Reuters has a proud history of factual, unbiased news coverage. In our news articles we let the facts speak for themselves; opinions are clearly sourced to the experts whom we interview.

But we have our own experts as well. And I want to let them increasingly have their voice on Reuters services.

It is vitally important to me and to everything we stand for that news and comment are kept separate. It is also vitally important, however, that we use all forms of journalism available to us to communicate with our audience and engage in a vibrant conversation around ideas.

Recently here on Reuters.com youll have had the chance to read our new world affairs columnist Bernd Debusmann or our global finance columnist Jim Saft with their analyses on current events. Both use facts as their base but then use their many years of reporting experience to deliver an argument an argument I hope youll join via email.

If you read Chinese, you can see how our Chinese financial columnist Wei Gu puts her expertise to work on our Chinese-language pages.

And subscribers to our Brazilian Portuguese-language financial service can read Agela Bittencourt as she dissects that countrys economy.

What these columns, and the ones that will join them, have in common is a mixture of facts expertise and a point of view. They wont engage in screeching name-calling or invective; they will be challenging and controversial. Agree or disagree with them as you like, but please read, be stimulated and join in the debate.

Once again, Reuters staff have died covering the war in Iraq.

When is a story worth a life?

The answer, of course, is never.

And yet, six Reuters deaths later, were still in Iraq, still covering the story.

Reuters Ukrainian cameraman Taras Protsyuk was killed in April 2003. Reuters Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana was killed four months later. Reuters Iraqi freelance cameraman Dhia Najim was killed in November 2004. Reuters Iraqi soundman Waleed Khaled was killed in August 2005. And in July 2007, Reuters Iraqi photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and Reuters driver Saeed Chmagh were killed.

All of the victims were visual journalists and the people who work with them. To get the story they must get close to the action.

To a journalist reporting the action is the entire reason we are in the profession. We tell the story. We tell what happened. We put it in context. We show; we describe; we explain.

Some do it in words, and that can be done from the office, which, in a place like Iraq, can be horrifically dangerous too. Some do it in pictures and video, and that must be done from the front. And that means taking a risk.

Imagine a world where no one took the risks.

Imagine a world where wars happened in secrecy.

Imagine a world where heroism, tragedy, death and life never got reported or were only filtered through official versions.

Imagine a world where you, as a citizen of whatever country you are reading this in, just didnt have the information you needed to make up your mind.

There arent many news organizations left in Iraq. The ones that are there take a terrible calculated risk. We at Reuters, like our colleagues at other major organization, struggle endlessly to make the dangerous safer, to understand the risks and to mitigate the risks. The cause of journalist safety is a vital one.

Foreign staff and Iraqi staff together put nationalities aside, put religion aside and put sectarianism aside to bring the story out day after day. They do it because they believe with every cell of their souls that telling the story truthfully and fully is a vital service and a sacred obligation.

They do it because they are journalists.

Our Reuters staff in Iraq exemplifies this creed. Read their stories. View their pictures. Watch their video. And know that they are there because they believe you need to know what is happening.

Taras, Mazen, Dhia, Waleed, Namir and Saeed. We at Reuters salute you. We salute your many colleagues from other news organizations who also have died. We salute your colleagues in the bureau today, who are striving to tell the story.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

A tribute to Namir’s work has been compiled by his colleagues

Usually as Reuters editor, I care about stories that deal with millions and even billions of dollars. Today, Im writing about a gift of $26.

My job takes me around the world, sometimes interviewing world leaders, sometimes seeing key financial moguls, sometimes visiting Reuters journalists as they do their jobs.

Sometimes my job transports me spiritually as well as intellectually when it takes me to extraordinary projects projects that open my eyes to the potential of this world and the amazing things that can be done with hope, with dreams, and with a few dollars.

Im writing this in Nairobi, Kenya, visiting our Africa headquarters and visiting the expert men and women who write the stories, take the pictures and produce our Africa Journal and Africa Daily television programmes.

As part of my visit, they took me to Kibera East Africas largest slum and one of the most densely packed places in the world, a place where more than 700,000 people live in the space of New Yorks Central Park. Its a place where gangland-style execution murders happen, where glue-sniffing beggars approach wild-eyed, where the stench of sewage and the sight of garbage assault you as you enter.Today, the clinic sees 200 people a day, most for free.

