maronite Christian militia allied with Israel, which was then occupying the country. The six TV stories noted that there was some question as to how much Israeli troops empowered or allowed the slaughter.

At Stanford, the researchers found that among the 144 students they questioned, members of pro-Israeli student groups roundly condemned the stories for being pro-Palestinian. Students in pro-Arab groups were equally convinced that the stories were pro-Israeli. Both sides appeared to be genuine in their feelings, as they remembered words and images that they believed buttressed their opponent's case, while forgetting words and images favorable to their own.

A control group of neutral students, meanwhile, didn't see the fuss. They came away from watching the news videos feeling that the stories didn't favor either side. (A subsequent Israeli investigation concluded that local Israeli troops did indeed know of the massacre taking place and stood by, and it faulted senior military officials for not taking steps to prevent the killings.)

This so-called "hostile media phenomenon" among partisans has since been confirmed many times by other researchers looking at news coverage of other highly charged issues, such as political debates or even articles on Macs versus PCs. After seeing, reading or hearing news stories on polarizing issues in which we have strong opinions, we tend to remember the reported arguments and facts that seem to favor the other side more than those favoring our own. We — all of us, me included — thus honestly believe that the news outlet is biased against our viewpoint.

Sometimes, of course, it is. But I am reminded of this research as I read the many complaints about a Feb. 20 report on All Things Considered by correspondent Larry Abramson on Emad Burnat, the Palestinian director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary 5 Broken Cameras. (He lost.) The film chronicles life in the Palestinian village of Bil'in near an Israeli settlement on the West Bank. The story chronicles the danger in filming.

Abramson explained that Burnat became "a target for attacks from settlers and soldiers" while he was making the documentary. The reporter noted that a close friend of Burnat's was killed during the filming, and that an amateur documentarian in the village was hit by gunfire — we don't know from whom — and then imprisoned by the Israelis for 11 months.

Filmmaking on the West Bank, in other words, can be perilous. Abramson ends his nearly six-minute piece by saying:

ABRAMSON: It's a complaint that Emad Burnat's wife also makes during "5 Broken Cameras" as she questions the price her family must pay for his project. In this lasting conflict, cameras are an important witness to suffering, but they also may be the cause of some of it.

I often get complaints from highly organized, strongly pro-Israel supporters about Palestinian-related stories, but this time the complaints came from apparent sympathizers to the Palestinian side. Micah Uetricht from Chicago, Ill., wrote:

I couldn't believe you ended your story on the new documentary "Five Broken Cameras" by saying that documenting Israeli settlers' incursions into Bil'in could be partially causing the violence faced by Burnat and his family. This is victim-blaming, pure and simple. Someone documenting the abuse he or she faces is not responsible in any way for that abuse—those carrying out the abuse are.

Thomas Antenucci from Abingdon, Va., wrote:

Do we hear the Syrians blamed for photographing the brutality of the Assad regime? Only with Israel does NPR blame the victims for daring to witness their oppression as the settlements steadily expand and grab more land. The filmmaker is shot, beaten and imprisoned. His mother wails in fear. And Larry Abramson says his camera "caused" this suffering?

I understand the concern behind the complaints, but was Abramson really "blaming the victims"? Remember, his last line was: "In this lasting conflict, cameras are an important witness to suffering, but they also may be the cause of some of it."

I asked Abramson what he thought he was saying.

His response:

My wording was not intended to question these people's right to take pictures or record video. I was reflecting on the fact that, in some cases, the act of filming can get people into trouble. In the case of the young man I included, his mother was upset that his commitment to video journalism may have led into a perilous situation, and he eventually spent nearly a year in prison, was injured, and now has a police record. I have also seen many videos illustrating that the mere presence of a camera can help provoke a violent confrontation, because people are so afraid of being photographed in such a context. I myself have been verbally abused and even detained by police for taking pictures I thought to be quite innocent. In the Middle East, the act of taking photos is often viewed is invasive and even provocative, either for cultural reasons, or because people fear the picture taker may be working for the "other side." In that context, I observed that "cameras are an important witness to suffering, but they also may be the cause of some of it."

Almost every photographer or videographer I have worked with in conflict zones will tell you the same thing. My own experience with a camera has been similar. What I hear in the story is Abramson's sympathy for Burnat, and not a blaming of Burnat or his subjects.

What I also hear in the story is that Abramson bent over backwards to be fair towards the settlers. "'5 Broken Cameras' is unabashedly pro-Palestinian, an indictment of Israel's settlement policy that never examines the settlers' claims or the security force's point of view," Abramson says on-air. "Settlers groups often complain they are the victims of misinformation from both Israeli and foreign left-wing groups which have trained a battalion of Palestinians in how to document alleged abuse. After years of bad press, settlers are getting organized."

But you may hear something different from what I hear and are invited to disagree.

The film, by the way, was also the subject of an earlier interview with Burnat and his co-director Guy Davidi (an Israeli) on Talk of the Nation.

Intern Kiran Alvi contributed to this post.

When The Washington Post in 1970 became one of the first American news organizations to have an ombudsman, it set a precedent that helped build the quality and influence of the Post and all American journalism.

When today the Post killed that position and replaced it with what sounds like a customer relations person, it appeared to be setting the opposite precedent of sticking its head in the sand. It eliminated a position that builds audience trust precisely at a time that this fundamental and fickle quality — trust — in the Post and all American news media is declining.

That reduced trust, as much as changing business models, is responsible for the economic travails with which the Post is struggling, and ostensibly seeking to combat by eliminating the ombudsman to save both money and face. The circular irony is sad.

Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth announced the change late Friday, the day after the two year contract for the paper's last ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, had ended. "The world has changed, and we at The Post must change with it," she wrote, not unreasonably. "We will appoint a reader representative shortly to address our readers' concerns and questions. Unlike ombudsmen in the past, the reader representative will be a Post employee. The representative will not write a weekly column for the page but will write online and/or in the newspaper from time to time to address reader concerns, with responses from editors, reporters or business executives as appropriate."

A call to public relations at the Post went unanswered, but what was clear from the announcement was that this new reader representative will not be an independent outsider protected by contract, as most ombudsmen are, and apparently will not do her or his own investigations. Rather, like a customer relations person, she or he will take in complaints and get responses from editors, reporters and executives. The novel feature is that some of the responses will be published online, though not in the paper.

Weymouth justified the change by noting the evolving times and adding: "We know that media writers inside and outside The Post will continue to hold us accountable for what we write, as will our readers, in letters to the editor and online comments on Post articles."

