Before we begin, a note of warning: the topic we are about to explore may not be suitable for our young listeners.

Heard this before?

These warnings regularly make an appearance on NPR programming as a cue to parents or listeners wary of graphic content that they might want to turn down the dial for a few minutes.

Jennifer Myka, a listener from East Montpelier, VT, wrote to complain about the warning after hearing Morning Edition host Renee Montagne state it before introducing a January 30 story. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported on a women's group in Malaysia called the Obedient Wives Club that is trying to teach Muslim wives there about sex, including to act like prostitutes, setting off a bit of a furor.

I am writing because I just heard yet another warning to parents about sex in a story. My frustration centers on the fact that, nearly every day, there is a story that includes a bombing, dismemberment, stabbing or shooting. NPR fails to give warnings for any of these stories, yet for reasons that are unclear, there must be a warning for stories involving sex. This is not just a problem with Morning Edition - it is on every program I have listened to. The focus on sex as a subject for which we must protect the tender ears of babes is misguided.

 

What to do with graphic content is a never-ending issue, as editorial decisions are often necessarily subjective. The issue has come up in these columns in recent months, for example, on stories about former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky's alleged rape of young boys and about the Google search problem of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. The debate over graphic matter came up again this week in relation to a grisly Syrian video re-Tweeted by NPR's Andy Carvin.

But Myka's complaint that NPR, effectively, is prudish about sex but not violence provides an interesting twist. So, intern Stephannie Stokes in my office did a search of "warning" and "graphic" in stories aired over the last six months on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition and Weekend All Things Considered.

Myka was right on one thing: NPR makes these warnings regularly. Stokes's study was hardly scientific, but she found 18 stories over six months with warnings. But a review of the content of each of these stories didn't entirely support Myka's claim. Only three of these disclaimers cautioned parents because of pure sexual references. Nine others had to do with sexual violence—six of them rape and three of abuse—but this to me is more about violence than sex, though the two are intertwined in a primal, revolting way. The remaining six stories had to do with graphic war recordings, strong language, and the like.

Reporter Ina Jaffe, in a Dec. 31 Morning Edition segment, for example, gave a warning before describing a violent attack that took place at a mental institution. All Things Considered host Melissa Block notified listeners Aug. 26 that a reporter's exploration of a hospital scene in Libya might disturb listeners.

Whatever one thinks of this breakdown, Myka's concern does raise a valid question: What policy do producers follow in judging when to warn listeners? I asked the executive director of news programming, Ellen McDonnell, and she replied:

The policy is good common sense. Show producers try to be sensitive to content that could be perceived as offensive or inappropriate for some listeners. We try to do this for stories containing overtly sexual content, excessive violence or content that by its nature is offensive. As a result we try to flag listeners by saying that the subsequent story may not be appropriate or may contain sexual references or excessive violence.

In the case of the Malaysian story, I personally agree with Myka in not finding the content offensive. But NPR has a wide listener base, encompassing people of widely diverse sensitivities. Some surely feel different from Myka and me. I think that it is therefore wiser and more respectful for NPR to risk seeming prudish and err on the side of caution. Montagne was right to give a heads-up.

While such warnings may be annoying to some listeners, they are harmless. But for some sensitive listeners worried for their children or who simply want to defend their own standards, graphic content can be not just annoying or inappropriate, but also disgusting—even sickening.

Stephannie Stokes contributed to this post.

More from the Ombudsman:

Reporting On Romney's Taxes: Economics, History And Morality

War Is Hell: Andy Carvin And The Tweeting Of A Graphic Syrian Video

Last Friday, I published a column assessing NPR's coverage of Mitt Romney's released tax returns. I agree with critics that the main stories did not address the justifications for Romney's low tax rates on high income. Nonetheless, I concluded that the limited context in the stories of comparing Romney's low rates to what most Americans pay was fair. My view was that you either give all or none of the analysis for, and against, the favorable tax rates on investments that wealthy financiers and investors such as Romney get in comparison with what most of us pay on wages.

I also reached out to Tom Herman, the former Tax Report columnist at The Wall Street Journal, where I myself worked for nearly a decade. I asked Herman for his expert opinion as one who has written extensively on this issue, and for a business audience. His reply on whether the NPR stories should have provided more context on rate justification:

My short answer is: It depends on how much time and space you have. But in general, I would say no. When writing or broadcasting routine stories about Mitt Romney's taxes, journalists don't need to delve into the many reasons for taxing capital gains at lower rates than ordinary income. That is a lengthy subject. However, I do think that would make an excellent separate story. There is also the issue of how "carried interest" should be taxed.

 

I have to admit that I breathed a sigh of relief that he agreed with me.

An engaging debate, meanwhile, developed among readers in the comment section. I wanted to share a sample of what I found to be a worthy and interesting discussion.

Kev G (MandoGroh) wrote:

Please remember, while we want everyone to pay an equal share in taxes, "rich people" are not bad people. "Poor people" are not bad people. We are all just people, and we all need to focus on what is best for the future children of this country and world. Everyone's, not just your own.

Samuel Howard (Samiam_2012) wrote:

I love NPR and all, but they are trying to justify going over Romney's tax contributions with a fine-toothed comb looking for anything that "might" look suspicious. Are they going through this process for the other candidates? NPR is still totally missing the point of why so many people are upset with their coverage of this issue.

Chris Jones (cj51) wrote:

The clarity and fairness of this report is everything one could hope for, as a listener and reader. Thank you for maintaining objectivity when so many are wanting to jump on one side of the issue or the other, without full understanding of all the issues involved.

Now, let the chips fall where they may without the bombastic rhetoric so many approach this topic with, without all the facts and history at hand. There really is a lot to consider, especially where we are going as a nation, when fairness and reason are so often left by the wayside, in favor of digging in one's political heels.

As we approach the general election season, we will, undoubtedly, hear more on this topic. I am happy to keep exchanging opinions beginning now.

In the world of Twitter and social media, Andy Carvin has become a legend of sorts. I don't want to sound too much like a publicist for NPR, but the role of this NPR digital strategist as, effectively, Twitter Central throughout the Arab Spring—for the Arabs themselves in the uprisings—has won him numerous accolades. The Washington Post called him a "a one-man Twitter news bureau." The New York Times said he was "a personal news wire about Egypt."

As of today, Carvin has 62,450 Twitter followers. He told The Post last year that he tweets 7 days a week and up to 16 hours a day, sometimes more, from his laptop and phone in Washington, D.C.

His role in covering protests and unrest in the Middle East began in 2010 when he used Twitter contacts in Tunisia to crowd-source coverage of the revolution. He went on to repeat the formula in each successive country of unrest, using the same style of crowd-sourcing to debunk myths, share pertinent information, and create a written record of revolutions in real-time.

 

But Carvin's job has meant that he is often sent disturbingly graphic images and videos. He is then faced with the same predicament as the traditional media side of NPR and all other news organizations. What to do?

This is what happened yesterday with a video tweeted to him showing gruesome footage of children injured in the current Syrian conflict: he re-tweeted it with a warning. He wrote: "2 boys: one w/ his jaw blown off; the other his foot. Worse than graphic, an abomination. My hands are shaking."

The re-tweet has set off a minor furor, especially in the United Kingdom. Among his critics was a British digital legend of sorts. As The Telegraph reported today:

Sky News Digital News Editor Neal Mann, named by a survey last year as the most influential tweeter in the UK media, called the video "disturbing" and said he would not post it. Much of the footage coming out of Syria is "haunting", he wrote. 

Journalists are used to dealing with such footage, but "I do not feel comfortable pushing it to those who aren't."