When I visited, mothers carrying coughing babies were lined up waiting for a visit or for medicine: its winter in Kenya now and in the altitude of Nairobi it gets bitter cold. The clinic treats large numbers of people for malaria, typhoid and the complications of HIV/AIDS.

And it all started with that gift of $26. Tabitha used that money to start selling vegetables, ploughing the profits back into a savings plan with other women, finally starting a clinic.

Bigger gifts from foundations including the Reuters Foundation — and other donors followed. The clinic is currently doing a major project with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention. And it is building a new, modern building in the heart of the slum that will bring undreamed of possibilities of treatment to people who need it desperately.

Barcott, whose gift started it all, entered the U.S. Marines after graduating from the University of North Carolina and served in Iraq as an officer.

He founded and heads the charity Carolina for Kibera, a name that echoes both his ties to North Carolina and his feeling for Nairobis slum, where the charity not only supports the clinic but runs a sports programme for 5,000 children, a womens safe space, and a waste management and recycling programme that mobilizes local youth groups.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Photos: REUTERS/Antony Njuguna

Sitting next to British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he attacked the feral beast nature of the media in a speech at Reuters headquarters on Tuesday, I had mixed emotions.

I knew it was a great story a politician who has been a master of managing press relations criticising the institution that has been a key player in his rule but I also felt uncomfortable, weighing up the points he made.

The lines have been blurring in the media between fact and comment and between public lives and private lives. Sometimes those lines blur for the right reasons: questions of character definitely reflect on fitness to rule; facts without context are useless. But sometimes the media crosses over and politicians and the public are right to call us on it.

I love my profession, and am usually hugely proud of it: when we expose a story that otherwise would remain hidden; when we exhibit huge bravery covering war or disaster; when we bring expertise to explaining an important but complex issue.

I sometimes wince at what my profession gets up to, however: when we fall slave to the cult of personality journalism, when we pander to the lowest common denominator of taste, when we are voyeurs instead of guides, when we just plain miss the story.

Ultimately, though, I think the answer does not lie in regulation or legal structures to try to paint lines brighter

Within an organization like Reuters, I think our tradition of unbiased fact-based reporting serves us well. When we push the boundaries, when we experiment with new forms, when we move our journalism up the chain of value to make it ever more useful to our customers, the key is to label clearly what is fact and was is not, to be crystal clear about the source of our facts, and to hold true to the best traditions of our craft.

The final arbiters remain our readers, our clients and our customers thats true of any media organization.

I have the greatest faith in the marketplace of ideas. That marketplace will create the winners and losers.

Sometimes, of course, pure entertainment will win the show of point/counterpoint and the sniggering, prying exposure of celebrity satisfies some human need.

But if you believe, as I do, that real, honest, insightful reporting truly powers the decisions of this world and is necessary for the working of business, government and life then ultimately that kind of reporting, properly done and presented, will win and be given its proper value.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

That’s a distinct possibility for me after chairing a discussion on communities and journalism at the World Editors Forum in Cape Town on Tuesday.

I use blogs and social networking sites like Facebook - but I’m 47 so I’m hardly the future.

The point of the session was to get people thinking about what really lies ahead for journalism in the generation after me - and after that.

It is going to be a new world with much more interacting, communing and socializing between journalists and our audience.

Richard Sambrook, director of Global News at the BBC (and one of my Facebook ‘friends’) is convinced that social media will be central to news organisations in the future.

In particular, in a world of commoditised news, journalists will need to be able to host conversations with their audiences while also playing their traditional roles of newsgathering and providing context and analysis.

Richards most excited about networked journalism the notion that you need to connect with your audience because within it are people who know more about any subject you might cover than your journalists. This holds the promise of driving up standards in journalism.

Rebecca Mackinnon, co-founder of Global Voices an aggregator of blogs from the developing world that is partly sponsored by Reuters thinks that journalists will need to learn how to listen to the public via blogs.

If you spend time in the Egyptian blogosphere reading Egyptian blogs its a bit like spending time in the cafes and living rooms of Cairo finding out what people care about.

Rebecca’s convinced that journalists will find new subjects to cover if they do this.

One glimpse of the future I got was from Didier Pillet, Director of Information at Ouest-France, who believes bloggers are already moving into the heart of news coverage. He speaks for a daily with a circulation of 800,000 that gets something like half its material from so-called village reporters — local bloggers. Reassuringly, he told us that they are not envisaged as substitutes for news journalists.

