We can ill afford to pass up any decent opportunity to hold ourselves accountable, and to help the public understand all that we do to uphold our principles and to get our facts straight. The question, of course, is whether this is a decent opportunity. But I was not there then. It's pointless because it's not going to change anybody's opinion of the media. I think that's dead wrong.
Newspapers have more to gain from news councils than they'll ever lose.
Then we'd have two state news councils, two routes toward success and a greater possibility that councils will spring up elsewhere. In which case, we'd all be better off. Geneva Overholser is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, whose column appears regularly in the Post-Intelligencer. This column first appeared in the February issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.