Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

This week brought more distressing news for journalists, as a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found the U.S. public more critical than ever of the accuracy and independence of the media.

Only 29 percent of Americans believe that news organisations generally get the facts straight, the survey found, the lowest level in the survey’s near quarter-century history.

It gets worse:

–Just 26 percent said the media are careful that reporting is not politically biased.
–Only 20 percent believe news organisations are independent of powerful people and organisations.
–Barely a fifth believe the media are willing to admit mistakes.

And news organisations have been able to do what politicians have failed at: creating consensus across party lines. Now solid majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents all believe that stories are often inaccurate and tend to favor one side.

It’s been a long road down. Back in 1985, in the first survey on media performance cited by Pew, 55 percent said news outlets get the facts straight and only 45 percent said the press was politically biased. Now 60 percent see political bias and only 18 percent say the media deal fairly with all sides of political and social issues.

What are we to do?

In the face of criticism, there’s sometimes a tendency to take shelter, keep one’s head down and hope the critics go away. But they won’t go away. And judging by the passionate and sometimes vitriolic criticisms I see in our comment sections, there are significant numbers of readers who will never believe reporters can put aside personal viewpoints and report a story accurately and fairly. You only have to look at discussions of coverage in the Middle East to see that.

The proper response, I believe, can be summed up in two words: More transparency.

That’s why we decided to make freely available to the public the guidelines our journalists live by when we published our Handbook of Journalism–and asked for feedback on it. That’s why I’m doing this job. That’s why we’re aggressive and open about correcting our mistakes. That’s why, in this blog and others, we welcome comments and debate on our work and issues in the news.

Reuters Editor in Chief David Schlesinger put it well in a recent speech, when he described journalism, at its best, as “a mirror, exposing back to society a true and brutally honest picture of what is going on.”

“When we fail at that,” he said, “when our picture is not clear or is at all distorted, we deserve to be criticised.”

At the risk of violating metaphor-overload rules, I invite you to take advantage of the windows we’re opening into our world–our Handbook of Journalism and our blogs–to tell us when you see a distorted picture or when the view is foggy. Or when it’s clear and distinct.

Judging by the dim view of the media revealed in the Pew survey, we can’t open the windows too wide or too soon.

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

The first entry is abattoir (not abbatoir); the last is ZULU (a term used by Western military forces to mean GMT).

In between are 2,211 additional entries in the A-to-Z general style guide, part of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, which we are now making available online. Also included in the handbook are sections on standards and values; a guide to operations; a sports style guide and a section of specialised guidance on such issues as personal investments by journalists, dealing with threats and complaints and reporting information found on the internet.

The handbook is the guidance Reuters journalists live by — and we’re proud of it. Until now, it hasn’t been freely available to the public. In the early 1990s, a printed handbook was published and in 2006 the Reuters Foundation published a relatively short PDF online that gave some basic guidance to reporters. But it’s only now that we’re putting the full handbook online.

We’ve decided to make the handbook available to everyone for a number of reasons. Among them:

• Transparency: At a time when trust is an endangered commodity in the financial and media worlds, it’s important that news consumers see the guidelines our journalists follow.
• Service: As we’ve seen over the past decade, the barriers to publishing have dropped so that anyone with an idea and a computer can be a publisher. But it’s also become clear that publishers have a varying standard of truth, fairness and style. Our handbook is a good place for budding journalists to begin.
• Geography: Reuters serves a global audience and the handbook recognises the cultural and political differences that our journalists face in reporting for the world. This is a handbook not just for English-language journalists in the United Kingdom or the United States, but for wherever English is used.

Many entries deal with words that are sometimes confused or misused. Turning randomly to the “H” section, we learn the difference between hyperthermia and hypothermia (The latter means “Too cold. Think that o rhymes with low” while the former means “Too hot. Think of ‘er’ as in very.”); Haarlem and Harlem (the latter is in New York City, the former in the Netherlands); hangar and hanger (the latter is for clothes, the former a shelter for aircraft); and hale and hail (the former means “free from disease, or to pull or haul by force.” The latter “is to salute or call out, or an ice shower”).