In one of Pexton's recent columns, Executive Editor Marty Baron also pointed to the "ample criticism of our performance from outside sources" and noted that for the favor of these sometimes unpleasant criticisms — my words — the Post didn't have to pay their salaries.

I sympathize with Weymouth's predicament and know and admire Baron, who joined the Post recently from another fine newspaper in economic trouble, the Boston Globe, which killed its ombudsman, too. I also am a great fan of the Post. Early in my career, I was a prolific stringer for the paper from Boston, Tokyo, Seoul and around Latin America. More recently, before joining NPR, I was an op-ed contributor to the Post and was syndicated by it. Today's move won't change my love for the paper.

But let's be honest: no editor or reporter at the Post or any other news outlet — including NPR — will subject himself or herself to being publicly questioned if he or she doesn't have to. This is human nature.

Editors and reporters do respond to some criticisms from readers or listeners, but they usually do so privately. They often also publish corrections, but usually these are of indisputable facts. Journalists, no matter how high-minded or principled, will seldom investigate themselves, over issues of fairness, ethics, nuance, context, judgment, half truths, tone and the like, as well as over some mistakes, unless forced to by lawyers, a massive public outcry — or by an ombudsman.

Moreover, self-investigation by editors in the newsroom rarely is a fully accurate investigation. Editors naturally and properly see themselves first as defending the organization, not the audience.

There are indeed many individuals and organizations that call themselves "media analysts" — and we certainly don't lack for anti-media gadflies — but their critiques usually are uninformed, silly nitpicking or advocacy opinion thinly disguised as analysis. These critiques disappear in the political noise. A dirty little truth is that many, if not most, editors and reporters in mainstream media hold the advocates and online gadflies in such low regard that they seldom read them, much less respond to what they write.

This is separate from the serious, non-partisan veteran watchdogs such as Howard Kurtz of CNN, think tanks such as Pew, training centers such as Poynter, and any of a number of academics. But none of these focus on any one outlet, and only seldom do they really investigate any one story.

There is no way, however, for editors and publishers to ignore regular reports by their own independent ombudsman who has done the research and talked to you or your staff (some of whom confidentially may have been the source of the original complaint).

Then there is the upside that pleases the organization. The ombudsman is usually a veteran journalist who understands the competing pressures in putting out the news. In weighing many criticisms, she or he can offer independent but realistic perspective on judgment calls and deadline decisions, sometimes actually winning sympathy for the newsroom from the audience. Only the silly and the snarky expect non-human perfection.

As often as not, I disagree with complaints. But by taking them seriously, even those made by advocates, I find that it disarms the critics, or at the very least wins their appreciation. Listeners, readers and viewers want above all to know that someone with independent power in the organization is actually listening to them and acting on their complaints.

One, moreover, would be foolish not to listen to an audience as smart as NPR's, and even extremist advocates can be right. Receiving a pro forma response to a complaint, or having your complaint read on air, is a far cry from having someone believable actually investigate your complaint and get to the truth. The online stories cited by Weymouth are at least a public response, which is good, but the stories sound as if they could be written by the public relations department. If they are that way, it is unlikely to win much credibility among readers.

And the mainstream news media is in need of a lot of credibility these days.

Repeated polls show the unmistakable decline in public trust. Gallup, for example, has been measuring the trend since the 1970s, when an overwhelming number of Americans professed to have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of "trust and confidence" in the news media. The proportion was as high as 72 percent back then. By last year, it had plummeted to 40 percent — meaning less than half of Americans said they have much trust or confidence in the country's news media.

Meanwhile, the number of respondents last year who said that their trust was "not very much" or "none at all" had zoomed up to 60 percent. This was a new high — or low. The gap of 20 points between the opposing responses was the most ever. Here is the actual question and the chart showing the dispiriting trend since 1998:

Last year's poll, of 1,017 adult respondents and with a margin of error of plus or minus four percent, was conducted in September, during the presidential election campaign. While trust was particularly low among Republicans, it was lacking among independents, too. Only 31 percent of independents and 26 percent of Republicans said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media. This compared to 58% of Democrats, though their trust has been steadily eroding as well. Here is a comparison by party:

Another reliable researcher of public opinion, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, looks at 13 specific national news outlets — including NPR — and asks the question in a different way. Pew measures what it calls "believability" and asks respondents to give a rating of one to four, with four being the highest rating. In its poll last year of 1,001 adult respondents, more than half — or an average 56 percent — gave a three or a four to the 13 outlets.

That would seem to be a little more positive than the Gallup findings, but the trend is the same: downwards. The average positive rating was 62 percent just two years earlier, in 2010, and was a very healthy 71 percent in 2002. The drop in average positive believability, in other words, was 15 points in just 10 years.

Here is the breakdown from last year's Pew poll, which has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percent:

Once again, there is a partisan gap, but not even Fox News is immune from the trend among Republicans. Some 67 percent of them gave Fox a favorable believability rating last year, but this was down 10 points from two years earlier, as Pew's trend since 2002 by party illustrates. The margin of error behind each number is high due to small sample sizes, but the trend is indisputable.

Independents are not shown here, but they fall roughly in the middle between Republicans and Democrats in how much they believe most of the media outlets measured by the survey. Also, The Washington Post was not included among the 13 news organizations, but does anyone believe that it is bucking the national trend?

NPR falls more or less in the middle of the pack in all the Pew measures. Its credibility, too, has declined over the last decade. In 2002, 62 percent of respondents gave NPR a believability rating of three or four. Last year, the number had dropped to 52 percent.

The news media, of course, is not alone in suffering from declining trust. So are governments at all levels, churches, schools, political parties and other institutions, according to social scientists. We live in an age in which, rightly or wrongly, cynicism is high and evidence-based analysis has given way to half-truths and mere opinions. The Internet is aiding a national fragmentation along political, ethnic and other tribal lines.

What this suggests, however, is a need for independent ombudsmen not just to build trust, but also to help news organizations maintain exacting news standards. The nation needs a reliable, fact-based news media more than ever to combat the misinformation and cynicism. The quality of American journalism is generally high, but ombudsmen help hold their newsrooms' feet to the fire.

Curiously, while the American news media cowers and pulls back, unable to believe in itself, the increasingly free press in so many other parts of the word are adding ombudsmen and improving standards. Even in some places without a long tradition of free press, there is a growing recognition of the link between good public information, on the one hand, and economic development and democracy, on the other, as shown in studies by the World Bank and others.

