Toronto Star Public Editor: When you were the editor
Almost 11,700 Toronto Star readers participated in the 2016 You be the Editor challenge.
By Kathy English for the Toronto Star
A record number of readers weighed in on my annual You be the Editor challenge — almost 11,700 in all.
In all of the real-life situations described, the Star’s newsroom had in fact published. A majority of readers were aligned with those newsroom decisions in 11 of the 15 matters in question.
Even when readers disagreed with the newsroom’s judgments, these were often close calls, however. For example, the split on whether to publish an editorial cartoon making light of a Valentine of Jian Ghomeshi squeezing his infamous teddy bear, accompanied by the words “You get me all choked up” was 56% No/44% Yes.
Other “publish” calls were also similarly split, in line with the reality that in the newsroom there are often no clear black-and-white answers, just judgment calls made with good reasoning that stands up to scrutiny.
Here are all of the results of the 2016 You be the Editor feature:
1. Russian diplomat Andrey Karlov was speaking at a public photo exhibit in Ankara, Turkey, when a man, later identified as a police officer, pulled out a gun and shot him dead in front of a crowd. Do you publish the image of the killer and the dead man captured by Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici on Page 1?
Yes: 77%
No: 23%
Continue reading this story on the Toronto Star website, where it was first published.