Many of his followers agreed with his decision. "I'd rather not have a link, thank you," wrote user Mavis Wombat. "I can know how disturbing it is without having seen it. Once seen it cannot be unseen."

"I agree," wrote Cliona Wilmott. "It is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. If people are determined to see it, they will find it."

Others disagreed and felt that Carvin was performing a service.

I asked Carvin himself to respond. His statement is one of the clearest I have seen when it comes to social media and graphic content, and to the difference between social and traditional media, such as NPR radio. He wrote:

The issue of whether to link to graphic imagery via Twitter is something that has come up a lot over the last year, due to the nature of much of the footage coming out North Africa and the Middle East. On my Twitter account, I will share links to graphic images when I think it's warranted. Until very recently, mass media had no choice but to be very discrete when it came to such imagery: think of the evening news playing in the family room, or the newspaper sitting on the counter at breakfast. The media grew up in an era that was family-friendly. Understandably, news organizations were cautious about what they would post, but even so, there are times where they chose to share the content. Think of the image of the South Vietnam officer summarily executing a POW by shooting him in the temple, or the naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm explosion. Or more recently, footage of Muammar Gaddafi before and after he died. So there are times when even mass media will conclude something is newsworthy enough to share it.

On Twitter and other types of social media, I feel the situation is different. Before a person is going to see anything I've linked to, first they have to subscribe to be a member of Twitter, then subscribe to my feed, and then make the choice of whether or not to click the link. I always go out of my way to label such footage as "graphic," and try to describe the content as bluntly as possible, so people will know what they're getting themselves into. Meanwhile, my Twitter account is set up so that people who visit my page there first have to consent to seeing images I've posted, so they're not accidentally exposed to it.

War is hell—there's no way around that. And the growth of alternative media, social media, citizen journalism and the like now gives the public many ways to access content that would otherwise have been lost in archives. People now have the choice whether or not they want to bear witness, and I try help them make an informed choice. The responses I get online are overwhelming supportive, but everyone agrees that this is a difficult issue and people need to follow their own conscience on what they're willing to share online.

I side with Carvin on this one. As someone who has fought in and covered wars, I also think that for some of our armchair warriors who—for either nationalistic or humanitarian reasons—are so quick to send young men and women into war, it is good from time to time to have a reminder of the human costs.

Lori Grisham contributed to this post.

Is Mitt Romney being treated unfairly in the coverage of the taxes he pays?

Hardly.

Some might find it rich even to raise the question, but many NPR listeners have, and it is journalistically and intellectually a valid question.

According to tax returns that Romney released last week under pressure from opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, he paid what appears to be a low rate for 2010 of 13.9 percent in federal taxes on adjusted gross income of $21.7 million. His campaign also released his estimated income for 2011 and projected that the average rate over the two years would come to a slightly higher 14.5 percent. That is an uncertain number, however, and is still extraordinarily low by the standards of the nation's progressive income tax scheme. In that scheme, the wealthy supposedly pay the highest rates.

But many listeners wrote to complain that reports on Romney's tax returns by Tamara Keith on Morning Edition and All Things Considered were, if not biased against the wealthy, at least ill-informed and lacking the context that explains how he came to have the low rates. More than half of Romney's income comes from investments, which Congress purposefully taxes at a low rate. They do so on the grounds that this will encourage more investment, as well as compensate for what arguably is double taxation on some investment income. Keith's reports noted that most of Romney's income was taxed low because it came from investments, but some listeners and conservative advocacy groups felt that she and most of the mainstream media failed to explain the justification.

 

They are right.....to a point. NPR is obligated to provide context and explanation, especially for subjects that are controversial or that might be unfamiliar to many in its audience, including the details of tax policy, for example. But it's also important that the context is itself fair and balanced; the explanation should not be skewed to one side of an argument. Full context requires additional historical, moral and economic analysis if any of this background is to be included in straight news stories and still be fair—that is to say, not be biased in favor of Romney's low tax rates.

Omitting the full analysis, in other words, and simply labeling the rate in news stories as "low" is fair even if it is not complete.

Elsewhere in its coverage, however, NPR did provide some of the context that letter-writers said was missing. It did so online, and, in anticipation of Romney's returns, All Things Considered did a two-way conversation between host Audie Cornish and NPR reporter John Ydistie on capital gains rates.

It was also fair to focus only on federal taxes, even though Romney surely paid state and local taxes, too, as some listeners noted. Those are lesser taxes and vary geographically, making it difficult to make comparisons nationally. Also, Romney didn't release his state and local tax information.

None of this is to suggest that Romney did anything illegal or questionable. No NPR stories made such a suggestion.

Lets work our way through the arguments. Listener Rick Walsh, of Boca Raton, FL, summed up many of the complaining emails in this very well-reasoned letter:

ATC's story on Jan 24th regarding Mitt Romney's tax return was very incomplete and misleading. The story utterly fails to note that any dividends upon which Romney pays 15% Federal tax have already been taxed at the Corporate level at 35%. In effect Romney is paying more net taxes due to this double taxation.

If you want to advance the agenda that the 15% double taxation of dividends is too low, then fine — but it is unfair, and frankly economically illiterate — to fail to report all the facts about how Corporate taxes and dividends work — and to point out fairly and accurately that the dividend payment has been taxed previously.

ATC should endeavor to provide a complete understanding of the issue, rather than the same breathless ignorance over the low rate (again, which is NOT a low net rate) that I hear and read all day long in the media.

Failing to do so, and joining the mass of ignorance not only misinforms on the facts, it builds bad faith in the government since it sounds like corruption — when in fact it is not unreasonable at all to have a 15% rate AFTER the 35% corporate tax has already been paid.

I don't want to make this a media bias issue, since the real issue is the evident economic illiteracy of the reporting staff, but I don't recall John Kerry's dividend income and effective tax rate being so closely scrutinized in 2004.

On one level, Walsh is correct. Of Romney's $21.7 million in reported 2010 income, $12.6 million was taxed at the capital gains rate, which is a maximum of 15 percent. Of this money, according to his campaign, $5.4 million—or roughly a quarter of his total income—was mostly in qualified dividends, stock sales and other gains from the profits of companies. The companies may have already paid taxes on these profits, reducing the after-tax profits to be distributed to investors and giving rise to the argument of double taxation. The maximum corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

Putting the two tax rates together, John Berlau and Trey Kovacs, of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, estimated in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal last week that the total effective tax rate on income from investing in corporations is as much as 44.75 percent. This compares to a top rate on salary income of 35 percent, which is applied to wages of more than $379,150. This suggests that Romney in fact could have paid a high effective tax rate.

But this context is itself incomplete. First, numerous studies over the years have shown that few companies pay the maximum 35 percent corporate rate. According to a recent study of 280 corporations by the non-partisan Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy—both of whom advocate for middle- and low-income tax payers and tax transparency—the three-year effective tax rate of the group averaged 17.3 percent. Some large corporations manage some years to pay no corporate taxes at all.

The second issue has to do with the concept of double taxation itself — a concept that is highly disputed. For example, almost all of us who earn salaries are hit by double taxation. Our employers match our payroll taxes. Most economists agree that this "employer half" is effectively subtracted by companies from the wages they pay us, in effectively the same way that corporate taxes are subtracted from the profits distributed to investors. Additionally, it is not clear that corporate tax costs are passed on to investors anyway, and might instead be paid by employees (through reduced wages) and by consumers (through higher prices).

This debate over corporate tax "incidence" has divided economists for years and will surely do so for years more. This suggests that there is nothing conceptually special, galling or even agreed-upon about double taxation paid by corporate investors.

Almost all of Romney's investments in companies, moreover, were not directly in the companies themselves but in funds. It is the funds that are the direct investors in the companies. A "pass-through" concept links the fund investors and the companies, but this concept becomes ever more tenuous in the modern financial world of hedge funds and derivatives.

In Romney's particular tax case, there is more still to consider. Much more. Until now, we have been exploring the quarter of his income that is indisputably capital gains. Another nearly 30 percent of his income—$7.4 million—was in so-called "carried interest," according to Romney campaign chief counsel Benjamin Ginsberg in a conference call with reporters. Carried interest is taxed like a capital gain but is a very different type of income altogether. It has almost no ties to corporate profits and thus is not subject to a double-taxation claim.

Almost all this income continues to come from Romney's past interest in Bain Capital, a private equity firm he founded. Carried interest is considered by many economists to be conceptually more like a commission because it is earned by private equity managers from the investments made by their firm even if they don't invest their own money. Additionally, a core strategy of private equity firms is to borrow against the target company in which they are investing precisely so that the interest on the loans reduces corporate taxes to as low as zero. Perversely, in other words, instead of there being a double taxation claim, it can be argued that firms such as Bain borrow, take risks and grow at the expense of other taxpayers.

None of this is secret. Congress repeatedly has made a value judgment in devising the tax structure and rates that have benefited Romney. Congress—both parties, at different times—voted to benefit investors and financiers with lower tax rates for investments than those paid on wages on the grounds that this would help stimulate more investment and, in turn, the economy.

Romney benefited from a host of other deductions, such as for charitable giving, and legal maneuvers, such as in the establishing of trusts and offshore investments. Because of these deductions, his total real income was surely much more than the reported $21.7 million in "adjusted gross income."

You must decide for yourself whether you agree with the policy rationale for taxation on business investments and if it should apply in all the ways it does now. President Barack Obama and many Democrats have proposed reversing the benefit for carried interest. Newt Gingrich goes in the other direction and proposes doing away with the capital gains tax. Romney himself has proposed keeping it at current levels for high earners, but eliminating taxes on dividends and capital gains for households that earn less than $200,00 a year.

Capital gains tax is long enshrined. Until 1921, the rate was equal to that on wages, according to Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the authoritative and non-partisan Tax Policy Center. The argument that a high capital gains tax was counter-productive prevailed after the war, and it was cut to as low as 13 percent, he said. Beginning with the Great Depression it mostly fluctuated, though during four years under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, wages and capital gains were again taxed the same—28 percent. The current rate was passed by Congress in 2003.

This history suggests that the current rates and structures are not engraved in stone, or even proven in their effectiveness. Economists are divided on what is the optimal rate that encourages investments, jobs and economic growth, plus maximizes tax income.

Then there is the moral argument. If tax levels are not seen by most Americans as fair, they lose their legitimacy, which is an existential threat to the nation itself. A democracy is held together by more than its rules. People must believe in the tax structure, and its fairness for all.

Enter the so-called Buffett Rule proposed by President Obama. The rule would impose a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on the highest income earners in the United States, no matter how the money is earned. The rule is named after legendary Warren Buffett who has complained that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.

You will decide for yourself what is moral and fair, and what you think the collective ethos of the nation is. My concern and that of NPR is what is fair in the reporting on Romney and the broader tax issues. Should stories be framed in the context of progressive total tax payments, of economic stimulus, of double taxation, of finance loopholes, of the lesser value of work, of the historical fluctuations or the division among economists? All these questions reflect elements of truth and are legitimate.

But one thing is clear to me. To frame a news story or analysis only in the context of double taxation would be incomplete and misleading. The rate Romney paid is what it is. The justifications are a separate argument best left to a separate story that explores these many angles.

I end with Shirish Date, the lead editor on Romney's tax coverage. I asked him to explain the editorial decisions until now. He wrote:

What we wanted to show in these pieces was how much income Romney had, and how much he paid in taxes, against the yardsticks of his top GOP primary opponent and the typical American taxpayer. These are political measures, which are appropriate for political stories such as these.

True, there are a number of related discussions that we didn't enter into. Maybe these are good places to explore in the coming weeks.

Back to you.

Stephannie Stokes contributed to this post.

More from the Ombudsman:

Santorum, Race and the Limits of Journalistic Fairness

To Catch A Lie: Political Reporting's Dilemma

You're invited to use this space to discuss media, policy and NPR's journalism. We'll follow the conversation and share it with the newsroom.

Please stay within the community discussion rules, among them:

• If you can't be polite, don't say it: ...please try to disagree without being disagreeable. Focus your remarks on positions, not personalities.

• ...This is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, lobbying, soliciting or proselytizing. We understand that there can be a fine line between discussing and campaigning; please use your best judgment — and we will use ours.

Most of us remember from science class that data, a plural noun, should appear with a plural verb. But in every day usage many of us, myself included, are apt to say "the data is" instead of "the data are."

In an effort to steer us back on track, Robin Taylor, a biology professor and NPR listener from Columbus, OH, offered this request:

I realize that my asking this is probably a lost cause, like asking that all men please go back to wearing hats (or that "pedophile" be pronounce "peed-o-phile" rather than "ped-o-phile," which means lover of feet), but here goes: is there any possibility of NPR treating the word "data" as a plural noun, which it is? The singular is "datum." The form, then, would be "These data are........"

 

I love NPR and refer to it all the time in teaching my college biology class, but after teaching my class the proper use of the word, I must explain the discrepancy when they hear the word used on the radio. I realize that all languages are "alive," that they change, and that this may be part of the change. But my scientist's heart suspects that this loss of treating the word "data" as a plural is less an outcome of a living language and more the result of people not conducting their lives very scientifically.

Speaking of which, even today, I loved the story on depression in which you refer to the problems with lack of a blinded placebo-control group. It is a perfect of example of why I direct my students to NPR as a reliable source of scientific news. Thank you.

According to Webster's New World College Dictionary Fourth Edition—NPR's "official" dictionary—the plural form is still often used by scientists. But Webster's also notes that "data" now usually appears with a singular verb, as "data is." The Associated Press Stylebook, also used by NPR, gives a nod to the traditional plural usage, but accommodates the singular use as well:

Some words that are plural in form become collective nouns and take singular verbs when the group or quantity is regarded as a unit.

The data is sound. (A unit.)

To figure out how that translates to NPR's reporting, we did a quick transcript search of NPR-produced programs in 2011 – Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition, and All Things Considered Weekend.

The good news for Taylor and other language traditionalists: the plural use is not completely extinct. The phrase "data are" appeared in 17 stories. The bad news: "data is" appeared in 39.

As Taylor himself said, languages are alive and change over time. It appears to our office, however sadly, that this is one of those times.

We're interested hearing your thoughts. Is Taylor's battle cry futile or is returning to the scientific, plural use of data possible? And, while we're at it, can we bring back men's hats?

Lori Grisham is assistant to the ombudsman. Edward Schumacher-Matos edited this piece.

Updated 1/27/2012 6:10 p.m.(Click for the latest): Digital news editor Greg Myre weighs in on Bahrain web headline.

February marks one year since the start of a civil uprising in Bahrain, an island in the Persian Gulf. It was one of many countries to join in the so-called Arab Spring. As part of a recent series on the movement, guest host Linda Wertheimer on Morning Edition introduced a story on Bahrain by correspondent Kelly McEvers by saying: "Only one of the major uprisings has definitely failed, and that's where we'll go next."

In her report, McEvers says, "Bahrain became the one Arab country whose uprising was definitively put down."

Listener Tom Rizzo of Akron, OH, was dismayed:

That declaration is in the past tense, while the uprising in Bahrain is an ongoing event whose conclusion has not yet occurred. In many respects, the 14 February 2011 uprising has been wildly successful in raising the real situation that has prevailed in Bahrain for decades into the world's consciousness. For years and years it was possible to hear no mention of Bahrain in many "mainstream media" outlets in the United States, including NPR.

As a follow-up, Rizzo sent a Tweet noting that the State Department has just issued a travel alert because of potential unrest on the island. "Who's fooling whom?" he asked.

 

Just yesterday, a news bulletin from Bahrain reported that a protestor died after a clash with Bahraini police. Earlier this week, the State Department announced that it was relocating employees due to an increase of demonstrations.

I understand Rizzo's complaint, and agreed with it until reporter McEvers noted the difference between the "uprising" of her story and the "revolution" that Rizzo is concerned about:

Bahrain's mass uprising of Feb-March was definitively put down. Since then, protesters have desperately tried to re-kindle that mass uprising, to no avail. While protests in Bahrain are almost daily, they are usually small and confined to individual villages. Those that make it out of the villages are violently suppressed.

In the coming days, as the one-year anniversary of Bahrain's uprising approaches, there's a chance that the protests might grow larger and more effective and meet with more violence — hence the U.S. embassy warning. Even if this happens, our reporting still stands as correct. And we will follow all new developments.

And then in a Tweet she said more specifically:

'Uprising' and 'revolution' 2 very different things. Uprising of Feb-Mar 2011 failed. Revo ongoing.

Deputy Managing Editor Stuart Seidel underlined the importance of language by extending the discussion to the related terms of "revolt" and "unrest":

Political unrest is far different from political revolt. There is daily political unrest in China. On that basis, would you have us say that there is a political revolt going on in China, with the implication that the political unrest has the potential to unseat the government?

McEvers story, in fact, makes clear that limited unrest is continuing in Bahrain's villages, but they are mostly out of national sight and a far cry from the earlier massive street protests in the capital. "This is all that's left of Bahrain's revolution," she concludes. Listener Rizzo objected to this line, too, but it is correctly supported by the story.

A headline writer for the online edition, however, seemed to miss the language nuance. The headline said: "Bahrain: The Revolution That Wasn't."

Updated 1/27/2012 6:10 p.m.

Lest anyone think NPR is a monolith with a single point of view, the following response shows how reporters and editors disagree as much as listeners and readers on many matters. Shortly after I posted the "newsroom" response laying out the difference between an uprising and a revolution, Greg Myre, a foreign editor on the digital news desk, sent the note below defending the digital edition headline. He takes exception with the definition by the reporter and other editors of just what constitutes a "revolution."

Such debate is normal and healthy in the newsroom; we would like to open it to your participation. More than semantics are at stake. If you're Bahrani, each word counts.

Here is Myre's response:

I've discussed the headline on the Bahrain story (Bahrain:The Revolution That Wasn't) with several of my digital colleagues, and we feel that this is a valid way to summarize this particular story, as well as the developments over the past year in Bahrain.

The Bahraini protesters launched an uprising with the goal of ousting the ruling Al Khalifa family. This came in the wake of successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. But the attempt at a revolution has failed, at least for now. The uprising was suppressed. There was no revolution in Bahrain and the Al Khalifas remain in control.

As the story notes: "There's no large movement as was the case back in February and March. And from what a lot of people say, there's not going to be one anytime soon." ..... "For now, the uprising appears to be over."

The online story makes no mention of an ongoing revolution. This is something that was first mentioned in Kelly's subsequent tweet. I think it's highly debatable whether there's an ongoing revolution in Bahrain. A revolution is when there is a fundamental change in power, and nothing like that has happened in Bahrain. There are currently small-scale protests, something that is happening in many countries around the world. Maybe they will become something larger, maybe they won't.

Please join in.

Lori Grisham contributed to this post.

Yesterday I was invited on air to comment on the state of political journalism for WMRA's Virginia Insight, a call-in show broadcast out of Harrisonburg, VA. Host Tom Graham and a few callers quizzed me on the ethics of political reporting and media bias. Below, you'll find the audio and a few excerpts from my interview.

 

First, though, I want to share a quote from another guest on the show, the venerable Ed Wasserman, a columnist for The Miami Herald and McClatchy Newspapers and Knight Professor of Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University. In recent posts, I have addressed the issue of fact checking in political reporting. Wasserman here really captures the nuances and how the matter is not as clear cut as we'd like it to be. He said on the show:

The problem with authorizing or empowering or charging reporters to do all the fact checking on the fly is that great many things that sound like factual assertions really are characterizations. I think that in the case of Romney's false statement that Obama's gone around the world apologizing for the U.S. He's really I think saying something else. He's trying to distinguish his approach to foreign policy from Obama's. He's trying to say—I mean—anybody who has been married for any length of time knows that there are many different ways to apologize without ever saying you're sorry. And when you bring up things that you did wrong in the past, acknowledge wrongdoing, and express a desire for conciliation, and to go on a new path, it's not unreasonable to see that as containing some element of apology to it.

Certainly I was among many people who applauded Obama's attempt at harmonizing and conciliating and sort of talking about things like the revolution that we fomented in Iran in the 1950s and referring to those things regretfully and it went over very big in the Middle East. I'm not sure that saying, "oh, well, he never said I'm sorry." And the reporter saying, "Oh, he never actually apologized." You could dispute Romney's characterization. You could dispute where he is going with that characterization and the kind of foreign policy it implies, but I'm not sure it really clarifies things to call Romney a liar.

Here are some excerpts from my interview:

Edward Schumacher-Matos: I think the reporters here run into the same problem that Ed Wasserman pointed out. They toil about just how far they can go. I find that even when they do their own investigations, often times they want to let the facts tell themselves as opposed to draw conclusions—about just what all this means, what are the consequences of their own findings. I have written that I think they should do that. I think that they have to turn the corner, particularly when they in fact have done all the analysis that allows them to say that something is true or false.

Tom Graham: So, is there a difference in reporting on politics than reporting on most anything else, on science, on nature, on family relationships? Are there certain rules that apply to when you have competing political points of view, how you can delve into them and how you can't?

Schumacher-Matos: I think, two things happen: One is a lot of political stories are much shorter, because you're on the campaign trail, you know, it's a daily story, it's several stories being told at the same time. But secondly, I think reporters—and you can understand it—are hesitant to take on a public figure and say that he or she is saying that that's not true—and you can imagine that dynamic. But, that said, the stories are done. The second-day stories, the analytical stories, the separate stories on what are policy issues, to try and get at the truth and to try and get at those sorts of nuances, like the one Ed Wasserman pointed out about Obama's foreign policy and whether Obama has apologized abroad.

I invite you to listen to the full audio of the discussion.

You're invited to use this space to discuss media, policy and NPR's journalism. We'll follow the conversation and share it with the newsroom.

Please stay within the community discussion rules, among them:

• If you can't be polite, don't say it: ...please try to disagree without being disagreeable. Focus your remarks on positions, not personalities.

• ...This is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, lobbying, soliciting or proselytizing. We understand that there can be a fine line between discussing and campaigning; please use your best judgment — and we will use ours.

Let's jump into what is a raging debate and side with a colleague, Arthur Brisbane, the ombudsman for The New York Times, not out of collegial loyalty—it would be more fun to disagree—but because he is right.

Brisbane asked the same question that NPR listeners and critics have been asking me: To what extent should reporters, in everyday stories, act as "truth vigilantes" in correcting statements by politicians. He has been roundly attacked and lampooned. Or as he put it: "A large majority of respondents weighed in with, yes, you moron, The Times should check facts and print the truth."