I am on the board of the international Organization of News Ombudsmen and have watched with delight as the number of ombudsmen has taken off in countries such as India, Bangladesh and South Africa. According to Stephen Pritchard, the president of ONO, Colombia now has 14 ombudsmen working just in television — each with a weekly half-hour show—and Mexican television has five. When Lord Justice Leveson issued his report last November on the phone hacking scandal in Great Britain, he cited having an independent ombudsman as a "best practice" to respond to public complaints.

The movement toward having ombudsmen grew in the United States as the press became more powerful beginning with a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s that largely created the American idea of almost unfettered freedom of the press as we know it today. Despite the First Amendment, the press often was far more circumscribed on matters such as libel, privacy, government secrecy and fairness before then. But the United States news media has always fiercely resisted having an industry or national press complaints council, as exists in many other countries to help maintain standards, curb abuses and give citizens some recourse for complaint short of a costly suit. The ombudsman was our answer, led, apparently, by The Louisville Times and The Courier-Journal, three years before The Washington Post.

The American press remains powerful, but as, first, regional papers and, now, possibly The Washington Post eliminate their ombudsmen, the press has ever-fewer controls over it. Television news, for example, is barely regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and no longer adheres to what was once its longstanding fairness doctrine. Small wonder the public rebels by questioning the power of the news media and losing trust.

Clearly, the mainstream news media is facing an existential economic crisis that cannot be ignored. I know it well, having published my own chain of four Spanish-language dailies in Texas that failed because of the secular decline in advertising. But the protestations by many editors that opening themselves to investigation and criticism by an ombudsman further weakens the organization are short-sighted. It is a bit like the arguments of Chinese and Venezuelan autocrats who limit free press in the name of national strength and their own self-professed good intentions.

What the crisis in the news media calls for is doubling down to rebuild trust. This might require some creativity, including outsourcing the ombudsman or, eventually, joining forces with other news organizations to form some sort of non-governmental press complaints council or group. Such a reorganization within the industry might contribute to a complete rethinking of the sector and what may become an inevitable trend toward public media to replace economically unsustainable private news media. This may be especially true for general and local news — if the unsustainability of online news that we see today comes to that.

Which brings us to the public media we already have. This includes NPR, PBS and their many member stations. I am on a time-limited contract and will not be at NPR forever, so what I say next is not out of self-interest. I will be gone. But it would be absolutely unconscionable for a news organization that calls itself a public medium not to have an ombudsman.

The very nature of its being "public" — with its revenue coming from taxpayers, audience members, foundations and corporate underwriters — requires a bending over backwards to be transparent and open to criticism and independent investigation.

The same can be argued for private media organizations such as The Washington Post, which claim special constitutional privileges as a virtual fourth branch of government and yet demand a laissez-faire form of non-regulation that they do not accept for any other corner of American society. I adamantly agree that we do not want government regulation of press standards. But to forsake even self-regulation and transparency raises questions among the American people about the extent of the media's special privileges and legitimacy.

This opens a separate debate, about the relationship between government and the news media, better left to another time. The point here is to support the self-regulation of having an independent ombudsman — for the audience, for the country and for the news media itself.

Lori Grisham contributed to this report.

Occasionally listeners think they heard something on NPR programming that was never said. This was not one of those times.

On Saturday, Jan. 19, ESPN's Howard Bryant appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon to talk about sports. The broadcast was taped live. Simon asked about Lance Armstrong's famous interview with Oprah Winfrey, and Bryant referred back to a tweet he read:

I mean, I think the big problem that I had with listening to Lance over the last couple of days was how controlled – how much he was trying to control this confession. That someone had put out a very funny tweet in my timeline that other day that said, "With this much remorse he could be the next spokesperson for the NRA." I mean, it was really that controlling. And I'm listening to this, and I'm thinking, he's not sorry at all about this.

Simon didn't respond to the NRA comment, but kept the conversation focused on sports.

Listener Charles Brown of Franklin, Mich. immediately took to the Web. Before the audio or transcript had been posted online, Brown wrote on the show's site, "I am looking forward to seeing the transcript of this segment, featuring Howard Bryant's tone-deaf comparison between the remorse, or lack thereof, on the part of Lance Armstrong, and 'the NRA.'"

The transcript Brown eagerly awaited eventually arrived, but the reference to the gun association wasn't there – either in the audio file or written transcript. The response by Bryant now existed in both as the following:

I mean, I think the big problem that I had with listening to Lance over the last couple of days was how controlled - how much he was trying to control this confession. And I'm listening to this, and I'm thinking, he's not sorry at all about this.

Brown contacted our office suspicious of a conspiracy."There is no explanation for the post-broadcast edit. Is this instance a representative one, for NPR editing and posting policy(ies)?"

Well, in some ways, yes, as I myself discovered when I went to ask.

Weekend Edition, like Morning Edition, is a two-hour program, but it is fed to various stations in different time zones. It generally airs on stations from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET and from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. PST. Over that time, a story is often edited and changed. What visitors to NPR.org find is the final version.

Stuart Seidel, managing editor of standards and practices, explained the editing process:

The newsmagazine shows update as warranted so long as they have feeds on the air. Many times, updates fix technical errors, clarify some point in a story or interview, or make a correction. At times, significant changes are made as news develops and new stories or interviews are substituted into the second or third feed of a show.

Only the last feed of each show is archived and transcribed. As a result, there are times when a listener may have heard something on a first or second feed of a show and then find that the transcript does not reflect what was aired on an early feed.

We correct errors as quickly as possible when we learn of them. Significant errors are noted on the air in ensuing feeds of a show. When appropriate, corrections posted online note whether the error occurred in an early or final feed of a show.

The edit in the Bryant segment was not seen as the correction of a mistake, and therefore no note was added to the transcript online that a change had been made. As Sarah Oliver, a supervising producer on Weekend Edition, explained:

One of the most basic — and most critical — decisions we make as show editors and producers is what to cut from an interview and why. Simply put, we make edits in interviews for content, clarity, accuracy and fairness. When we edit a previously live interview for a later feed, we are guided by the same principles that we apply to a pre-taped interview.

When we edit an interview for a later feed, we inform member stations of the change. We also relay the information to NPR's online production team so they can post the latest audio and correct the text if necessary.

In this particular case, Howard Bryant, one of our regular sports commentators, made an offhand comment that didn't make sense in the context of the live interview. Scott didn't ask for clarification or challenge the characterization Howard appeared to be making, and we cut the comment for later feeds. Howard and Scott have "talked sports" every other week for many years, most often without issue – other than Scott's blatant preference for the Chicago Cubs.