We take a global approach to the spelling of many words. Often, it’s the United States against the world. For instance, our preferred style is “artefact,” except in the U.S., where it’s artifact. Same goes for axe and axeing — our standards for most of the world — which become ax and axing in the U.S. There’s also “backwards,” which loses its “s” in American stories, and “leukaemia,” which loses that first “a” in the U.S. There’s plenty more: tyre and tire, titbit and tidbit, and defence and defense.

In the world of diplomacy, economics and academe, the G3 is Germany, Japan and the U.S.; the G5 extends membership to France and the U.K.; G7 grows the club to Canada and Italy; make it G8 with Russia; G10 adds Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. As for the G24, G30 and G77, you’ll have to look for yourself (we’ve got entries for them, too).

There are slang words to avoid (posh — though one former Spice Girl might object) and a number of common misspellings (Viet Cong, not Vietcong; ventricle, not ventrical; machinegun, not machine gun; and ketchup, not catchup or catsup).

The sports section of the handbook offers a list of sports cliches to avoid (hard fought, made history, veteran, bounce back, and icon), the difference between a field and a pitch (the former’s where American football and baseball are played), and an explanation of delight as a transitive verb that needs an object (”Marat Safin delighted Russian fans with a neat chip…not Marat Safin delighted with a chip.”). Words like disaster and tragedy shouldn’t be used in sports stories, as this devalues the significance of these words (”Losing a football match is not a disaster. A stand falling down and crushing a fan is”).

When language implies a value judgment, we must use words very carefully (cult, for instance: One person’s cult is another’s religion). The entry for “good, bad” advises: “For financial and commodity markets good news and bad news depends on who you are and what your position is in the market. Avoid them.”

One of the most controversial entries is that of “terrorism.” The entry reads, in part:

“We may refer without attribution to terrorism and counter-terrorism in general but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor do we use the adjective word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events. … Report the subjects of news stories objectively, their actions, identity and background. Aim for a dispassionate use of language so that individuals, organisations and governments can make their own judgment on the basis of facts. Seek to use more specific terms like “bomber” or “bombing”, “hijacker” or “hijacking”, “attacker” or “attacks”, “gunman” or “gunmen” etc.”

This policy has been passionately debated inside and outside Reuters. As  the handbook says, “we aim for dispassionate language” so that our customers can “make their own judgment on the basis of facts.”

Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger puts it this way:

“Over the years we have been criticised for this policy on numerous occasions, when people or governments wanted us to label an incident ourselves rather than quote their views. Criticism of our policy was especially fierce when the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Reuters made the decision not to describe the attackers as terrorists, because we thought a label would not add to our vivid description of the thousands of deaths and the destruction of the iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center. In the years since, as the world has witnessed numerous other attacks, we’ve chosen to continue that policy of sticking with the facts and letting our readers make up their own minds based on our reporting and the evidence we present them.”

It’s important to point out that the handbook is a living document, one that preserves rules that have guided Reuters journalists through a century and half but also one that may change when the times change.  It’s also important to note that the handbook is produced by humans who aren’t infallible — and it’s used by humans who aren’t infallible, so sometimes we make mistakes. I’m sure you’ll let us know when we do, but we’re usually harder on ourselves than anyone else is.

I hope you’ll find the handbook useful, whether you’re a journalist, a student, a teacher or an engaged reader. And we welcome your comments and suggestions.

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

Are we too connected?

In recent days and weeks I’ve been wondering if our mobile phones, Blackberries, text messaging and constant access to email and social media have brought us too close together for our own good.

Or maybe the quality of our connected life is only as good as the information we share.

At this point, social media and microblogging phenomena like Facebook and Twitter focus on short answers to such generic questions as, “What are you doing?”

We hear from network and cable television anchors who tell us what they’re having for lunch (often a quick sandwich in the company cafeteria because they are, well, really busy). Or from usually cynical White House journalists who can’t resist Tweeting which B-list celebrity they saw at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Here are a few actual Tweets from the so-called nerd prom:

• “Just spend quality time with ricky schroeder #nerdprom”.
• “post #nerdprom sightings. demi/ashton, james franco, owen wilson, eric holder, mayor fente, d axelrod, christopher hitchens, dana delaney”. (This one’s fitting since Ashton Kutcher is the world’s most followed Twitterer).
• “Just got picture with Dule Hill.”

Given the quality of the material, it’s little wonder that a Nielsen study found that Twitter retained only 40 percent of its new members after a month of use. And that was after Oprah started sharing her 140-character thoughts. Before that it was 30 percent.