 

Only days before Brisbane posted his poorly-received inquiry, I received an email from Jeremy Bratt, a NPR listener in Washington, D.C., Bratt cited one of the very examples included in Brisbane's piece:

I am an NPR fan, and a supporter. I spend every morning with the Morning Edition team and think Steve Inskeep is a national treasure. But the wimpy he said/he said reporting in the story "Romney Maintains The Style Of A Front-Runner" on January 1 drives me crazy.

In the story, Steve Inskeep plays a quote from a Romney stump speech in which Romney talks about President Obama's repeated apologies on behalf of America when traveling overseas. But, Inskeep tells us in the story, "Independent fact-checkers, like Politifact.com, have found that Obama did not apologize, and rate Romney's claims false.'"

Why the wishy-washy reliance on Politifact.com? Has President Obama ever apologized on behalf of America in a speech overseas? No, he hasn't. And NPR knows this, because your reporters have been at many of his overseas speeches (indeed, I've listened to their stories filed from overseas about the speeches). So just say that: Romney says this, but actually, it isn't true.

I can't speak for Inskeep, but I can speak for why he did the right thing: Quoting Politifact.com was authoritative and efficient. Had he simply stated of his own authority, "This quote by Romney, however, is not true," Inskeep would have had to provide evidence to back up his claim. The short amount of time he had on-air would be taken up with a long analysis of why Romney's common campaign statement is false. Politifact had already done the work and is widely recognized as independent and reliable.

It's impossible to know whether Republicans or Democrats make more outlandish statements. But in these primary days, the Republicans are doing most of the talking and so the limelight is on them for corrections. Some conservatives, among them talk show hosts on Fox News, are beginning to attack Politifact for focusing too much on the right, though the site regularly corrects Democrats too.

Brisbane's original question was too broadly worded, but I knew what he meant and he corrected it in a follow-up post to say that he was referring to statements in ordinary daily news stories, such as of a debate, in which many statements are included on many issues. How practically should it be done. This is separate from what to do in a story on one issue in which a reporter can go into depth and analyze the claims made by politicians.

The Times story—or Inskeep—might have said, for example, about the Romney assertion, in Brisbane's words:

The president has never used the word 'apologize' in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president's words.

Sounds simple, but then Brisbane also asks: "Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another?"

New York University professor and media critic Jay Rosen has been strongly outspoken on the responsibility of the media to correct politicians and tell the truth. You might read this interesting post, "Why Political Coverage is Broken." I agree with Rosen in principle and have faulted NPR where I think it has fallen short.

But Rosen and I have publicly disagreed on particular short, daily NPR stories in which I maintain that what he wants is impossible. Digging for the truth—as he suggested for a story on a Kansas bill designed to harass clinics that perform abortions—was good to do, but as a follow-up in which the reporter would have more time. Otherwise, you have no choice but to cite experts like Politifact. Rosen criticizes this as 'he said/she said' journalism.

I was happy to see that Rosen, in public statements, sympathetically understood where Brisbane was coming from, and while I agree with Rosen's sense of ethics and standards, I disagree with his historical analysis and his sense of where journalism is today. Wrote Rosen:

Something happened in our press over the last 40 years or so that never got acknowledged and to this day would be denied by a majority of newsroom professionals. Somewhere along the way, truthtelling was surpassed by other priorities the mainstream press felt a stronger duty to. These include such things as "maintaining objectivity," "not imposing a judgment," "refusing to take sides" and sticking to what I have called the View from Nowhere.

No one knows exactly how it happened, for it's not like a policy decision came down at some point. Rather, the drift of professional practice over time was to bracket or suspend sharp questions of truth and falsehood in order to avoid charges of bias, or excessive editorializing.

I prefer this history and analysis by Michael Schudson, who is a colleague with me at Columbia University School of Journalism and author of Sociology of News. He wrote to me an email:

The usual story, and the one I believe to be correct, is that journalistic faith in objectivity and the reluctance to make judgments was at its height in the 1950s and 1960s. It was attacked during the Vietnam war. That attack came from activists and outsiders beyond the media but it received support from some (mostly younger) journalists inside mainstream media and received reinforcement in the rise of alternative media and in the work of the likes of Seymour Hersh whose My Lai scoop was published by the left-wing news service, Dispatch News Service. Watergate further reinforced the growing sense that the media should hold government accountable and that this requires digging, investigation, and analysis, not taking the words of politicians at face value. Research on news coverage of presidential candidates shows increasingly negative coverage of candidates of both major parties from the 1960s to 1990s; research also shows a growth 1950s-2000 of the aggressiveness and critical-ness of reporters' questions in White House press conferences, with 1968 being a significant turning point — the level of reporter assertiveness thereafter rising and falling but NEVER falling to levels as those of 1968 and earlier. There has also been a significant growth of "soft news" relative to hard news in the past 40 years — a trend one can see as a mixed blessing but one that certainly enables journalists to be more analytical and to take greater initiative relative to politicians in shaping a news agenda.

The change I see is actually toward a stronger and more complex attention to truth-telling, but that's at the grand philosophical level. The workaday specifics are simpler: "don't give politicians so much control over the news as they had in the 1950s and 1960s. The politician is not your friend." Does this sometimes yield untoward cynicism? I think it does. Is it better than the 1950s coziness of politician-press relations? I think it is.

Is Jay right that the mainstream media are running scared about being accused of bias? Yes, I think that is true, and these days there are thousands of attentive people ready to call the press on signs of bias and able to make their voices heard. But the media are at the same time called on not to let politicians get away with (literal or figurative) murder. And, however complicated this may be, they are responsive to both calls.

To be clear, journalists should do everything possible to confirm the accuracy of the facts they report. The issue that we all face in a changing world of instant, 24-hour media is how practically to do that and maintain standards of fairness and impartiality.

Stephannie Stokes contributed to this report.

More from the Ombudsman:

Santorum, Race and the Limits of Journalistic Fairness

The Media, Civil Liberties and Security in Post-9/11 America

Last week, I disagreed with an email campaign requesting a correction to a report about Iran's nuclear program. Unlike the Huffington Post commentary that started the campaign, I found Tom Gjelten's report informative and careful. I felt the negative reaction had less to do with the journalism and more to do with the sensitivity of the subject. Most of us share an understandable fear of repeating in Iran the mistake that we made in going to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that proved to be fictitious.

I knew my conclusion wouldn't go over well with some readers. NPR had received thousands of emails on the subject. I was right, and I'm thankful for the honest feedback. Below is a selection of some of the most thoughtful notes that add to the debate, as well as a criticism from a media watchdog advocacy group and a sophisticated analysis by an authoritative Washington think tank.

 

James Byrnes (Jiby) wrote:
I signed the form letter. Yes, it was the lazy thing to do, but it reflects my very strong sense that the drums of war are beating again and that NPR, in its more subtle and nuanced way, is participating. Your response suggests that it's different this time, that it's not like Iraq. I beg to differ. It is very much like Iraq. I find it impossible to believe that you don't get that. As for nuclear weapons, who wouldn't want one if they thought it would deter an attack by a foreign power (U.S. and/or Israel) and protect their sovereignty?

bruce walker (ponythecomic) wrote: 

So the objectionable line was "And remember, the ultimate goal for the US and its allies is to convince Iran to give up a nuclear weapons program." Your defense is that it doesn't say "a" or "the." Well, please explain to me how Iran can give up something they don't have. It sounds a lot like us telling the Iraqis to turn over their weapons of mass destruction, when in fact they had none to give up. In fact, their refusal to turn over those nonexistent weapons was our justification for invading them. So how does Iran "give up a nuclear weapons program" if it doesn't have one? Or will their refusal to give up their possibly nonexistent program be our justification for launching an attack on Iran?