On a similar theme, Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck (in which Reuters has a stake) pointed out several examples of how U.S. newspaper sites are beginning to find ways of covering new subject areas without using journalists by syndicating content from bloggers.

Let me know your thoughts about how journalists might have to change in this new age of social media. And if you’d like to see an edited video of the session, including a presentation on SecondLife by our very own Adam Pasick, then have a look at the bizcommunity blog.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Writing about yourself is never easy: that’s true for the best diarists as well as the best reporters.When you are part of the story, it is both extremely difficult and absolutely necessary to keep to absolute standards of objectivity and freedom from bias.Reuters reporters and editors have this special burden now, as anyone following this story can guess.

We have always had rules about reporting on Reuters. They say, in part,

“You must take extreme care to avoid any hint of bias when reporting on the Reuters Group, ensuring that reports are factually based. We need some special rules on reporting Reuters as a company, so we are not seen as talking the companys shares up or down.

• As a rule, we do not produce initiative reporting of Reuters.
• Any story about Reuters must be marked ATTENTION EDITOR and seen by a regional specialist editor or deputy before transmission.
• Always seek comment from a company spokesman. One should always be available in London or New York.
• No story about Reuters may contain a quote from an unnamed source”

Because this story is such an important story in the market and in the media sector, Ive told our editors we should report it aggressively the only thing off bounds to them is trying to get information from Reuters officials unofficially. I have allowed an anti-trust lawyer to be quoted anonymously since it was clear the attorney was not speaking from or for Reuters itself.

Stories about Reuters can be especially complicated to report and edit because many Reuters employees including me hold stock or have stock as a regular part of our compensation.

The normal Reuters rules on avoiding conflict of interest apply and the Reuters Code of Conduct says:

• Before you report on a company in which you or your family has any kind of shareholding or other financial interest you must notify the interest to your manager or bureau chief.
• You must not deal in securities of any company, or in any other investment, about which you have reported in the previous month.
• If you are regarded as a specialist in a particular area of business or industry you must notify your manager or bureau chief of any financial interest you may have in that area or industry.

Additionally, journalists are bound by supplementary rules which say, in part:

No inside dealing
Reuters journalists must not engage in or facilitate inside dealing

Avoid conflict of interest
Reuters journalists must not buy or sell, either directly or through nominees or agents, securities about which they have written recently or about which they intend to write in the near future
To avoid loopholes, no time period is specified. The test is whether the editorial activity might continue to have an impact on the securities

No short-term trading
Reuters journalists must not take part in short-term trading of any kind. To this end, Reuters journalists must hold investments for a minimum period of thirty days (except that investments in Reuters shares acquired or disposed of through the various company schemes in place shall be governed by the rules of those schemes). Should a journalist wish to repurchase an investment he or she has just sold, a minimum period of thirty days must pass first. Any exceptions should be for family hardship reasons only and must be notified to and approved by the regional corporate counsel and regional managing editor.

We are putting this disclaimer at the foot of our stories to make the situation clear to all our readers:

(Reporters and editors involved in the writing and editing of this report may own Reuters securities and are bound by the Reuters Code of Conduct, which restricts dealing in securities in companies a journalist is reporting on.)

Reporting on yourself is never easy. But it is sometimes necessary, and it is possible to do well and ethically.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

The Virginia tech shootings have been a defining moment for citizen journalism, as Reuters Community Editor Mark Jones writes about here. They also, once again, raised the question in many peoples minds about how far the media should go in reporting details.

Weve received a number of thoughtful letters on the subject, and heres a sample.

• I am sadden to see Reuters promoting the senseless acts of the Virginia Tech terrorist… Talk about it, talk about why, in hopes of preventing this sort of thing in the future, but do not play his videos or display his photos.
• With the help of the news media, [Cho Seung-Hui] has achieved his place in history… It was NOT necessary to disclose Cho’s video. NBC had a choice.
• Those of us seeking solid news do not need to be greeted with this visual. Please have respect for those who are suffering most and remove these disgusting images with those of just Cho’s face.

As a curious reader and as an editor, when something horrible happens Im drawn to find out as much as possible.

But as a person, I, also, often recoil at the sheer weight of the horror and sometimes the accumulated graphic detail does seem too much. It isnt a line thats easy to draw. Our obligation as journalists is to tell the story completely. Our obligation as people is to avoid going overboard.

I believe that the videos the shooter took of himself and the pictures of him holding the guns help make the story immediate and complete. They provide insight into his mind and his world. But I too found a point where I simply couldnt watch any more; I too found a point where any added detail was superfluous.

