The biggest dilemma with “Correct Me If I’m Wrong,”  the new San Francisco Chronicle podcast of over-the-top complaints from readers, isn’t the question that a Poynter Online article raises: Do readers expect their calls to Chronicle voicemail to be broadcast to the world? There’s no dilemma at all. Readers clearly don’t expect that.

The REAL problem is that the Chronicle is sending a self-defeating message to its staff to laugh at reader complaints. Isn’t that the opposite of everything that we’ve tried to accomplish for the last 10 or 15 years?

Nine years ago, in one of her last ombudsman columns for the Washington Post, Geneva Overholser enumerated why so many readers think we’re arrogant. One of the reasons was the newsroom response to reader complaints. Geneva wrote:

“I’ve passed along substantial comments from thoughtful readers, only to hear: ‘The letter writer is a dope.’ Or, ‘That reader is an idiot, and frankly I’m surprised you don’t think so.’ Or, to a very critical reader comment I used in a column: ‘Whoever that reader is, he or she is wrong, and by letting that venom into the newspaper, you were wrong. And you ought to apologize.’ ”

Imagine if the Chronicle’s podcasts had been available in Geneva’s day: Staff members could tell the whole world that the reader is a dope who will be ridiculed if he deigns to bother us again.

A version of this post appeared on Poynter Online.