After my inquiry, the Weekend Edition team contacted Bryant about the NRA comment:

The comment I made was in response to Scott asking me how I thought Lance Armstrong came off to the public following his interview with Oprah Winfrey. I responded, if I remember correctly, that he did not seem particularly contrite or convincing, adding that a viewer sent me a message on Twitter that Armstrong was so unsympathetic toward the lives he ruined with his lawsuits that he could be the "next spokesman for the NRA," which was in reference to that organization's lack of sympathy or contrition toward the Newtown tragedy. Had Scott asked me to explain, I would've said exactly that. Off-air, I received two messages from listeners who took offense to my criticizing the NRA. I responded to those two listeners who took offense with the same explanation. It was my opinion and mine alone.

Bryant is paid to contribute to NPR and give his opinions about sports. His is a position analogous to a sports columnist in a newspaper. How far he and they can go in giving their opinions on other issues is a fuzzy area. Not far, is the standard 20^th century American rule, which I still support. Many of these rules are breaking down under the assault of the Internet and a slide towards more opinion in journalism, but the editors were still right to excise his unsupported, unexplored, non-sports comment, as clever as it might have been.

Some purists might argue that any change to a story should be noted, whether a factual error or not. I understand why the discovery of an un-noted change can raise questions, but this vulnerability to doubts is outweighed by the practical considerations of it being both costly and a nightmare to track and list every change. Newspapers never did between editions and still don't. Ditto books.

As Mark Stencel, managing editor of digital news, wrote to me about what happens in the NPR site itself:

The updating process Stu [Seidel] described is much like the updating process throughout the print run at many newspapers and their digital editions. And our process of updating the text version of stories is much like the audio process.

In some of our blogs, particularly our breaking news blog, The Two-Way, we are pretty methodical about noting significant updates when it comes to emerging facts and the details of unfolding events. Those news posts almost require that we do that because they are stories we expect interested followers to revisit over the course of a day, so we want to signal clearly what's changed.

But those incremental details are different from the errors we actually correct (with links from our Corrections page and explanations added up top).

The real achievement, then, is that reporters and editors keep updating to give later listeners and readers the latest and best news.

But in the interest of historical accuracy and scholarship, I did wonder whether online transcripts and audio files could have some sort of a routine date-time stamp for when they were broadcast by NPR. Stencel told me that NPR's systems do not have a way to do that now, but that he would look into the idea. It wouldn't satisfy conspiracy theorists, and wouldn't tell you whether you actually heard that version on your local radio station at that time. Member stations sometimes record what they receive from NPR and mix and match it in their own broadcasts. But, it would create an official baseline of sorts. Oh, the complications.

Assistant Lori Grisham contributed to this report.

Some listeners rightfully have sensitive cultural antenna for reports from developing nations that smack of offensive exoticism from the heart of darkness. But one person's offense is another person's reality. This was nowhere more true than in an insightful exchange over the seemingly innocuous labeling of a "village" versus a "town."

Cindy Bates of Roslindale, Mass., sent this:

I was struck this morning by the use of the word village referring to the places in Mali that are under attack by rebels. I realized that in the U.S. we would call a small place a town and that the use of the word "village" connotes primitive, tribal, when in Africa, but sounds quaint when referring to a locale within a New England town, etc.

So, we asked the reporter, NPR's West Africa correspondent, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, why she used the term she did. She appreciated Bates' concern for nuance, but explained:

I acknowledge that my use of village, town or city is not scientific and I often won't have the chance to check a population census before reporting, so I tend to go by how residents refer to their place of abode.

If it's a metropolis, I'll call it a city or major/main city or centre of capital city. If it's clearly a large town, but smaller than a city, then I'll say just that — large town or main town.

If I see a village, I say a village — and it won't necessarily be rural. There are sometimes urban villages on the fringes of towns and cities.

Taking your specific query: "use of the word "village" connotes primitive, tribal, when in Africa".

I see your point, it can be tricky and it's all about interpretation and, of course, a reporter — certainly this reporter — never wants deliberately to cause offence. But I'm an African myself and don't have cultural hang-ups about this matter — a village is a village, a town a town and a city a city!

Hope that clarifies matters; if not happy to continue the exchange.

Quist-Arcton represents a trend in which mainstream United States media hires local reporters. It is part of a globalization of news standards and English. They offer the added bonus of local cultural insight and sensitivity, which may be different from our own.

Intern Kiran Alvi contributed to this post.

It isn't common for me to draw attention to another NPR blog, but an ethics debate today on the photo blog "The Picture Show" raises questions of interest to anyone interested in news media, ethics and NPR.

On the evening of the Newtown shooting, AFP photographer Emmanuel Dunand captured the image of a grieving woman praying in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary outside a Newtown Catholic church. Several days later, NPR used the image on its website for an All Things Considered report, "Newtown Tragedy: Would A Good God Allow Such Evil?"

The woman in the photo, Aline Marie, later contacted NPR and complained that the photographers at what was a church vigil had violated the privacy of her suffering, and that Dunand had not asked for her permission to use the picture after taking it.

Your heart goes out to the woman, who is not demanding that the photo be taken down. Rather, more in sorrow than anger, she said that Dunand should at least have accorded her the respect of introducing himself.

But then NPR multimedia editor Coburn Dukhart talked to the photographer. He seems sympathetic, too. He expressed his own deep grief as he worked at Sandy Hook, recognized Aline's pain and said that he thought he was being respectful by not disturbing her to introduce himself or ask her name. He said that he generally tried to work discreetly, from a distance, and put his camera down when he felt it might bother someone.

As the church vigil was a public event, Dunand didn't legally need to ask for Aline's permission. The question is ethically what does he have to do.

The debate on The Picture Show, much of it among photographers, is worth reading. Coincidentally, another post on the blog is about an iconic photo from the Vietnam War taken by Larry Burrows. Complicating the ethical question is one about recording the passions and feelings of events for the sake of history.

You might want to join the debate there, or pick it up here. There are genuine trade-offs and varying perceptions to consider.

When Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, called former Sen. Chuck Hagel "anti-Semitic" on All Things Considered, many listeners were enraged.

"How dare you NPR - how dare you allow discredited neocon hack Elliott Abrams to smear and mislead about Chuck Hagel on my Public Air Waves," wrote Larry James of Fairfax Station, Va. "Questioning Israel's actions from time to time is not anti-Semitism."

Donn Viviani, of Honolulu, referring to Abrams conviction for lying to Congress about the Iran Contra affair, said, "I can't believe you let a guy who secretly sold weapons to our enemies smear with hearsay and innuendo a guy who earned two purple hearts serving this country."

"I hope you are going to have someone on the program to refute Abrams position on the Hagel nomination," said Chris Carlson of Portland, Ore., referring to Hagel's nomination by candidacy for secretary of defense. "The charge that Hagel is an anti-Semite is a serious charge. Abrams was an architect of the Iraq War, which Hagel opposed."

