During the first three years I was ombudsman, the subject that was most often complained about was the coverage of the Israeli and Palestinian situation. We especially heard very much about the use of the T-word--terrorist. Are these people terrorists or militants or...? There's no easy answer to your question.
For an ombudsman, the main task is to make sure that each of the reports is accurate. If what's said by the journalist is accurate, well, okay--that's fine. The other thing is whether it's impartial. I think we can see if someone is biased, but it's a question many times of the integrity of the journalist. So you have to watch, and you have to take a look at many reports. Most of the time the management, since they have the right to answer first, look at many reports.
One of the things is that there are complaints about reports on newscasts. These are short reports, and most of the time they talk about only what has happened within the last 24 hours. So if you didn't watch the report the day before, or the day before that, and when management answers those questions about
biased reports on the Israeli-Palestinian issue or the conflict in the Middle East... Whenever anyone looks at series of reports, they ultimately have an opinion on the degree of partiality or impartiality of a particular story. That's how it works. There are never any easy answers, because quite often, people who complain have an opinion to start with, and we won't necessarily be able to convince them that the story was
accurate and fair. So there's no easy answer to that kind of question.