But could it be that this “me, me, me” quality of Facebook and Twitter is just an early evolutionary stage of something smarter and more useful? There are some encouraging signs — and that’s a good thing, because we’re becoming ever more connected.

How connected are we?

• Facebook has more than 200 million active users and more than 100 million log on at least once a day. More than 3.5 billion minutes a day are spent on Facebook and more than 20 million users update their statuses at least once a day.
• A Nielsen survey found that American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages a month in the last quarter of 2008, an astonishing 80 messages a day. That’s more than double the previous year’s figures and works out to more than three messages an hour — if they never sleep or go to class.

How connected are we going to be?

• Delta Airlines reported that more than 300 of its aircraft will be equipped with wi-fi this year, enabling email users to stay connected — or shackled — to their accounts even seven miles above the earth. Other airlines are closely watching Delta’s experience.

Media outlets and other institutions are finding ways to take advantage of this connectivity, moving beyond gossip and gab.

• ProPublica recently introduced Change Tracker, an application that monitors government websites and sends out notices of changes as they are posted via a Twitter feed. Some of the changes are a bit obscure — “Biography of Millard Fillmore [rare] changed on 5/27″ — but others track changes to the website following the spending of economic stimulus money.
• The Vatican has added an iPhone app to reach out to young, connected people, according to Online Media Daily. Young people “are looking to a different media culture, and this is our effort to ensure that the Church is present in that communications culture,” said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s Social Communications department.
• At Reuters, we’re using Reuters Messenger to build chat rooms in which our journalists can expand their conversation with the marketplace through informal, dynamic interactions with a group of engaged financial news clients on our terminals.

We’re also using Twitter in some intriguing ways:

• Specialist journalists use it to share articles and build up a following.
• Online editorial staff and bloggers use Twitter to distribute news and solicit reader comment.
• Journalists are using Twitter during live events like Davos (Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger used it to break news there earlier this year) and to solicit questions for newsmaker interviews.

There are huge implications for those of us in the news media as we try to reach an increasingly fragmented and distracted audience awash in information, some of it wanted and much of it not.

And journalists who work and live in the digital world (and that’s just about all of us now) will find that there is little or no difference between our professional and private personae in the wide-open world of social media. A visit to my Facebook page, for example, would reveal to my friends that I have a strong interest in horse racing; an affection for the New York Yankees (an obsession, my wife would argue); and take great pleasure in the words and music of Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Townes Van Zandt. What you won’t find is an indication of my politics or religion.

Here at Reuters, we are developing guidelines for how our journalists interact with social media.

• If Reuters journalists want to use Twitter or social media as part of their professional role they should seek the permission of their manager.
• If Reuters journalists use Twitter professionally they should use the word “Reuters” in the name of their streams or somewhere else on the page.
• The Trust Principles apply to Twitter and social media — they should do nothing that compromises them.
• Microblogging and use of social media tend to blur the distinction between professional and personal lives: When using Twitter or social media in a professional capacity our journalists should aim to be personable but not to include irrelevant material about their personal lives.

In an email to the editorial staff, Editor-in-Chief Schlesinger told Reuters journalists, “whether we like it or not, our online identities are inextricably linked with our workplace identities….Things we do online could very easily taint our journalistic activity. If one of us self-identifies as ‘very liberal’ politically, it may well be the truth, but would advertising it simply feed the myth that journalists in general have a liberal bias?”

“The easiest rule,” Schlesinger cautioned, “is to stop, think and imagine: How would you feel and how would you react if someone made your Facebook page or blog or online comment a story? Could you defend your objectivity? Could Reuters defend having you on the beat you’re on? Could your reputation, and ours, survive someone making an issue of it?”

I’m sure neither Schlesinger nor I have had the last word on the relationship of journalism and social media, nor on whether we’re all too connected. What we need to pay attention to is the quality of those connections.

What do you think about how journalists are and should be using social media and microblogging? Let us know here — and don’t feel like you have to keep your thoughts to 140 characters.

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

There’s nothing like a disease outbreak to highlight the value of the media in alerting and informing the public in the face of an emergency.

There’s also nothing like it to bring out some of our more excessive behavior, essentially shouting “Run for your lives! (but, whatever you do, stay tuned, keep reading the website and don’t forget to buy the paper!).”

An outbreak of a form of influenza, which was known as swine flu before the World Health Organization changed the name, has killed scores in Mexico and infected others in the United States, Canada, Europe and New Zealand. It’s already having an effect on markets and travel plans, in addition to the obvious impact on public health.

The impact on markets could become more significant in time, but the impact on the media was practically immediate.

Cable television programmers went into crisis mode and a look at newspaper front pages and website home pages around the world showed a range of responses, from the almost hysterical to the concerned and more measured.

• In the New York Daily News: “SWINE FLU SPREADS!” (though it was played below a sports story on the New York Yankees losing to the Boston Red Sox).
• In the New York Post: “HOG WILD!” (also playing second to the Yankees’ humiliation, but illustrated with a pig sucking on a thermometer).
• In The Japan Times (using a Reuters story): “Swine flu in Mexico sparks global panic”
• In the South China Morning Post (which certainly has experience in covering bird flu and SARS): “Asia on high alert for swine flu as airports step up checks.”
• In The Guardian: “Swine flu: call for global action as outbreak spreads.”
• In the Toronto Sun: “CALM URGED AS FLU FEARS GROW.”

Later Monday, after the European Union health commissioner advised Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico, The New York Times led its website with “Europe Warned on U.S. Travel,” with a deck reflecting transatlantic disagreement, “Flu Advisory Unwarranted, C.D.C. Says.”

The BBC website focused on the confirmation of flu cases in the UK, with extensive Q&A’s on the origins of the disease and how it spreads and contributions from readers who were dealing with disease (some of them medical professionals in Mexico).

Big, bad-news stories can mean surges in audiences for media outlets and they certainly raise the adrenalin level of editors and reporters. They offer the temptation to go to excess, but they also offer the opportunity for us be of priceless service to our customers, clients and readers.

The question for me is how we in the media make sure we report accurately and informatively on the story and its impact on the markets and consumers’ lives without minimizing and without sensationalizing it.

“This is the type of story where our goal to stay factual and keep perspective is essential to uphold,” says Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger. “Our role is neither to trivialize nor to hype or scaremonger, but to describe accurately what is happening and put its implications in context.”

Reuters has focused a great deal of resources—rightly, given our customers and audience—on the implications for the markets and the impact on the global economic downturn.

On Monday afternoon, Reuters.com was leading with “Will global recovery catch the flu?” atop a package of stories on possible market scenarios, the EU travel warning and factboxes on health precautions and industries being affected. One story noted, not surprisingly, that travel and tourism stocks were in turmoil.

Reuters.com also featured a special coverage page with the latest news, accompanied by a sober presentation of “Swine Flu Facts.” There’s even an invitation to receive updates on Twitter. Call me a skeptic on Twitter, but 140 characters won’t do much to add context to the story. Still, no one ever said Twitter was about context and at least you can follow developments, whether or not you’re near a computer.

My Reuters colleagues—especially the ones working bravely and tirelessly in Mexico—are succeeding in upholding the goal of staying factual and keeping events in perspective. It’s our mission to provide the information and insight our audience and customers need to make intelligent decisions about their investments and their lives. As shown by the World Health Organization’s decision Monday to raise the pandemic alert to Level 4, and later to Level 5, there’s plenty of drama to report without adding to it.

The flu story is still in its early stages and it remains to be seen if this becomes one of the biggest stories of our time. Whatever happens, it won’t hurt us all to take a deep breath now.

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

This is the time of year when I’m reminded of how proud I am to work for Reuters News. So permit me to put criticism on hold for a moment and write a column of praise.

The 2008 Journalists of the Year awards were presented Thursday night at a ceremony at Thomson Reuters headquarters in New York. The 10 awards, presented by Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger, honored individuals and teams responsible for the top journalism produced last year by Reuters News.

Looking at the winners, I’m not only proud but humbled. The expertise, the tenacity, the speed and in some cases the sheer bravery of these journalists is inspiring.

Take Goran Tomasevic, awarded Photo of the Year for his stunning image of Marine Sergeant William Olas Bee taking cover from Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. You can almost hear the bullets pinging into the foxhole. Goran is modest, though: “If I hadn’t already been pointing the camera at the Marine when the bullet hit the wall, there is no way I would have been able to react quickly enough to take those pictures.”

Or Emmanuel Braun, honored as Video Journalist of the Year for his work in Africa. He was the only agency TV crew to get into the Central African Republic, a near-forgotten crisis zone where conflict between rebels and the government has displaced tens of thousands. And when British mercenary Simon Mann went on trial in Equatorial Guinea, Emmanuel bravely carried on shooting subversively with a mini camera after his main camera was rendered useless by Guinean soldiers and he had been repeatedly threatened and told not to continue his coverage.

Tenacity doesn’t just happen in the world’s war zones, either. Patrick Rucker won the Scoop of the Year award for his July 11 report that the Fed would lend emergency funds to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Fed initially denied the story after markets closed that day, something competitors jumped on, even labeling our work erroneous. But Patrick’s reporting was rock-solid and, barely 48 hours later, his scoop was 100-percent confirmed.

I’m humbled by the expertise and solid reporting that Eadie Chen brought to her coverage of macroeconomic issues from Beijing. She was named Reporter of the Year for her efforts and was simply unparalleled in breaking economic stories in one of the toughest countries of the world on which to report. One of her secrets: Patiently and diligently cultivating contacts.

China was also the setting of the Story of the Year, the Reuters News team’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics. The Beijing Games was one of the most important since the Olympics began, as China cemented its importance on the world stage with a dazzling display of showmanship and organization.

Mike Dolan, who was named Editor of the Year, showed that a tumultuous year in the markets brings out the best in our journalists. Mike, the financial markets editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, delivered a balanced, astute and important news file that was light on hyperbole while still capturing drama. He’s the sort of smart, dedicated editor who helps make Reuters News indispensable to our clients.

Reuters News proved indispensable to clients in covering another war zone: Georgia. The Reuters Television team covering the war won the Video Story of the Year award. The team of more than a dozen dominated coverage of the conflict from the very beginning.

The Georgia War also produced another winner, Gleb Garanich, who was named Photo Journalist of the Year, for his haunting and dramatic photographs, which captured the scale of the conflict and the devastating toll it took on the thousands of people killed, maimed or rendered homeless. Gleb’s photos appeared on the front pages of hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world.

In a year of so many big stories, the historic U.S. presidential election was surely one of the most far-reaching. Across the U.S., Reuters journalists seized the opportunity to showcase their multimedia storytelling skills in covering the campaign. They produced a vibrant and compelling package of content that won huge online play and told a story in words, photos, videos and blogs in a heartening illustration of our ongoing push for innovation. For their work, the members of the elections team won the Multimedia Storytelling of the Year award.

A new award this year was the Editor’s Choice, chosen by Schlesinger. He honored Mike Stepanovich, the recently named managing editor of Reuters Project Insider, our next-generation, multimedia information service for financial professionals, which was recently unveiled and will launch later this year. Again, this was a real team effort, but Mike’s tenacity was crucial to making it happen. He was a tireless champion from the time Insider was little more than a PowerPoint presentation.

There will be times when I will write about mistakes we’ve made and address issues with our coverage, as I’ve done in the past. But this is not one of those times.

So congratulations, not only to these winners, but also to the other nominees, and to the many other winners in their respective coverage areas. Just looking at the list of winners and examples of their work reminds me why I’m so excited to come to work every morning.

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.

Let’s say it up front: Almost all of you will find something in this column to take issue with.

That’s because the subject is the conflict in Gaza and perceptions of bias in reporting on it. News consumers detect media bias on any number of subjects, but there is nothing like the continuing Mideast conflict to bring out the passions of partisans on all sides.

Here’s a small sample of some of the more restrained comments that have come in to the Reuters reader feedback line:

–“It seems like the whole world wants to condemn Israel for the war/actions it’s taking. Sorry Reuters but for me, I can see right through your pro Palestinian slant. Why don’t you investigate how a U.N. Camp was used as a staging area for Hamas rockets? …”

–“Your pro Israel reporting from Gaza makes one thing perfectly clear. Israel has some control over Reuters. You are in their pocket. Why else would you choose to slant information?”

­­–“Why does Reuters insist on letting someone such as Nidal al-Mughrabi cover the war on Gaza? His reporting is completely biased and filled with inflammatory rhetoric. Doesn’t Reuters have a reporter that understands both sides of the issue and that can JUST REPORT THE NEWS!! I consider such reporting on your part as an insult to my intelligence. Why must you participate in antisemitic propaganda?”

–“Your pro-Israel news coverage of Gaza is shockingly evil. Shame on you! I’ll get the real news elsewhere.”

All feedback is taken very seriously by the editorial leadership.

“A story as important to so many people globally always is scrutinised and criticised,” says Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger. “I take all the comments seriously, because getting it right and giving a true picture of the situation is fundamental to our mission and to the kind of news service I want to run.”

Reuters is not alone in catching flak on coverage. And we’re not alone in examining that coverage. The BBC and The New York Times have both looked at their coverage, concluding that, generally, it has been fair. But both organizations noted the difficulties of covering the conflict in Gaza, as does Reuters Jerusalem bureau chief Alastair Macdonald.

For the past two years, he says, it has been virtually impossible for Reuters staff in Gaza to leave the territory for training, rest or recuperation, as they are routinely denied exit permits by the Israeli army. The army has also prevented Reuters from sending Arabic-speaking staff based in Jerusalem or the West Bank to Gaza and more recently has banned foreign journalists from Gaza entirely. This means Reuters has been unable to send reinforcements or replacements to the Gaza bureau since the Israeli offensive began on Dec. 27. On Thursday, Reuters and other media were forced to evacuate their offices after an apparent Israeli rocket strike on the Gaza building that houses the bureau.

“Unlike many media organizations who complain that ‘there are no journalists in Gaza,’” says Macdonald, “we are very fortunate to have a team of up to 20 people working for us, led by professional journalists of long standing. Their resources, however, are greatly stretched and, aside from persistent fears for the safety of our colleagues and their families, we work in permanent anxiety that overworked equipment will fail and we will be unable to replace it.”

Within Gaza, says Macdonald, senior Hamas officials have generally accepted Reuters’ right to report independently.

“Hamas officials have largely disappeared from view since the offensive began, so they have not been in a position to restrict our reporting, even if they wanted to,” he says. Since Hamas took over, Reuters journalists “have occasionally faced problems with low-level Hamas police and other representatives who try to prevent us filming certain types of event. Such people are particularly reluctant that we should cover events that they see as evidence of challenges to their authority.”

However, Macdonald says: “We have had frank and open meetings with senior Hamas leaders when we have had concerns and are generally satisfied … We generally feel that (they) respect our independence and give us the freedom to do our jobs. We have reported incidents of official repression, including torture … and quoted people making serious allegations against the authorities.”

The Reuters team on the ground in the region is a mixture of Israelis, Palestinians and other nationalities. Reuters Politics & General News Editor Sean Maguire says most have worked for Reuters for many years. “All of them are well-versed in the need to be scrupulous in our use of language, attentive to our rules on rigorous sourcing and aware of our requirement to produce a balanced news file,” he says.

But in a story with so many different datelines, it’s up to the editing desk to pull the threads together, see though the “fog of war” and ensure that the coverage has balance and appropriate context. This team in London has decades of experience and includes several editors who have worked in the Middle East on assignment or have reinforced the Jerusalem bureau. Maguire and I agree that the editors are acutely aware of both the realities on the ground and the complex history of the region.

Several readers have written to say they see bias in Reuters coverage because they have seen stories, like this one, that don’t tell them directly why Israel launched its offensive on Dec. 27, after Hamas militants ended a six-month truce and started firing more rockets into southern Israel. A search of our stories on the Gaza conflict shows that, while there have been stories that have lacked that context, most have included it or similar explanations of the roots of the conflict.

“We are a real-time news service so we are continually tweaking and improving the news file, hour by hour,” Maguire says. “Some stories with new developments have to be moved very quickly to ensure our customers have the latest information. To do so they need to be short, so they will not contain all the background. However, such stories are quickly updated and lengthened to include the appropriate context.”

Other readers have suggested that stories focusing on the conditions in Gaza reflect a bias against Israel and call for more coverage of the hardships Israelis are suffering in the face of continuing rocket attacks. The focus of the coverage has certainly been within Gaza, because that’s where the story—and the bulk of casualties and destruction—has been.

Still, Reuters has made strong efforts to document the situation in Israel. Macdonald wrote movinglyabout how the shadows of history hang over Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz within sight of the smoke of the Gaza conflict. And Douglas Hamilton reportedon the strong resolve of residents of Sderot, a southern Israeli town that has borne the brunt of Hamas rocket attacks. The townspeople’s advice to the Israeli forces in Gaza: Keep it up. This coverage, in turn, has drawn criticism that it too readily accepts an Israeli view of the history of the region.

Even user-generated content is not immune to charges of bias. Reuters Your View, which solicits photographs from Reuters.com users, was accused of imbalance in publishing pictures of anti-Israel demonstrations, but none from the other side. In the Jan. 2 showcase of Your View pictures there were 10 images of anti-Israel protests from six locations and seven different photographers. No pro-Israel or anti-Hamas pictures were received that week. On Jan. 9, there were images of seven anti-Israel protests from four locations and six photographers. There was one image of a rocket attack on Israel, selected from three pictures that were sent. Again, no pro-Israel demonstration images were received that week, reports Leah Eichler, editor of the online newsroom.

Other readers have suggested that journalist Nidal al-Mughrabi’s first-person accounts from within Gaza, such as this onein which he describes the horrified reactions of his children during an Israeli raid, disqualify him from reporting on the conflict. Some readers have suggested that it’s impossible for a journalist to set aside his feelings and report objectively. However, I think a close reading of the article shows that while al-Mughrabi’s first reaction was to make sure his family was safe, he quickly set about the journalist’s work of filing a complete, accurate report of what was going on. “That is what you would expect from a seasoned and responsible reporter of Nidal’s high caliber,” says Maguire.

“I think first-person accounts bring to life the drama and the horror of this conflict,” says Maguire. “Journalists are human beings as well, and it is honest of our reporter Nidal to acknowledge his concern as a parent and the fear of his children when they found themselves under bombardment.”

Indeed, all journalists are called on almost daily to set aside their personal feelings or politics as we objectively cover wars, elections and other stories. Some partisans will never believe it’s possible for journalists to do that. Thankfully, I see it happen every day.

Editor-in-Chief Schlesinger puts it this way:

“Reuters News has journalists from 80 different nationalities working around the world, sometimes in their homes and often in other places. There are certainly times when events affect them and their families personally. But our professional ethics and our company’s Trust Principles mean they try their utmost to put their personal feelings aside in the interest of telling the story truthfully and without bias. As an organisation we have our standards and editing procedures in place to safeguard our report. As editor-in-chief, I take my responsibility for maintaining our standards extremely seriously, and will not tolerate willful breaches. ”

So—has Reuters News given people reason to believe we might be biased against Israel? Perhaps, if they believe a journalist can never separate his reporting of what he sees from what he may feel. And, yes, there have been stories—not many, but some—that have lacked context and have seemed imbalanced. We need to be more vigilant in making sure that all our stories carry appropriate context, as we can’t assume that every reader has read every one of our stories and thus can see our overall lack of bias.

And what seems to be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli reporting to readers on one continent may not raise any eyebrows on another. It’s also fair to say that articles from different news organizations have differences in tone. That’s good. Who would want one big, bland news source for the world? Reuters News is produced for a global audience and there are bound to be different reactions in the United States, Europe and other regions.

But has there been systematic bias against either side? No. I believe Reuters journalists–-the text, photo and video journalists on the ground and the editors who pull it all together– have, by and large, produced journalism that is fair and as complete as possible under the most difficult circumstances. Can we do better? Surely. Will we satisfy the partisans on both sides? Probably not.

I recently visited one of the most frightening sites on the Web—the place where I look at my shrinking retirement account.

As I calculated the investment loss since the steep decline in the markets began, and particularly since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September, some questions arose (in addition to: Will I ever be able to retire?).

--Did we in the media do our job in reporting on the run-up to the crisis?

--Now that an “official” recession has been declared in the U.S. and the depth of the crisis is becoming clearer around the world, are we in the media keeping things in perspective? Should we even be using words like “crisis” or “meltdown?”

On the first question, I can’t help thinking of Claude Rains’ “Casablanca” character Captain Renault, who was “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on” in Rick’s club. In hindsight, given the current state of the financial markets, wasn’t it obvious a problem was brewing?

Not necessarily. And it probably wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone reading online or print coverage or watching television news in the United States.

