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Terry Leonard, Stars and Stripes editorial director, responds to the ombudsman column:

Stars and Stripes’ investigation of the U.S. military’s program to compile profiles of reporters and attempt to steer their coverage of the war in Afghanistan was consistently even-handed, accurate and balanced. The stories revealed numerous new details about the program, including the identity of the contractor running it, the contents of the profiles and the ways in which military officials were using the profiles to deny embeds to disfavored reporters. Journalists, press freedom groups and national newspapers reacted to the Stars and Stripes stories by expressing outrage over the military’s practice. And within a week of the first Stars and Stripes story, U.S. Forces Afghanistan announced it was canceling the profiling contract. It is also true that a National Public Radio program mentioned the existence of the profiling program two weeks before publication of the first Stars and Stripes story, and we could have taken note of that fact.

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