I understand the complaints and was myself troubled that Abrams, who is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was allowed to use NPR to make an inflammatory allegation for which he offered precious little proof. NPR wouldn't allow someone to make an unproven accusation that another person is a thief, for example, or beats his wife.

Is it different to accuse someone of being anti-Semitic, or racist, or homophobic, or any of a number of other inflammatory terms that are an unfair smear if unproven?

Abrams spoke in a "two-way" interview with host Melissa Block that lasted eight minutes. These conversations give listeners the opportunity to hear directly from people involved in the news or experts with viewpoints, including some listeners might not like. This was not a reported piece, in which the reporter has greater control — and responsibility — to find truth and impose fairness over the quotes she or he decides to include.

Yet, even in a reported piece on Morning Edition this past week, a voter who opposes President Barack Obama repeated the canard that the president is not American-born, with no context added by the reporter. This raised a separate wave of complaints from listeners.

What's happening? Are some of these charges political fair game when it comes to public figures?

One valid reason to air such charges is the news value in reporting what a significant group or public figure believes. But then you should deal with the charge directly and analyze it, which can be done more easily in a reported piece. Block did heroic work in trying to question Abrams' claim about Hagel's alleged anti-Semitism, and she offered a quote from a book by Hagel that would seem to refute the allegation. But she is constrained in her role from openly disagreeing with a guest.

The show could have chosen to edit out that section of the interview, which was pre-recorded. It also could have killed the interview altogether. Or producers could have told Abrams that it would not air the charge without better proof and ask him to re-record his answer. Abrams could then speak of his own discomfort about Hagel's position on Israel and about his past use of the phrases "the Jewish lobby" and "the Jews." It is these phrases, plus some unsubstantiated hearsay, that was the proof Abrams had to offer for Hagel's supposed anti-Semitism.

It is unclear how often Hagel actually said these phrases, and their use does not automatically mean someone is anti-Semitic. History has given Jews and anyone who is conscientious reason to be nervous when Jews are singled out as a group in a negative way. But that Hagel might be anti-Semitic has been roundly rejected by many Jews and non-Jews who know Hagel well, and nothing in his record has come to light to support the charge.

All this is part of the case against NPR's giving air time to Abrams to make it.

And yet.....

And yet there is another argument that justifies NPR's action, and it comes down to this: Trust the audience.

Christopher Turpin, the executive producer of All Things Considered, cogently made this case in an email exchange with me. In doing so, he also showed the care and anguish that goes into "two-ways."

Wrote Turpin:

As you have doubtless heard before, these kind of interviews are always tough. As hosts, producers and editors, we're invariably left second guessing ourselves. Believe me, there are always questions you wish you had framed a little differently, facts you would have liked to have found a way to work in, edits you wish you had (or hadn't) made. That said, I feel we were on pretty solid ground here.

As to the specific questions you raise:

—No, I don't think we should have killed the interview. While we don't want to provide a platform for ad hominem attacks — and we need to be sensitive to the ways both left and right can use accusations of hate to undermine perfectly legitimate policy perspectives — I disagree with the notion that allegations of anti-Semitism or racism constitute hate speech. Take that argument to its logical extreme and you end up in a pretty odd place. As with so much of what we do, these are judgment calls. In this case, Abrams' allegations reference specific events, which were accurately contextualized by Melissa, who challenges him appropriately throughout the interview.

Turpin didn't think that the interview should have been stopped and re-recorded, either.

We didn't consider re-recording the question. We do that when there is an error of fact. To Abrams the facts here are perfectly clear, based on Hagel's comments over the years. He is not plucking his allegations from thin air. The question is whether those facts, as he sees them, constitute anti-Semitism? Is it our role to decide where that highly subjective bar is? Not in my view. Ultimately, I'd rather place my faith in our listeners to weigh the allegations in context and decide on their merits.

But the All Things Considered staffers were aware of the weight of the decision that they were making. They wrapped up talking with him at about 3:30 p.m. and had less than an hour to edit the tape before airing it, Turpin said. That is not much time to think through subtle trade-offs. They thought fast, as Turpin explains:

Post-interview we considered three options;

—Killing the interview (briefly...see my previous note).

—Cutting the section where Abrams makes his accusation. If you listen to the interview this is a discrete section at the end of the conversation, and could have been lifted out. In my view, to cut this and run the rest of the interview would have been intellectually disingenuous.

—Extend the interview a tad to keep the anti-Semitism section, as well as much of the wider context as possible. This is what we did.

I should also note that we immediately transcribed Abrams comments and sent them to the White House for comment. Our editorial assistant followed-up by phone. We didn't get a response.

In the end, I accept — reluctantly — that the decision Turpin, Block and their team made was defensible. Two things sway me.

One is that you, members of the NPR audience, are smart and by hearing the Abrams charge and reasoning, you yourself can hear the thinness of his evidence, which came across pretty clearly. This is apparently what is happening across Washington and the country as the charge appears to be fading away.

The same goes for the so-called "birther" statement about Obama. The story was about Republicans who, on Inauguration Day, still deeply disliked the president. The quote showed that some of them even still believe he isn't American, a belief so discredited that it arguably doesn't merit context anymore. I doubt that few if any members of the NPR audience were influenced by the statement or needed it to be challenged.

A second observation that sways me has to do with American character and constitutional history. Few countries match the United States in free press and free speech. Protected by the First Amendment, Americans have flung accusations against public figures with an ease that astounds citizens of most other countries, even those with mature democracies such as Britain and France. I share the fear — or the civility — of those listeners who feel that giving a megaphone for unproven, inflammatory smears unnecessarily divides and perhaps even undermines us as a nation, not to mention the damage it does to the individual such as Hagel.

But the country has prospered with the rough and tumble system we have. Will it always? I don't know. Other countries have strong democracies and more regulated speech. As one media lawyer told me last week, falsely accusing someone of being anti-Semitic might even be criminal in Germany, where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. We shouldn't be so arrogant as to think our way is the only true democratic way. But it has worked so far for us.

Still, I personally would have cut or re-recorded the offending parts of the Abrams interview, for reasons of simple fairness and civility.

For reported pieces, meanwhile, it seems to me that a sensible rule would be to avoid inflammatory names such as "homophobic" and "anti-Semitic" and say instead what a person has actually said or done. The Associated Press recently moved in this direction.

I welcome a genuine discussion among us on the matter.

As it was, Turpin did have a separate regret:

—I felt we fell down, and the lapse is strictly mine, by not having a strong supporter of Senator Hagel on the show the following day to respond to Abrams. While Senator Hagel's qualifications have been well documented on our air, this was a moment where his supporters deserved the opportunity to state the Senator's case in the same relatively extended format we gave to Abrams.

It probably is not necessary by now. But a great thing about the news business is that tomorrow is a new day, and you can always go back and do it all over again.

Former foreign editor John Felton conducts quarterly, independent, reviews of NPR's Israeli-Palestinian coverage. His 2012 fourth quarter report is now available online.

Felton reviewed the 104 radio stories, interviews and other reports that aired on NPR's daily radio shows from October through December, as well as 61 blogs, news stories and other reports carried exclusively on NPR's website.

Roughly one-half of the radio and online stories reported on the conflict in mid-November between Israel and the various Palestinian factions in the Gaza strip. This conflict resulted in the deaths of some 160 Palestinians and 6 Israelis.

In his assessment, Felton found that NPR gave its listeners and readers generally accurate, fair and balanced coverage of most of the daily events in the Gaza conflict. NPR reporters provided compelling coverage of the impact of the fighting on civilians on both sides.

However, much of NPR's coverage failed to provide the context listeners and readers needed for a complete understanding of the fighting, Felton found. Such questions as, "Why is this happening now?" and "What does this mean for the future of the Middle East?" should have been asked more frequently — even if satisfactory answers were not always available. The website did provide several background pieces. It was a shame that they did not reach the radio audience, too.

Felton also found that NPR was commendably cautious in reporting the key facts about the Gaza conflict, including casualties, but the caution sometimes went to extremes. In too many cases, NPR's reporting simply skirted the topic of casualties altogether. In other cases, NPR gave rough totals of how many people were killed but did not attempt to distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths — admittedly a difficult thing to do when both sides used casualty figures for propaganda purposes. NPR was reasonably consistent and accurate in reporting the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. However, NPR gave virtually no information about how many bombs and missiles Israel fired into Gaza, or how much physical damage those airstrikes caused.

The fourth quarter report also summarized some key trends of NPR's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the 10-year period of 2003 through 2012. The summary showed a relative balance, over time, in NPR's coverage of the two sides. Listeners heard somewhat more often from Arabs than Israelis during the decade. Even so, they heard much more often from the Israeli prime minister and other top Israeli government figures than from officials and spokesmen on the Palestinian side.

I encourage you to read the complete review. Quarterly reviews going back to 2008 are also available online.

John Felton prepares the quarterly evaluations. He has covered international affairs and U.S. foreign policy for more than 30 years. His book, The Contemporary Middle East: A Documentary History, was published by CQ Press in 2007. A former foreign affairs reporter for Congressional Quarterly and foreign editor at NPR, he has been a freelance writer and editor since 1995.

The newsroom has confirmed that the president puts on his pants like most of the rest of us: one leg at a time.

I make light. What it did today was change its stylebook and dropped referring on-air to the president of the United States as "Mr." in second references. Beginning with the inauguration of President Barack Obama for his second term next Monday, "Mr." Obama and his successors will be called by just their last names on second reference. "Obama," for example. Just like the rest of us.

Many listeners have complained over the years about the style. It was meant to show extra respect, but as I wrote in a column on Election Day, extra respect is a suspect practice in a democracy like ours.

Let me say, a smaller number of listeners have steadily made the opposite complaint: "Mr." is too informal and that the president should always be called "President so-and-so" in second references. The complaints seemed to come from supporters of the person in the White House at the time. They often saw an NPR conspiracy afoot against their guy.

The newsroom has punted on what to do when a woman is elected president, as surely one will be some day. The problem has to do with the first lady. To avoid confusion over whether the last name refers to a male president or his wife — Barack or Michelle, at the moment — the first lady will continue to carry an honorific in second references. It is "Mrs." in the case of Mrs. Obama, which she prefers to "Ms." But what to say when we have a "first man"? The newsroom decided to wait to weigh societal preferences when the time comes.

You could say they are being squeamish, or "egregiously gender biased," as Stuart Seidel, the managing editor for standards, says in the note below to the staff. And you would be right. But honorifics have a way of changing, and he and senior editors are also right to cross that bridge when the time comes.

This seemingly minor matter of how to refer to the president has been a source of as much debate inside the newsroom as among some listeners and news style mavens. If in the future, you hear a host or reporter say "Mr. Obama" or whomever in a second reference, the journalist is not making a personal statement. They will have the freedom to use an honorific when it helps in the cadence or clarity of delivery. They can do that in referring to you and me, too.

So, keep your pants on.

Here is Seidel's note to the staff, which includes parenthetical references to presidents past, putting the matter into (light) historical perspective:

NPR broadcast style has long required referring to the president as "President" (McKinley/Arthur/Cleveland) on first reference and then, on second and later references, as either "the president" or "Mister" (Van Buren/Polk/Harrison). Although meant as a gesture of respect for the office, many listeners have regarded the use of "Mister" as disrespectful. On the other hand, during the most recent presidential contest, the contrast between our references to "Mister Obama" and just plain "Romney" were perceived by many as showing favoritism toward the incumbent president.

After considerable discussion — and some thoughtful deliberation — we will take the start of the second Obama term as a good opportunity to eliminate this style anomaly.

Moving forward, there will no longer be a broadcast style requirement to call the president "Mister" on second and later references. We will continue to say "President (Tyler/Fillmore/Hayes) on first reference. The phrase "the president" remains appropriate on later references, but the president's last name, without 'Mister," will also be an acceptable reference on second and later references. (In our digital copy, we dropped the use of "Mister" a number of years ago, and began referring to the president in second and subsequent references by his last name. That practice will continue.)

Elimination of this long-standing style rule does not mean a prohibition on using "Mister" on second or later references to the president, just as there is no prohibition on using "Mister" in reference to anybody. We will generally avoid using "Mister" (Pierce/Garfield/Ford) in reporter pieces, but in two-ways we expect that one or another host or reporter will find one or another practice more or less comfortable.

The First Lady will continue to be called "First Lady" (Harriet Lane) http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies/harrietlane on first reference and "the first lady" on second or later references. "Miss Lane" will continue to be preferred on second and later references so as to distinguish the First Lady from the president. (Of course, "Miss" Lane is a bad example since there wasn't much chance of her being mistaken for "Mister" Buchanan.)

...

(And, yes, this is an egregiously gender biased note. If presidential gender trends shift, I promise that considerable discussion, and possibly thoughtful deliberation, will go into reviewing appropriate style changes.)