Tim Myers (Muck_Smelling) wrote:
Wow. Internet people are alarmists, are they not? While vigilance is necessary, imagining an American or Israeli city going up in smoke is a little much at this point. Iran may be ruled by a particularly un-American crowd, but they aren't stupid. Also, being able to initiate a nuclear explosion does not grant carrying capacity. Yeah, I know, they'll just buy it from Russia or China, as if either one is eager to start a nuclear holocaust.

 I am a fan of NPR, and this response is one reason why. I know of few, if any, other news outlets so targeted for irrational conspiratorial gibbering, yet so willing to strive to maintain its integrity. Thanks.

D.S. Poorman (agreatkentuckywriter) wrote:
Wow, what an interesting issue as the confusion seems to stem from semantics in a way. That those disparate interpretations of pro-war vs. vigilant reporting depend upon the use of an indefinite article as opposed to a definite article is fascinating. (My inner-language-geek is very pleased... More! More!)

The media watchdog is FAIR, which leans left. They disagreed with my secondary supporting point of Gjelten's use of an indefinite article and posted this on their blog:

Does NPR really think that the best way to inform its listeners is to assume that when people hear a report about forcing Iran to "give up a nuclear weapons program," these listeners should fill in the blanks themselves so as to arrive at an entirely different meaning? That every time you hear something about Iran's "nuclear weapons program," that is really code for "the-nuclear-weapons-program-that-may not exist-since-there-is-no-evidence-that-it-exists"? That'd be an unusual burden to place on listeners.

For good measure, the ombud throws in another defense of the NPR report by pointing out that the "quote carefully refers to 'a' program—using the indefinite article—and not the definite 'its' or 'the' program." Again, NPR listeners: If you hear one of the reporters use the word "a," remember that could be a reference to something that doesn't exist. Got it?

As a contribution to the actual truth in the matter, here is a letter from Paul Brannan, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington D.C.-based think tank that tracks nuclear programs. The name is familiar to those who read about the deadly explosion at the Iran military base last November. ISIS released the commercial satellite images and an analysis of the damage.

Please find the link below for a new ISIS analysis. The absence of a final Iranian decision to make a nuclear weapon is not an accurate characterization of the international concerns regarding Iran's nuclear program. Iran has already made several key decisions over time that have better positioned it to quickly make nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so. It is important to find a non-military solution to this issue, but there is indeed an urgency to finding this solution, and the urgency is not reduced by the absence of an Iranian decision to actually make a nuclear weapon.

http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/reality-check-shorter-and-shorter-timeframe-if-iran-decides-to-make-nuclear/

So there you have it. More food for thought for the weekend. We do read all your emails and comments, so please keep them coming.

Lori Grisham contributed to this post.

More on Iran from the Council on Foreign Relations:

A Threshold of War, or Diplomacy, with Iran?
Jan. 17, 2012
Ray Takeyh, Matthew H. Kroenig

Not Time to Attack Iran
Jan. 17, 2012
Colin H. Kahl

More from the Ombudsman:

Is NPR Fomenting A War With Iran? No.

The Wikipedia Blackout and the 'Scabs' at NPR

Santorum, Race and the Limits of Journalistic Fairness

NPR online readers passionate about the current debate over intellectual legislation in Congress were Wednesday slightly put off—well, for some, that would be an understatement. They were upset by what they perceived to be insufficient or slanted coverage of the online blackout protesting the two pieces of legislation, known as SOPA and PIPA.

Proponents of the House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and its counterpart in the Senate, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, introduced the legislation with the aim of curbing online copyright infringement. Opponents argue the two bills are too far-reaching in their regulation of the Internet and threaten free speech.

One NPR post, in particular, from NPR's Two-Way blog caused some uproar. Featured in the post was insight on how to sidestep Wikipedia's day of protest January 18 against the bills.

Several readers were outraged, claiming NPR was "trivializing" the widespread online blackout and effectively "undercutting" Wikipedia's efforts by publishing a way to access the free encyclopedia's site during the day of protest. One characterized NPR as acting "like a scab in a labor dispute."

 

The point is an interesting one, but moot since Wikipedia published instructions on its English-language site to how to get around the blackout. Two-Way even quoted Wikipedia's published statement: "Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message."

The reporting, moreover, was informative and of great interest to the millions of people who visit Wikipedia each day.

NPR reporters and editors offered a full smorgasbord of stories both on-air and online on the blackout that day:

Wikipedia Goes Dark To Protest Anti-Piracy Bills

Websites Shut Down To Protest Anti-Piracy Bills

Q&A: Congress, SOPA And A Fight Over The Web

Internet Blackout Puts Washington Online Piracy Fight In Limelight

So, What Did We Learn After A Day Without Wikipedia?

Are There Workarounds For Wikipedia's Blackout?

Stephannie Stokes contributed to this post.

More from the Ombudsman:

Can Too Much Campaign Coverage Cause Heartbreak?
Santorum, Race and the Limits of Journalistic Fairness

You're an NPR reporter covering a presidential candidate. Serious stuff, even if it's still early in the election season. As he speaks, you think you hear the candidate say something that negatively singles out African-Americans. You try to get an explanation from the candidate after he finishes, but can't get to him. So, you go back to your hotel and listen to the tape. You're convinced he said it. But it's a little garbled.

What do you do?

In the balance, as you prepare your story, could be the fate of one man's presidential candidacy, or an increase in racial friction during an election year—or just simple accuracy.

This is the situation that Ted Robbins faced covering Rick Santorum in a meeting with voters in Sioux City, Iowa, two days before the Iowa caucuses earlier this month. Unable to get an explanation from Santorum, Robbins went with what he heard, which was a slur against black Americans. Since then, however, many listeners—and the candidate himself—say that in the garbled comment, the candidate did not mention blacks. At the most, others say, the candidate might have started to say "black" but stopped himself.

 

All of this raises questions about how far a reporter and NPR should go to be fair and responsible. There is no totally satisfactory answer.

Sides have lined up as the story has set off a chain of accusations, claims and denials among advocacy groups, African-Americans, commentators and talk show hosts.

The issue still dogs Santorum in the blogosphere as he campaigns in the South Carolina primary.

This is what Robbins' story quoted Santorum as saying in Iowa:

They're [undefined who, but probably government and politicians] just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom line is.

I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.

Santorum stumbles on what appears to be the word "black." You can listen to it yourself here and watch CBS' tape of that part of the speech here.

Robbins was at the coffee shop event in Sioux City with producer Sam Sanders. He said that the two of them looked at each other after Santorum finished speaking and said, in Robbins' words, "Did you hear what I heard?" It was Sanders who attempted and failed to get through to Santorum, who left quickly, Robbins said.

He continued, "We went back to our hotel. It had sounded like a Freudian slip. Then we heard it on tape and that was when we were surprised that it was as clear as it was."

Sanders agreed. In fact, Robbins and Sanders were so sure, Robbins told me, that their concern was not whether Santorum said it or whether it was racially explosive, but whether it was factually fair on Santorum's part to single out blacks. "It was factually inaccurate, and that was what bothered me, or bothered us," Robbins said.

Robbins said he believed that more whites than blacks receive welfare benefits. Santorum had mentioned Medicaid as part of the same rambling comment. There were few people to call on a late Sunday afternoon, and so Robbins said he searched online about Medicaid usage by race but couldn't come up with anything definitive because of the way the statistics are kept.

Neal Carruth, the supervising editor for election coverage, entered the picture and heard the tape while it was being edited. He, too, agreed that Santorum had singled out blacks. And like Robbins, Carruth said he did not frame the story in racial tinderbox terms.

"We were doing a daily from-the-trail story on Rick Santorum and his remark about black people getting other people's money was just one element of that story," Carruth told me. "It wasn't the central focus of that story, but it seemed to us a newsworthy comment and worth including."

And so the resulting story on Morning Edition did not lead with the "black" comment or hype it by calling it racially provocative. It was only midway through the three-and-a-half-minute report that Robbins said on air:

For Santorum, that [core message] means cutting government regulation, making Americans less dependent on government aid, fewer people getting food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of federal assistance - especially one group.

And then followed the tape of Santorum making the famous quote, which we could all hear for ourselves. The story then cuts back to Robbins, who adds:

Santorum did not elaborate on why he singled out blacks who rely on federal assistance. The voters here didn't seem to care.

This last comment can be taken in many ways, but Robbins says he was referring to the lack of reaction in the almost all-white audience, which clapped politely.

Curiously, many reporters were at the event, and only NPR reported the highly newsworthy black quote.

Had it been Mitt Romney, or, say, President Barack Obama, who had muffed a line, their press spokespeople would have been all over the journalists to correct—or spin—the statement. Santorum, however, has been running such a shoestring campaign that, as the Associated Press reported last December, Santorum largely moved around Iowa with just a driver and a borrowed pickup truck. It was only four days later, as he was hustling to play catch-up in New Hampshire, that Santorum said he finally had time to review the video tape of that coffee shop event.

If they had had a doubt, the NPR team should clearly have held off until confirming it with Santorum. But Robbins and Carruth said that they did not have a doubt. It was like reporting on any speech: the speaker said it, you report it. It was just one more daily story that rounds out the picture of a candidate.

Seen that way, the story was straightforward and fine. Its limitations—not getting the truth on welfare usage or more explanation from the candidate—were correctly acknowledged. This was done in the line, "Santorum did not elaborate why he singled out blacks." Robbins says that in retrospect, he wishes he would have added that they tried to get an explanation from the candidate but couldn't. This more explicit disclaimer would have been better, though only marginally so.

This entire analysis, however, relies on Santorum having said "black." It changes if you think that the journalists at NPR should have been less certain about what he said, given the garble as he spoke. The analysis changes even more if you think that not just factual accuracy was at stake, but also the demonizing of a race—blacks are taking other people's money—and the stoking of racial tension. If you think these things—as I do—then it should have been the responsibility of someone in the editorial chain of command to stop that part of the story before it ran and ask if this wasn't an unfair and potentially dangerous "gotcha" moment.

Robbins is an experienced reporter. He is based in Arizona, however, and through no fault of his own was covering Santorum for the first time. He said he did the normal background research on the candidate. A more seasoned follower of Santorum might have known that he doesn't have a history of playing the race card. This knowledge would have been a tip-off to be extra cautious.

A second tip-off was the context. While Anderson Cooper on CNN much later—and somewhat tendentiously—found that the context of Santorum's comments supported the idea that the candidate meant to say "black," I don't see this contextual inference at all.

Immediately before the comment in question, Santorum said the government or politicians are trying to get "you"—his mostly white audience—dependent on welfare. The meeting was not a white resentment affair with speakers railing against minorities.

In fairness, however, I have to add that Santorum is such a confusing, undisciplined speaker that the context and meaning of his comments are often hard to follow.

After the NPR story aired on a Monday morning, CBS.com did a similar short story Monday afternoon, and then followed up on the Evening News with an interview of Santorum by anchorman Scott Pelley. The anchor asked the candidate why he singled out African-Americans on welfare. You can decide for yourself whether you believe Santorum's reply that he couldn't remember what he said.

You might first ask yourself, though, if this has ever happened to you. It has to me. Few of us, additionally, have had to speak off the cuff in a forced campaign march as much as Santorum has. In Santorum's reply to Pelley, he did summarize what has been his historical position on welfare. Here is his full reply:

I've seen that quote. I haven't seen the context in which that was made. Yesterday I talked for example about a movie called, um, what was it? 'Waiting for Superman,' which was about black children and so I don't know whether it was in response and I was talking about that. Let me just say that no matter what, I want to make every lives [sic] better. I don't want anybody—and if you look at what I've been saying—I've been pretty clear about my concern for dependency in this country, and concern for people not being more dependent on our government, whatever their race or ethnicity is.

CBS was able to do a fact check. Instead of looking at Medicaid, CBS looked at food stamps, a program much easier to analyze. Pelley pointed out that only nine percent of Iowans who receive food stamps are black; 84 percent are white—somewhat reflecting Iowa's overall racial makeup.

Nationally, according to the Department of Agriculture, the percentage of food stamp recipients who were black was 22 percent in 2010. This is larger than their 13 percent proportion in the population, but much less than the 34 percent of food stamp recipients who were white. Seventeen percent were Hispanic.

With CBS reinforcing NPR's take on what Santorum said, the story bloomed online and on Fox News, where different interviewers asked Santorum what he meant. The candidate's replies evolved to become that he didn't say black, but he didn't say what else it was that he said. Finally on Thursday, he told John King of CNN:

I've looked at that quote. In fact, I looked at the video. In fact, I'm pretty confident I didn't say black. What I think, I started to say a word and then sort of changed, and it sort of—blah—mumbled it, and sort of changed my thought.

By now a number of advocacy groups had weighed in with angry statements condemning Santorum. "Sen. Santorum's targeting of African-Americans is inaccurate and outrageous, and lifts up old race-based stereotypes about public assistance," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP. "He conflates welfare recipients with African-Americans, though federal benefits are in fact determined by income level."

Santorum's vague denial didn't help. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Charles Blow, for example, dismissed it with unbecoming sarcasm:

At first, [Santorum] offered a nondenial that suggested that the comment might have been out of context. Now he's saying that he didn't say "black people" at all but that he "started to say a word" and then "sort of mumbled it and changed my thought."

(Pause as I look askance and hum an incredulous, "Uh huh.")

What began as a few seconds in the midst of an ordinary NPR campaign story had taken on a toxic life of its own. And yet....and yet it's entirely possible—maybe even likely—that Santorum is telling the truth.

That Santorum took so long to make the denial is immaterial. There could have been many reasons for that, not the least of which was that he was busy playing catch-up to compete in the New Hampshire primary.

Among the many independent judges who don't hear the word "black" are Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates, Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple, and NPR diversity vice president Keith Woods. I heard "black" on the first hearing, but not afterwards. But then, many other people hear "black," just like the NPR team did.

There is a middle ground, and if you have watched the video, many of you may be there. It is that Santorum started to say "black" and pulled back. This is partly supported by his own explanation that he said "blah" and then changed course. There is no way for us to know why he might have started to say "black," if he did. The important thing to me is that if he stopped himself, or misstated himself, then I believe that he deserves some benefit of the doubt, given his history, the context and the potential consequences of a statement that amounts to race baiting.

Adding to the tinder is a Republican primary environment in which some candidates and some far-right groups have indeed stoked racial resentments. Some Americans have faulted Santorum for demonizing two other groups—gays and immigrants—but those are separate issues.

Robbins maintains that it is not a reporter's place to guess what a candidate is thinking. He also said that he was not trying to catch Santorum in a "gotcha" moment, and I believe him. "Maybe it was a mistake, but it was his mistake, not ours," said Robbins.

His is a defensible position. If journalists start making exceptions for what they think someone meant, where does it stop? Many journalists will be uncomfortable with my emphasis on such subjective matters as fairness, benefits of the doubt, and consequences. They will maintain that neutral objectivity rules: Just the facts ma'am. And let the chips fall where they may.

But most of us know that pure objectivity doesn't exist. Reporters and editors must try to be as objective as possible, but objectivity must be tempered with fairness, and must have a context that considers consequences. This doesn't mean pulling punches. But hiding behind objectivity without fairness fuels an image of journalistic arrogance or disregard for the actual truth. Trust in the press is undercut in the process.

I can't condemn the journalists for reporting what they are convinced they heard. I am only sorry that someone else in NPR didn't hear what so many of the rest of us have heard, or didn't exercise more caution, especially when it comes to a racially sensitive matter.

There was one more curiosity linked to this convoluted story. Although many commented at the bottom of the web version of the story, only one listener wrote directly to NPR to complain. This may suggest that I am being overly sensitive. Santorum and the Republic, after all, will survive, and the nation's great racial divide will likely continue to recede. I look forward to your responses with great interest.

More from the Ombudsman:

Rick Santorum's Google Problem Becomes The Story
We've Been Misled! No One Won Iowa!

Listeners are right to be vigilant about NPR and the news media coverage of Iran's nuclear program. A decade ago, much of the news media was intimidated and manipulated over a supposed nuclear weapons program in Iraq. The news media was hardly the only sector of society to be gullible, but the cost that we have had to pay in lives and money for such a catastrophic mistake has left us all on edge not to repeat it.

But the thousands of letters and phone calls that have poured into NPR in recent days about a story on Weekend Edition Sunday are finding phantoms in the other direction: the protesters are claiming things that NPR didn't say.

Most of the letters were a form one drafted by Robert Naiman, the policy director for Just Foreign Policy, a small advocacy group based in Washington. The campaign was started in an opinion post by Naiman on The Huffington Post, in which he gave a link to the letter to send to NPR, asking for a correction.

There is nothing to correct.

The NPR story by national security reporter Tom Gjelten was about the escalating economic war of sorts between the United States and Iran. The focus was on how the current economic threats and sanctions have rebounds and consequences that are often unintended or counter-productive. It was a smart piece that stepped back to suggest that we all open our eyes to look at just what we are getting into as a result of what we are doing now.

 

The objection was to a line in the story in which Gjelten said: "And remember, the ultimate goal for the US and its allies is to convince Iran to give up a nuclear weapons program."

Naiman wrote in Huffington Post that this statement was "thereby implying that Iran already has a nuclear weapons program, which is certainly not a known fact." The thousands of form letters received by NPR conclude: "I urge you to correct reporting that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and to take steps to prevent its recurrence."

But the story didn't say or imply that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. As Bruce Auster, the senior editor for national security, notes, "The story was about how the sanctions are designed to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons program, which automatically suggests it may not have one."

In other words, the quote cited by Naiman is taken out of context, and even that quote carefully refers to "a" program—using the indefinite article—and not the definite "its" or "the" program.

Here is the complete context, stated clearly by Gjelten at the beginning of his report:

The West wants to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The plan, for now at least, is to use sanctions as pressure. The resulting economic pain might induce the Iranian regime to give up any thought of a weapons program. But international inspectors say Iran is getting closer to that nuclear capability.

In mentioning international inspectors, Gjelten is referring to a report released in November by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the most authoritative public source we have at the moment. In it, the agency notes that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program up until 2003, stopped it, and now there is great uncertainty as to whether it has re-started it.

The IAEA report says that Iran is carrying out "activities that are RELEVANT to the development of a nuclear explosive device" and that while some of those activities "have civilian as well as military applications, others are SPECIFIC to nuclear weapons." My emphases.

All very Talmudic. It was the closest the UN agency had come to saying that Iran was engaged in a nuclear weapons program, but still stopped short of saying that the country actually had one. The NPR story in wording and in tone accurately reflected this position.

Shorthand references are often dangerous in journalism, and listeners are correct to be on the alert for them. Repeated enough as fact—"Iran's nuclear weapons program"—they take on a life of their own.

According to Auster, NPR's policy is to refer in shorthand to Iran's "nuclear program" and not "nuclear weapons program." This is a correct formula, it seems to me, in part because Iran has proudly announced its nuclear program—while asserting it is for "peaceful" purposes, not for making weapons. For a complete, level-headed analysis of the IAEA report, readers might want to go back to a segment by NPR Mike Shuster the day it was released.

Even to refer to Iran's "nuclear program" is warmongering to some listeners. The worse offense, however, would be to pretend that the program does not exist, or that a threat is not there.

Many of us probably took heart last Sunday when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said flatly on Face the Nation of Iran: "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No." He appears to have gone further than the official US government position, however. In denying that the US had a role in the assassination this week of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton encouraged Iran to "end its search for nuclear weapons." This says that the US government believes Iran is at least searching.

The form letters to NPR note that The New York Times removed a paragraph from one of its Iran stories and The Washington Post changed an online headline on a photo gallery. This is true, but the shorthand references in those papers were different from NPR's. The Times, in a story on European sanctions of Iran, had written in the removed paragraph that "Iran's nuclear program has a military objective," according to the paper's ombudsman, Arthur Brisbane. The original Post headline was: "Iran's quest to possess nuclear weapons." The Post later changed the headline to nuclear 'technology'.

This issue and the sensitivity on how to report it is not likely to go away any time soon. For further reading on how the whole issue is seen from inside Iran, I recommend reading Hooman Majd's "Christmas is No Time for an Iranian Revolution" in this week in Foreign Affairs.

Meanwhile, please stay vigilant and let me know when you think I am missing something.

"Roadside slim" from Roseburg, OR, wants to take a break. And he's not the only one.

Many of you have written—pleaded, really—for NPR to cut back on 2012 presidential campaign coverage. As Frank Range, from Athens, GA, put it, "The election is still 10 months off and we will have to endure a lot of hot air from the candidates. Please don't add to the wind."

Trust me, I hear you. You're not alone.

A survey by the Pew Research Center published yesterday found that 37 percent of Americans feel there is too much campaign coverage in the news. One problem for us is that about the same amount—39 percent—felt that they were receiving the "right amount" of coverage so far this year.

Much of the news media coverage is, of course, "horse race speculation." Most of us, including journalists, bemoan that, but we all want to know who is in first, too. The crowded Republican field does look a bit like the Kentucky Derby. I trust that NPR will continue to give us more substantive coverage as well, which many of you have written to say that you want. Let me know if you are dissatisfied, though it will be easier to judge once we get down to a more manageable number of candidates. In the meantime, here is a tongue-in-cheek solution from "Roadside slim," or at least I hope he doesn't really mean it:

Dear NPR:

We need to talk a little. Our 35+ year relationship of sharing the news of the day both in the morning and at night has been pretty stable, but recently you have seemed rather distant and preoccupied. Our great conversations about life, the universe, and everything now seem strained and only with perfunctory effort. I understand the bright lights, glitz and short term heart stopping lust of election analysis, but it is so fleeting like cigarette smoke, and becomes like warm stale wine and last night's muddy confetti.

I know there are things I can't understand but why would you throw your splendor and talent of delightful, provocative stories of home, culture, science, and far away cultures to the wind and then wallow with the hard, coarse and vulgar election street walkers of the other media, especially when street walking is not one of your best talents?

NPR, I bask in the air waves of both AM and FM stations located in the central part of western Oregon. But recently I have had to turn you off multiple times, both going to and coming home from work because we are just not talking on the same wave link.

NPR, I think you and I need space while you go find yourself. Perhaps you need time to explore the vulgarities enough to decide that is not for you. Understand that I will be fine. Now with the head spinning aroma of audio books and blogs misting from my silver IPOD and savory voices reading from my Kindle, Perhaps I could.... Maybe even... YES NPR, I do think we need space at least till next January after the inauguration. Maybe then we can hook back up. Play well NPR, just don't let the smoke and warm stale wine harden your voice, laughter, and desire for richness in the important things of life.

- "Roadside slim," Roseburg, OR

As always, we'll share your laments, odes and thoughts with the newsroom.