Reader Andrew Peth was upset with the assertions made in a June 22 column by Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, a retired surgeon who is a columnist for the opinion pages.

The column, “Myanmar’s minority: The least-wanted people in the world,” focused on a campaign of terror being waged against the small Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, the former Burma.

Dr. Hussain, himself a Muslim and a native of Pakistan, said flatly that “the campaign of terror unleashed by militant Buddhist monks has targeted Rohingya Muslims. The monks have been attacking their villages, killing them and forcing them to flee.”

Mr. Peth wrote to him to say that while many sources indicated that there had indeed been violence against the Rohingya, “I was completely unable to find any source that said Buddhist monks personally participated in attacks on/​murder of Rohingya people.

“Can you provide me with a source of that very specific assertion?” Mr. Peth asked.

Dr. Hussain replied “please Google ‘Monks Killing Rohingya’ and you will see many reports by reputable news agencies.”

Mr. Peth wasn’t satisfied and claimed the columnist had “engaged in irresponsible journalism via exaggeration and misrepresentation” and called for a retraction.

How does your ombudsman see it?

Well, the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle. Neither Mr. Peth nor Dr. Hussain nor I are in Myanmar, a largely closed society where accurate information is often difficult to come by.

But based on numerous reputable reports in outlets including the BBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, Buddhist monks have indeed participated in the violence and murder.

Writing in the New York Times in May, author Kenan Malik said the anti-Muslim campaign has been led by Buddhist monks — and notes that one named Wirathu leads a prominent anti-Muslim organization and calls himself the “Burmese Bin Laden.”

However, from other accounts, it would seem that while monks have participated in the violence, some or most of it came at the hands of violent mobs that were not part of any religious order, though the monks seem to have egged on and joined the mobs.

Your ombudsman thinks no retraction is needed — but he does think Dr. Hussain ought to have qualified his remarks to make it clear that monks were not alone in perpetrating violence — and should have attributed the facts to one or more reliable sources.

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Speaking of physicians … as I have discussed before, The Blade’s policy for many years has been to extend the title “Dr.” to holders of medical and veterinary degrees alone.

Holders of doctorates in other fields have sometimes complained about that. Earlier this month, several expressed anger and dismay that Joseph Shaffer, a psychologist at the University of Toledo who was a pioneer in treating sleep disorders, was only referred to as “Mr. Shaffer” in his obituary on July 23.

Among them was a Massachusetts psychologist, K.L. Laytin, who called me and then wrote me at great length about what he thought was an insult to the man. “The Blade’s policy seems more a bias than a logical decision,” he said. “I cannot see how The Blade justifies downgrading the title of someone who has been known to his students and colleagues as Dr. Shaffer.”

So I asked The Blade’s publisher and editor-in-chief, John Robinson Block, whether he thought it might be time to make an exception for clinical psychologists.

Mr. Block said no, adding, “The current policy is coherent.” He explained that it wasn’t a matter of showing more respect for some professions than others. “We use ‘Dr.’ for medical doctors because the public needs to know if an individual — even a psychiatrist — has basic medical training and could be called on to intervene on a public medical emergency such as a heart attack,” he said.

“We don’t use Dr. as a designation of respect,” but as a label, the publisher and editor-in-chief added, explaining, “Once we start making an exception … we might as well junk the existing policy, which was not of my making, but which I support.”

As far as your ombudsman is concerned, style decisions are up to the newspaper’s owners and editors. There is no fairness issue involved as long as the policy is consistent and consistently applied.

Incidentally, the policy itself was laid down by the current publisher’s father, whom I knew. Paul Block, Jr., was scarcely an anti-intellectual; he was an organic chemist, a Yale graduate, and a PhD graduate who at one time was the world’s leading authority on certain aspects of the thyroid gland. So he indeed had credentials — and the perfect standing to set this rule for what is, after all, his family’s newspaper.

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Several readers complained of what they found to be a partisan double standard when it comes to corrupt state attorneys general.

On Aug. 1, the online edition of The Blade had a story that began, “Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas … has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud ...”

But on Aug. 7, a brief story in The Blade noted Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane had been charged with perjury — but did not mention that she was a Democrat.

“My college education taught me that bias can be shown in many ways, such as these two examples,” one man wrote.

Well, those readers who complained were absolutely right. Not about bias. Both of these were wire service stories, and I don’t believe the editors who were sorting through them late at night were consciously working to downplay Democratic problems.

The wire service writer apparently left the party designation off the Pennsylvania story. But the newspaper needs to be consistent.

Politicians need to be designated by their party, just as baseball players need to be designated by their teams. In recent years, The Blade has tended to endorse more Democrats for national offices on its editorial page.

That’s the newspaper’s right. But the paper also needs to strive to be scrupulously fair in its news pages, and on this occasion, The Blade dropped the ball.

Anyone who has a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/​o The Blade; 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, 43660, or at my Detroit office: 563 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call at 1-888-746-8610; or email me at OMBLADE@aol.com. I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply. Reminder, however: If you don’t leave me an email address or a phone number, I have no way to get in touch with you.

Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade’s ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.

First Published August 16, 2015, 4:00 a.m.