Updated Jan. 24, 2013

Continuing the conversation, here's a note I received from White House correspondent Scott Horsley shortly after I published this column:

I wish we hadn't headlined the item on "Mr. President" as bringing him down a notch. I don't think that's the intent of the style change, as I understand it. Rather, what was intended as an honorific was frequently misunderstood as the opposite. I've received numerous letters from listeners who thought I was dissing the president when I called him "Mr. Obama." I've yet to receive a single complaint from someone who thought "Mr." put the president on an unwarranted pedestal. Also, the Mr. created awkward moments in campaign coverage when it made for seemingly unequal treatment of the president and his challenger. ("Mr. Obama" and "Governor Romney" didn't help.) None of these problems was unique to this president. I got the same complaints in '04 when covering John Kerry's challenge to Mr. Bush. So we're simplifying the style. But no one is trying to take the president down a notch.

Jan. 8, 2013: This column has been updated with minor clarifications explained below.

A Morning Edition segment last week on the decline of Kwanzaa began as a noble attempt to break with mainstream media orthodoxy and reach out to the social media generation by humanizing a reporter, flaws and all.

The resulting segment incited listener criticisms about content. But what the host and editors may have most provoked was a separate and more fundamental question about credibility — of NPR and of the guinea pig reporter involved.

Host David Greene and Chuck Holmes, a supervising editor, are convinced that they enhanced the standing of both. The complaining listeners, many of them apparently African-American adherents of Kwanzaa, claim the opposite.

Reporter Gene Demby, himself an African-American who has just joined NPR as a reporter covering ethnicity and race and was making his first appearance on air, is caught in the middle. He is hard on himself for not knowing some basic information about the holiday but is divided over the wisdom of being bared on air.

There is no clear right and wrong in this tale. Rather, it is an example of both the opportunities and pitfalls as NPR and the rest of the mainstream news media seek to evolve with the times. The under-35 who make up much of the growing social media culture — as well as some more wrinkled members from the two ideological extremes — are driving a demand to make once faceless reporters more publicly human and open about potential biases. But there are no agreed guidelines yet on how far to go.

One reason for the uncertainty is a divide over what constitutes credibility, the foundation of the news media. Without it, NPR and other news outlets are dead. Your guideline thoughts are welcome.

The Kwanzaa case at first seems deceptively simple.

The Morning Edition segment on Jan. 1 was what's known in radio as a "two-way," a conversation between the host and a guest, in this case Greene and the reporter Demby. The technique is an informal way to report and analyze the news. This particular two-way was about the changing role of Kwanzaa, which ends on the first day of the new year.

The exchange that offended some listeners came at the end:

GREENE: So on the last day of Kwanzaa, would I say Happy Kwanzaa or what do...

DEMBY: I think you're supposed to say the name of the principle of the last day of Kwanzaa. I'm not sure what that Kwanzaa principle is. But I think Happy Kwanzaa is a sufficient response for a salutation.

There is nothing wrong with a journalist not knowing something. But in a two-way with a reporter, that unknown is usually about a fact that is not public or is unconfirmed. In this case, however, Demby was presented not just as a reporter, but also as an expert and — crucially here — a personal example.

Kwanzaa, drawn from African harvest celebrations, was started in the 1960s as a way to encourage pride, community and end-of-year personal reflection among blacks. A separate principle is supposed to be used in seasonal greetings for each of the festival days between Dec. 26 and Jan. 1.

"Please check Google and you will see information about Kwanzaa everywhere," wrote Kemba Nzinga of Columbus, Ohio, in a typical email criticizing Demby's expertise to discuss the celebration. "There is even an official site for Kwanzaa. He did not talk about the principles that are the foundation of the cultural holiday. He did not even know the Kwanzaa Principle for today."

This is a middling sin in the full context of his report, but it could have been avoided altogether. The conversation with Demby was pre-recorded, and so could have been re-done or Demby's lapse could have been cut out. When Greene finished the report, he even went so far as to clarify that the greeting for that day was "imani," or faith. This was information that he, Holmes and Demby looked up following the interview.

But they purposefully aired Demby's lapse, Greene and Holmes told me, because of his value as a personal example. Demby is warm and, despite his recent arrival to NPR, well-spoken on air. As a 32-year-old example of a rising younger generation of African-Americans, his personal experience evokes the point of the segment: Kwanzaa, which was at its height of popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, is losing relevance among young blacks. And in radio, an intimate medium, evoking is far more powerful than explaining.

But should that example have been one of NPR's own reporters?

Arguably, by leaving in the lapse, the morning show was leaving the reporter as an expert out there to hang to dry. The criticisms I received suggest that among at least some listeners, the credibility of both Demby and NPR was damaged. As Darcelle Gill of Leland, N.C., wrote:

"What a way to introduce Gene Demby, a journalist of race and ethnicity, to your NPR family/audience. I was disappointed to start my 2013 to hear an incomplete description of Kwanzaa."

But Greene and Holmes strongly countered that that by humanizing their reporter, they did well by him and by NPR. As Greene, a thoughtful veteran, told me: "I would hate to draw lines and say those aren't questions and casual moments we can have on the radio. Being honest lends to your credibility."

Holmes said that in planning for the segment, "we briefly talked about whether or not we should talk to a Kwanzaa founder or to an academic." That would be the standard approach, used the week before on Tell Me More." But we thought a more vibrant option would be to talk to someone who spends his days in social media who can speak to where the community is now." Before joining NPR, Demby was a blogger on black culture at The New York Times, Huffington Post and on his own blog, PostBourgie.com.

The argument by Greene and Holmes is a popular one in the new media world. If you want to build a following on blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, and the like, you have to get personal enough that the audience feels that they know you. But what was unusual about this episode was that Demby was not online, but on public radio's flagship news show.

Prior to the lapse, Demby also talked about his own celebration of Kwanzaa as a child and of lighting Kwanzaa candles in the Catholic church that he attended. He referred to a friend of his who had written about the "psychic barrier" that blacks must overcome to celebrate a holiday that he said is "not part of the firmament of holiday celebrations."

Such self-revelation was innocent enough, but then came the lapse and the complaints, detracting from a focus on the information and underlining the danger of the technique. As late as the 1950s, not even the names of reporters were given on many, if not most, stories in much of mainstream media. Yet, now even in this column I have told you Demby's race and age, two personal details I almost never give, because, in the world of conventional journalism, they are almost always irrelevant.

But are such details about journalists always irrelevant? The new media world, correctly noting that the ideal of a perfectly objective reporter is impossible, maintains that it is thus better to know their background and their biases so that we can weigh it against their information. The demand extends to divulging the politics and policy views of reporters and editors.

I am not sure where the line should be drawn on how much to humanize reporters. I do think that politics and policy views should be excluded. Absolute objectivity may be impossible, but independence, accuracy and fairness are not. Yet, the trend to a more opinionated news media may overwhelm even that barrier. Certainly we will experience ever more voice and personality by reporters, which is not be a bad thing, though I don't think any of us want all of our news to come in first person accounts.

Let me leave the last word to Demby himself. Because of his age, he said that he comes from "smack-dab in Millennials territory." This is a generation in which race matters less and social media is king. To his credit during the two-way, he did indeed cite a Kwanzaa expert, Professor Keith Mayes of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He also listed some of the Kwanzaa principles and summarized his own crowd-sourcing research on Twitter.

Of the lapse at the end, he said: "I'm of two minds about the decision to leave it in. The conversation wasn't pro- or anti-Kwanzaa and was meant to be kind of loose and informal, which is what I think we were all aiming for. But I should have known the principle; that bit is pretty inexcusable. It allows for an inference of dismissiveness that certainly wasn't my intention. That's not anyone's fault but my own."

I don't agree. The "fault" clearly was not his alone. It should have been made clearer to listeners that this two-way was part of an evolution in media. Still, what did come through in the interview was Demby's intelligence, sensitivity to cultural change and basic decency and fairness. So, let me, too, join in welcoming him to NPR.

Editor's Note: The characterization of Demby as a "guinea pig" is mine. Greene and Holmes said they were not intentionally trying to do something new with Demby, and I didn't think that they were. To me, the segment produced by the three of them represents a continuing drift towards greater personal baring of reporters, whether conscious or not. For clarification, I made a minor change to the last paragraph. I also rewrote the paragraph on Demby's value as a representative of his generation so that it is clear that they were delighted with his conversation, and not with anything to do with the status of Kwanzaa. – Edward Schumacher-Matos, Jan. 8, 2013

Updated Jan. 24, 2013:

Continuing the conversation, Michel Martin, the host of Tell Me More, offered the following thoughts:

I am annoyed by the characterization in your column of our treatment of Kwanzaa on Tell Me More as "the standard approach." If you, or rather the person you quoted, had listened to the segment, or even read the transcript, then you would have seen that we actually accomplished what the Morning Edition piece attempted and failed to do. We explained the holiday AND made it personal ("human," if you prefer) by inviting a person who both knew about AND had a personal connection with the holiday — and arrived at exactly the same place as Gene did which is to say, he doesn't observe it (in the case of our guest, he used to and no longer does). Social media can make it EASIER, not HARDER to find things out. For example, you can reach out on Facebook or Twittter and ask if anyone is really observing the holiday and what they are doing? Knowing something and having fun with it don't have to be mutually exclusive.

And one more thing — I think the thing that annoyed many listeners was the implication that there is something unknowable or not worth knowing about the subject. The thing about our listeners of color — in fact many people who don't fit what they believe or have been made to feel is the NPR template or "core audience" — is that they want to feel that the thing that matters to them matters enough to us to be treated with respect. One habit of mind to consider: would you treat a different subject — something you cared about — the same way? That often helps me when I'm trying something new.

And yes, we DID know the seven principles.

Habari Gani to you too.

Lori Grisham contributed to this report.

In covering the precarious so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations, NPR reports have been filled with conversations dissecting which Americans might see their taxes return to higher levels. These discussions often mention "the wealthy," "the rich," "the top earners" — those Americans who make lots of money, or at least much more than the rest of us.

Clark Irwin of Alexandria, Va., raises a good point about the references:

Twice during an NPR morning newscast today (Dec. 10), I heard the newsreader describe the White House position in the fiscal-cliff dispute as a wish to raise taxes on 'the wealthy.' This locution — setting aside the thought that it panders to resentments and ideological posturing — is terminologically suboptimal:

1. It is vague. There is no official definition of 'wealthy.' Why not just say $250,000 per household?

2. It confuses income with wealth, i.e., flows with stocks. If you have $250,000 in household income, $1 million in assets, and $1.5 million in liabilities, you are not wealthy. You are insolvent — possibly a candidate for a personal bankruptcy filing.

3. If writers do not care to cite actual taxable-income numbers, they might at least refer to 'high-income taxpayers' rather than 'the wealthy'. While still light on data content, at least that alternative would avoid conflating income and wealth.

Irwin could have complained about other common terms for this fortunate group that are equally less than satisfactory. They include "top earners" "affluent," or just "rich." Then there is the reverse phrase of "job creators" pushed by the ideological right in a battle to re-frame the debate.

One of the problems with this type of wording is that the terms are relative and situational. A "wealthy" family in a rural town would not be considered among the "top earners" in New York City. Furthermore, terms such as "wealthy," "rich," and "affluent" describe people with a certain lifestyle or culture — not citizens within a specific tax bracket.

To explore this issue, I compiled a tally of how NPR reporters and hosts on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekends on All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition referred to those "few at the top." I excluded references made by guests or in quotes in order to capture the references choices made only by NPR voices.

In the three weeks evaluated (Nov. 27 to Dec. 17, 2012), the most popular category of descriptors was "wealthy," proving Irwin's frustration to be warranted. To NPR's credit, however, specific references came in a solid second place. The other categories of references were much less common, including variations on "top earners" as well as the "higher income" that Irwin suggests.

Politicians have their own favorite terms, and this can lend a slant to some of the above word choices. In these cases, the word choice is political; each side selects the phrase that best supplements their argument.

For example, President Obama is fond of using variations on "the wealthiest Americans" when speaking to the public on the fiscal cliff negotiations. In his first post-election press conference, he used "wealthiest" or "the wealthy" almost exclusively (with a "folks at the top" thrown in). In contrast, Rep. John Boehner is more likely to refer to "job creators" or "small businesses" when he makes his case to the public, though this change in the subject is no more accurate. As consumers, we are all "job creators." The link between a minor increase in the income taxes of a few upper income people and investments to create or expand businesses is unproven. Obama, meanwhile, uses "small businesses" to support his side of the case, too.

It could be that reporters vary their terms to avoid sounding repetitive on air. After all, who would want to say some variation on "couples having combined incomes of $250,000 or higher per year" more than a few times in one report? But since many of the alternative terms can be politically charged in this ongoing debate, I would argue that it is worth adding the extra words for the sake of clarity at some point in their stories.

Laura Schwartz is an intern in the Ombudsman's Office whose internship ends with the year. On her own initiative, she has done many of the quantitative studies and charts of recent months. This post was edited by Edward Schumacher-Matos.