A look at a study by the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates that, in the United States, coverage of the economy was pretty much drowned out by coverage of the presidential election—at least until the two stories converged in mid-September. Indeed, as the Pew material shows, in the month preceding the week of Sept. 15, which saw the Lehman bankruptcy, the Merrill Lynch sale, the AIG bailout and large drops in share prices, the proportion of the news hole devoted to the economy reached a low for the year, filling only 4.8 percent of the time on television and radio and space in the print and online media. Since then, that focus has shifted, as the presidential campaign narrative became, again, “it’s the economy, stupid,” and as the presidential transition has focused on U.S. economic problems.

Reuters News Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger is skeptical that financial journalists could have done much more to predict the depth of the crisis.

“Journalists do best when reporting what's happening and giving the news context and analysis,” he said. “We also do well when we look backwards and discuss past events from the perspective of the present. We do least well when we prognosticate. While our reporting and commentary did discuss potential weak points in the economy, we did not -- and nor frankly could we -- accurately predict the calamitous events of this year.”

Schlesinger worries, though, that there was a certain inevitability to the crisis and that the media played a role.

“I do worry about the narrative lines of reporting that contributed to the crisis,” he said. “To take just one example, much of the crisis was caused by banks taking on excess risks in the pursuit of higher profits. Yet had a major bank president stepped back from that fray and declined to participate, the ‘grammar’ of our results reporting would surely have compared that bank's results negatively against expectations and against its peers.

“That brave bank president would surely have lost at least his bonus and probably his job. The very fear of that kind of negative comparison helped spur things on -- as Citibank's ex-CEO Charles Prince said (while still in his job), ‘As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.’

“We in the media help play that music, probably exacerbating the highs on the way up and the lows on the way down.”

So did our reporting help change the tune that was being played? Did it raise questions about the factors that contributed to the crisis, including complex financial instruments, subprime mortgage lending and excessive risk?

To fully answer that would require a deeper analysis than we have room for in this space, but there is evidence that questioning notes were sounded.

As early as Aug. 18, 2003, a Reuters story quoted Fed governor Edward Gramlich citing the dangers of “predatory lending” in extending subprime credit. By 2006, the pace had accelerated. A Factiva search of Reuters News found 128 stories that mentioned the phrase “subprime mortgage” that year, including a number in which analysts predicted a deterioration in credit quality. The crescendo came in 2007, when there were more than 10,000 stories that referenced subprime mortgages and when Reuters.com built a special section to house material on the issue. That section developed into the current Crisis in Credit and Housing Market sections.

Still, the overall “music” was loud and infectious and it’s easy to understand why so many couldn’t stay off the dance floor.

Now that the crisis is here, some are accusing the media of deepening the problems. Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, a U.K. employers group and a former editor of the Financial Times, said “careless headlines or injudicious reporting risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies of a very serious nature.” He urged journalists to be especially vigilant in their fact-checking and called on the press to avoid such words as “panic,” “fear” and “chaos.”

He also suggested that journalists should cut bankers, regulators and politicians a little slack, since “precious few journalists gave any hint at all of what was about to come.”

The FT’s Lex column (Note: subscription required) accused Lambert of shooting the messenger and lamented that some would “seek to clamp down on the fourth estate…, hoping regulation will recreate a golden age when the business press was a tamer, more deferential beast” that “could be hushed up in times of financial turbulence.”

But those days are gone, as Lex put it. “The digital revolution, by lowering entry barriers and intensifying competition, has put paid to all that. It will not return.”

And good riddance. As a card-carrying lover of the First Amendment and the digital revolution, I’m happy those days are gone. But with our freedom comes a sometimes frightening responsibility, especially in troubled economic waters.

As Schlesinger says, “We have a responsibility to be careful, and most of our reporting has been very careful. But we too have played some discordant notes and we need to learn from that.”

What do you think? Did we in the media do our job in reporting on the financial crisis, both before the market collapse in September and since? Are we being careful enough not to sow panic and make things worse? How can our reporting help you weather the storm?

Please post your comments here.

I’ll be using this space regularly to explore issues arising from Reuters and other media coverage of the world and to have a discussion with you. Among the topics I plan to look at: the dangers and rewards of covering religion; the use of anonymous sources; the debate over shield laws for journalists, and much more. I’ll also be providing lots of space for you to have your say.

In the meantime, I’ll be watching that retirement account.

Dean Wright, Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards