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NEW YORK (AP) — The government’s top official overseeing the $1.5 trillion student loan market resigned in protest on Monday, citing what he says is the White House’s open hostility toward protecting the nation’s millions of student loan borrowers. Seth Frotman will be stepping down as student loan ombudsman at the end of the week, according to his resignation letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. He held that position since 2016, but has been with Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since its inception in 2011. Frotman is the latest high-level departure from the CFPB since Mick Mulvaney, President Donald...

It has been announced that the New York Times public editor aka ombudsman Margaret Sullivan will be moving over to the Washington Post. So does that mean the Post is now lifting its three year old decree against continuing the post of ombudsman? Nope. Sullivan is going to become a media columnist which makes one wonder if she will be supplanting Erik Wemple who in the same role is confined mainly to the digital edition. However, rather than speculate on Wemple's fate, let us take a Newsbusters trip down Margaret Sullivan memory lane in her role as the Times public...

Retiring EU ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros says he has witnessed the slow erosion of a dominating culture of secrecy among the EU civil services. “[But] this in no way suggests that I am content and satisfied,” the 70-year old Greek national told reporters in Brussels on Monday (27 May). The EU Ombudsman, staffed with 66 people, is tasked to seek a fair outcome in complaints against EU institutions, to encourage transparency and to promote an administrative culture of service. … He said 40-plus years of a culture that had no concept of transparency could not be so easily swept away, even...

On February 12 many NPR stations aired the show “Smiley & West” in which comedian-actor Garrett Morris caused peals of laughter from Tavis Smiley and Cornel West by joking about the small space between “hate Whitey” and “kill Whitey.” West also lectured about how police brutality on the “vanilla side of town” in New York would get condemnations from the White House. NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos predictably told me on Twitter that this wasn’t in his critical purview, since it’s not produced by NPR, but by Public Radio International. But on February 23, Schumacher-Matos devoted a post to charges of...

Former Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, one of the first women to lead a major U.S. newspaper, died in an accident involving an automobile in New Zealand on Saturday, according to her family. She was 68. Howell was traveling in New Zealand on vacation with her husband, C. Peter Magrath, at the time of the accident. Her stepson Nick Coleman said Howell suffered fatal injuries when struck by a vehicle. She lived in Glen Echo.

As I pointed out last August, Clark Hoyt has been a lame excuse for a public editor. His two year term is due up May 13. The question is, will the Times keep the position going? I think not, simply because the focus of the Times is not on long term integrity but simply keeping its head above water.

In her Sunday column this week, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell responds to charges of improper money-making from special-interest groups against two of the newspaper's stars, David Broder and Bob Woodward. The allegations were carried in the current issue of Harper's by Ken Silverstein, the magazine's Washington editor. Both Broder and Woodward recently took buyouts from the paper but remain as contract workers. The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Howell observes: "Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances...

This report is based on an unnamed official within the television news industry. Now that we’re past the completely unconfirmed headline and introduction, let’s examine the actions last Wednesday by most major news outlets including the AP and CBS News. CBS News online website ran the following headline and story excerpts: ~Excerpt~ 20 Bodies Found, Iraq Blast Kills 22 More Beheaded Men Found On Banks Of Tigris, Car Bomb Tears Through Crowded Baghdad Bus Station BAGHDAD, June 28, 2007 (CBS/AP) A parked car bomb exploded in one of Baghdad's busy outdoor bus stations at rush hour Thursday, killing at least...

NEW YORK - The New York Times' ombudsman said the newspaper should review reporter Judith Miller's journalism practices to address "clear issues of trust and credibility" in her role in the CIA leak investigation. Miller's attorney called the newspaper's recent criticism of her "shameless." Times Public Editor Byron Calame also said the paper should consider updating its ethics guidelines on using anonymous sources and quoted publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as saying "there are new limits" on what Miller can do in the future. Calame wrote in a Sunday column that the Times and Miller's Oct. 16 accounts of the reporting...

You're going to love this. This morning, I posted a follow-up item on DemCreditScam, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's dirty trick against Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele. (Send your suggestions for naming the scandal to Hugh Hewitt). I wondered why the NYTimes has failed to print a single article about the scandal, engineered by two of NY Sen. Chuck Schumer's former staffers. Reader Michael V. posed the question to NYTimes ombudsman Byrom Calame (emphasis on LAME). Here's Michael's e-mail: Why did the Times ignore the story about N.Y. Sen. Schumer's aid[e]s illegally obtaining Maryland Lt. Gov (and 2008 probable...

IT'S time to write Chapter 2 of the public editor chronicles at The New York Times. Recently retired after almost 40 years at The Wall Street Journal, I've agreed to become The Times's second public editor - an outsider dedicated to representing readers and serving as a watchdog over the paper's journalistic integrity. In this first column, I hope to provide a sense of who I am and how I intend to tackle the job. The first public editor, Daniel Okrent, boldly established the genuine independence essential to carrying out the job and elegantly dissected many of the major issues...

Re "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did" (May 22): As one of those people to whom The New York Times has become a daily ritual - even in Afghanistan - I say thank you. As should always happen when somebody takes up a new, ill-defined job, you molded it into something valuable and even groundbreaking. And in the end, you signed off with style, class and wisdom. We should all hope to have as much effect on our place of work as you did on yours - and on thousands of loyal readers. (Capt.) JONATHAN J....

Last Wednesday, a lengthy Editors' Note on Page A2 scooped a scoop I had planned on the toxicity of scoops. The note addressed irregularities in a March 31 front-page article by Karen W. Arenson, "Columbia Panel Clears Professors of Anti-Semitism." The Times, the note explained, had been given a one-day jump on other media in exchange for its agreement not to "seek reaction from other interested parties." While acknowledging that this was in violation of Times policy, the note said "editors and the writer did not recall the policy and agreed to delay additional reporting until the document had become...

For ideas that illuminate the rage out there journalists have to go outside their comfort zones, including the "liberal" zones in press thought. They have to find other sources of insight, and listen to explanations that may at first sound alien. Here are a few from the New Criterion... "At a public meeting in Jackson, Miss., last week, a listener to NPR programs on Mississippi Public Broadcasting asked me if I had detected a sense of outrage growing in the country," wrote Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman for NPR (March 8). "If my inbox is anything to go by, I certainly have."...

Is That What He Really Said? By Michael Getler Sunday, September 5, 2004; Page B06 "Cheney Calls Kerry Unfit," read the big, front-page headline over a story in Thursday's Post about attacks on the Democratic challenger at the Republican convention in speeches by Vice President Cheney and Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia. "Unfit" is a powerful, personally damning word; it has become even more explosive in the past several weeks because it is in the title of a best-selling book, "Unfit For Command" by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi. The book is the cornerstone of a nationwide...

When NPR Crosses the Line: What Is Acceptable Good Taste? February 25, 2004 By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin Ombudsman National Public Radio NPR has a reputation for restraint, good taste and for doing the right -- even the politically correct -- thing. But not last week, according to a number of listeners. They objected to two things: One was a satire on All Things Considered. The other was an underwriting message from Wal-Mart. First, the satire. Satirizing "The Passion" The satire that aired on Thursday, Feb. 19 Satire: Focus Group on Gibson's 'Passion' involved Mel Gibson's film The Passion of The...

ESGR Volunteers Help Protect Guardmen's, Reservists' Jobs By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Dec. 23, 2003 — All many reservists and guardsmen want for Christmas is assurance that their civilian jobs will be waiting for them when they redeploy from overseas. Thanks to a federal law – and hundreds of volunteer "elves" who ensure that both employees and their Guard and Reserve employees understand its requirements – Santa is sure to deliver. Herman Garrett, left, receives the 2003 Ombudsman of the Year Award from David James, national chairman of the National Committee for Employer Support of the...

washingtonpost.com Was This Turkey a Story? By Michael Getler Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page B06 The Thanksgiving turkey is long gone, but some Post readers think the paper is still sticking a fork in the White House and President Bush. At issue is a story in Thursday's paper by White House reporter Mike Allen, who accompanied the president on his holiday visit to the troops at Baghdad airport and who provided first-rate coverage of the event. The most widely published image of that visit was an Associated Press photo of a beaming president wearing an Army workout jacket, surrounded by...

The Thanksgiving turkey is long gone, but some Post readers think the paper is still sticking a fork in the White House and President Bush.At issue is a story in Thursday's paper by White House reporter Mike Allen, who accompanied the president on his holiday visit to the troops at Baghdad airport and who provided first-rate coverage of the event. The most widely published image of that visit was an Associated Press photo of a beaming president wearing an Army workout jacket, surrounded by soldiers and carrying a picture-perfect, golden-brown turkey on a platter.But in the Thursday article Allen reveals...

WHEN The New York Times invites you to be the first person charged with publicly evaluating, criticizing and otherwise commenting on the paper's integrity, it's hard to say no: this is a pretty invigorating challenge. It's also hard to say yes: there are easier ways to make friends. Reporters and editors (the thickness of their skin measurable in microns, the length of their memories in elephant years) will resent the public second-guessing. The people who run the newspaper may find themselves wondering how they might get away with firing me before my 18-month term is up. Too many combatants in...