It isnt an easy line to draw, but its one that we and you have to wrestle with.

When have we told a complete, fair story? When have we given our readers the facts and the data they need to understand what happened? When is it enough? We debate these questions ourselves, but we find the comments you send fascinating and valuable.

I wanted to say a little about the launch last week of a new Reuters Africa website and to answer some of the points already raised by bloggers and journalists.

Under the Reuters Trust Principles were committed to covering the world in an even-handed fashion. Africa tends not to make the international headlines outside war and other humanitarian disasters but we know, because weve got people on the ground, that stories from Africa are as rich and varied as from any other continent.

The Africa site should be seen as part of our efforts to make sure Africa is covered as well as any other continent.

Columbia Journalism Review, lamenting the reduction of U.S. foreign correspondents, makes the point that the launch comes at a time when Africa is assuming far greater strategic importance to the U.S.

Id go further: whether youre talking about global terrorism, oil prices, the emergence of China, or any of the dozens of other current themes, and whether youre based in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, you wont get a full picture if you leave Africa out.

And you cant cover Africa properly without looking at business and finance angles. Business is one of the defining features of the Africa site theres a lot more than youll find elsewhere, a point picked up by Rebecca Mackinnon at Global Voices.

The use of mapping as a navigational tool intrigued many, including Improprieties and well look at what more can be done to develop this. Mapping enthusiasts may be interested in what the Reuters Foundation AlertNet site has done to link news stories and the notion of humanitarian hotspots to interactive mapping.

Amy Gahran at the journalism site Poynter Online thinks weve missed a trick with not making RSS feeds available (shes right, and well look at that as soon as we can). Amy also thinks that, given the bandwidth issues, a mobile version would be good (ditto) but remember this site is not only Africa for Africans but also Africa for the rest of the world.

The aspect that has most interested commentators is the inclusion of related blogs at the country level. Annansi Chronicles welcomes the boost for African voices. And I hope we can live up to Dan Gilmors view that this is big, big news in journalism.

Dan is an advisor to the Global Voices network which powers the blog postings on the site. Were a Global Voices sponsor and Im looking forward to working closely with them and others to make sure the site delivers the very best in terms of the voices of African writers.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

I went to an interesting session at Chatham House on Monday, where Harvards Professor Joseph Nye spoke on soft power in the information age.

Soft power is a concept Nye has theorized about that deals with ones ability to persuade and attract others to do what you want, rather than coerce them through the hard power of force.

At one point he bemoaned the fact that the news during his stay in London had been dominated by turkeys and not Turkey, referring to the blanket coverage in local media about an outbreak of H5N1 avian flu on a farm in rural England and a relative absence of foreign news.

His point was, I think, that in an information age people need good access to a wide smorgasbord of information from all over in order to make informed decisions. News reports that are dominated only by local stories dont give people the tools they need to operate in a globalizing world.

The balance of news that people want and that news providers give obviously changes by location and by the degree to which people are personally affected by a story. You cant force people to read something they just dont care about.

Without question, the spread of avian flu and its potential mutation is a global story and not just a local one the key is keeping it in context, and making sure that it isnt the only world story you report on!

Like any story, it needs the right balance of expertise, transparency of sourcing, accuracy, balance and insight.

In a world of soft power these are the things that separate journalism and information from propaganda and dogma.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

We’re living in a world where readers expect a conversation and a high degree of interaction with their news providers. I’ve been pleased with the responses we’ve received to the various editors’ blogs we’ve posted. Most have been thoughtful and constructive. Many have posed new questions, and we’ve tried to respond.

As part of this new environment, various people and organizations often start organized email campaigns or coordinated responses to blogs about issues that concern them. Sometimes we get dozens of emails; sometimes hundreds.

Recently, one website — Honest Reporting — suggested its readers send in responses to my posting on photo standards to raise the issue of Reuters 2007 calendar. The calendar became a topic of discussion because one month’s photograph was of a Palestinian militant. That photo stood out as most of the others selected for other months were of dancers, swimmers, performers or farmers.

All the pictures in the calendar, selected by a group outside Editorial. were taken by Reuters photographers as part of the extensive and balanced file of photographs we send to subscribers around the world and publish on the Web.

The many comments we have received about the selection will certainly be taken into account the next time any company committee puts together a selection of images for a calendar or other purposes.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief