Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander weighed in this week on the paper's coverage of a murdered middle school principal who was gay, but whose sexual orientation was not revealed in Post stories.

"[Brian] Betts, a beloved and acclaimed educator, was found shot to death inside his Silver Spring home on April 15," Alexander reported in a recent column. “Five days later, reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. of the Washington Blade, the weekly serving the gay community, wrote that Betts 'was out as a gay man to a circle of friends and D.C. public school system colleagues.'"

But, Alexander stated, the Post did not reveal it, even when it was found that Betts had used a phone-sex chat hotline and those arrested for his murder had used the hotline to set up a meeting with him.

“When police spokesmen initially confirmed that Betts was gay, they clearly were not signaling a direct link between his sexual orientation and the crime. At that time, The Post was correct in not following the media pack,” Alexander wrote. “But the disclosure of the phone-sex chat shifts the balance to disclosing Betts was gay.”