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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