Carlo de Benedetti, Chairman, Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso/La Repubblica, will deliver the 2009 Reuters Memorial Lecture on ‘Newspapers and Democracy in the Internet era: The Italian Case’.

The Reuters Memorial Lecture commemorates journalists who have lost their lives in pursuit of their profession.

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by John Lloyd, with Timothy Garton Ash and Paolo Mancini. Reuters correspondents will be live blogging throughout.

To join the discussion click on the ‘make a comment’ link at the top of the liveblog panel.

-Tim Cocks is a Reuters correspondent in Iraq.-

This month we reported that the number of civilians dying violent deaths in Iraq had hit a fresh low since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion — about 125 for September.

Sounds like a lot, but for a country that only two years ago was seeing dozens of bodies pile up in the streets each day from tit-for-tat sectarian killing, it was definitely progress.

And as I prepare to end my assignment in Iraq this week, I need no argument from numbers to convince me that things are better here than when I arrived in Feb. 2008.

During my first few months, militants loyal to to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were raising hell in Baghdad, firing mortars and rockets at the Green Zone almost every hour. We could hear or feel them thud on impact, especially when they fell short, on our side of the Tigris.

A rocket hit the BBC building opposite us, causing a blast loud enough to shake our windows, although thankfully no one at the BBC was hurt by the strike.

U.S. airstrikes on Baghdad’s Sadr City slum were killing many civilians. Roadside and car bombs were erupting all over the place and the streets were largely deserted after dark.

Eighteen months on and things are hardly back to normal but, as any Iraqi will tell you, Iraq feels safer than it was.

Security forces have been purged of Shi’ite militiamen and are doing a better job of stopping suicide bombings, enabling U.S. combat forces to largely pull out of Iraq’s cities in June.

We rarely hear explosions in Baghdad. A semblance of law and order seems to be taking shape.
Reporting from Iraq, as a Westerner or an Iraqi, has been a tough business for some time. For Westerners, apart from the fact that few foreign correspondents here speak passable Arabic, the big headache remains security.

Ever since insurgents started kidnapping Westerners and beheading them in 2004, the foreign press corps here have been living in a kind of semi-incarceration, behind rows of concrete blast walls that make you feel a bit like a lab rat in a maze.

It varies from media organisation to the next, but all of us are pretty restricted in our movements.
We generally keep a low profile, moving around Baghdad in low key armoured cars. We don’t wander the streets for long periods of time or frequent bars and nightclubs after work.

The assumption is that any Westerner is a prime target for kidnappers — for political reasons or for a juicy ransom.

And this is not to say there are no dangers to Iraqi media workers. More than 130 have died in violence since the beginning of the war.

Seven of our colleagues from Reuters have been killed in that time, most of them Iraqis.

Security restrictions have left us heavily dependent on dedicated local journalists who can visit places we cannot and help us cobble together stories we send to the wire.

That’s perhaps as it should be in a global news agency with strong local talent, but it’s hard not to miss roaming the streets as I would in almost any other country.

As a military correspondent, embedding with U.S. troops has been an experience, though it can hard to get the full picture that way — for instance, persuading a nervous bystander in the street to talk to you when you’re surrounded by heavily-armed American soldiers has proved a real challenge.

As security improves, our leash has been lengthened. I’ve been able to travel to places with that were once off-limits, like many parts of northern Iraq.

Will it continue getting better? No one can claim to know the answer to that question. Many Iraqis are pessimistic, as well they might be after decades of war, dictatorship, brutal sanctions and sectarian bloodshed. But since Iraq was pulled back from the brink in 2007, it has defied gloomy predictions.

But I’m reminded of comments by the head of the Red Cross Iraq delegation Juan-Pedro Schaerer about avoiding the temptation to write off Iraq’s persistent violence as “normal”.

This week, one of our journalists, Ahmed, was awoken in the middle of the night by loud gunshots.

Gunmen had stormed the house of his neighbour and family doctor, and shot him in the head. Ahmed took him to hospital, where he remains in critical condition. He may never walk or talk again.
Clearly, that feeling of nearly normality is fragile.

Related blog: A voice in the wilderness?

- Nic Newman is Controller Future Media and Technology in BBC Journalism, and former Journalist Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. On September 30, he will speak on the Rise of Social Media and its Impact on Mainstream Media. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The news last week that the Prime Minister’s wife, Sarah Brown, has more Twitter devotees than Stephen Fry, is a further reminder of the onward march of social media

Politicians, entertainers, marketers and captains of industry are just some of those waking up to the potential of social media in transforming the way they relate to voters, fans and consumers.

But where does all this leave the traditional media organisation? Disintermediated? Bypassed? Stripped of all power and influence?

I’ve just spent three months at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, trying to work out the answers. Here are five key thoughts for your consideration.

Ignore the sceptics. Social media is real and it is here to stay. There has been an explosion of participation over the past two years (2007-9), driven by user-friendly internet tools, better connectivity and new mobile devices. Social Networking and user-generated-content have become mainstream activities, accounting for almost 20 percent of internet time in the UK.

Time for traditional news organisations to take note.

Social media is relevant to journalism. The death of Michael Jackson and the street protests in Iran earlier this year demonstrate how it is changing the nature of breaking news. It is contributing to the compression of the “news cycle”, putting more pressure on editors over what to report and when.

News organisations are already abandoning attempts to be first for breaking news, focusing instead on being the best at verifying and curating it.

Journalists are getting the hang of social media tools like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook, but very much on their own terms. “Same values, new tools” sums up the approach in most mainstream organisations as they try to marry the culture of the web with their own organisational norms. Will they succeed?

Social media, blogs and UGC are not replacing journalism, but they are creating an important extra layer of information and diverse opinion. Most people are still happy to rely on mainstream news organisations to sort fact from fiction and serve up a filtered view, but they are increasingly engaged by this information, particularly when it comes from a friend or another trusted source.

Social recommendation is playing an increasingly significant role in driving traffic to traditional news content. Most mainstream news organisations are devoting extra resources to exploit social networks like Facebook, You Tube and Twitter. Over time, social media sites could become as important as search engines as a driver of traffic and revenue.

These are powerful trends, and not all traditional news organisations in the UK have yet caught on. Taking social media seriously doesn’t mean you have to leave your core values behind, but organisations that fail embrace the power of the network will struggle to survive.

- Nathalie Harrison has worked in the broadcast and media industry for over seventeen years. A specialist in business change management in the media industry, her work has included major technological and production transformation projects for clients across the globe. Nathalie is currently Senior Business Consultant in the Professional Services division of Sony Professional in Europe. The opinions expressed are her own. -

The current economic climate has led an increasing number of businesses to seek new ways to improve business efficiency and function through change. When combined with technological advances, the media industry is one sector that has experienced record levels of change and faces some unique challenges when it comes to change management.

Burgeoning markets such as 3D, TV for mobiles and IPTV; the consolidation of content providers, distributors and aggregators; and the fragmentation of audiences has led to greater market diversity but also convergence which in some instances has limited the market opportunities. Meanwhile new outsourcing models; the re-location of broadcast and other facilities; and a decline in commercial and public broadcasting revenues, have all contributed to real grass roots change as the traditional media industry re-examines its business model.

All change management methodologies provide structure and tools to support organisations as they transition to new ways of working, re-skilling staff to operate new systems and preparing the organisation, culturally and practically, to adapt. But in media organisations maintaining a culture of creativity and innovation is critical to successful change; characteristics that can be threatened by increased processes.

Indeed, many broadcast and media organisations – public sector and private – spend millions on technology projects, but often do not invest enough time and resource in managing the people change. As a result those millions do not have the maximum effect: in other words, a significant percentage of the investment is wasted. We are involved with bids and projects valued up to 50 million euros, some of which can preoccupy an organisation for two to three years and have an impact on hundreds or thousands of staff; and there are even some projects in this industry which have threatened to or have actually cost senior managers their jobs.

We believe that clients need to consider their people from the outset as much as their technology and toolset.

From our experience of working with many of these businesses we have created a list of top ten tips for managing change in creative industries.

1.       Agree the business case before taking the change programme forward

Do not lose credibility by launching and re-launching the programme; this makes any final launch “underwhelming” but also increases the likelihood of conflict with other change initiatives and can result in “change fatigue”. By agreeing the phasing upfront the programme should progress easily with funding secured and dependencies identified.

2.       Understand the number of stakeholders involved in the programme and, more importantly, who is responsible for sign off

Agree at the start what the change programme will entail and how it will work alongside other technology projects underway. Ideally the leader of the project should help to identify the benefits and impact of the initiative. This will help when they need to explain the project to stakeholders and obtain buy-in.

3.       Make the change process consultative and encourage the participation of those affected by the change

Allow time to assess the implications of change for each community and ensure that the affected communities are involved in the resulting decisions. Individual community needs will differ and must be recognised if change is to be accepted and driven locally.

4.       Ensure that there is a steady flow of information into the business and that the style of communication is right for the audience

The means of communication cannot be underestimated in the creative industries. You are working with the experts and must be mindful of their skills and knowledge level. Tailor the information as a “one size fits all” approach will not work, and be honest about the difficulties.

Brand your programme and distinguish your communication from other business traffic by using distinctive visuals and a range of delivery mediums to keep your audience interested, and if funds permit, launch with an event.

Ultimately timing is key; be aware that premature information can do more damage than good but do not withhold all communications on this ground.

5.       Remember to nurture your staff

The media industry moves at a face pace but you must allow time for staff to learn new skills. Never underestimate the different ways in which people will respond to change and the variety of training that will be required as a result. Make sure training is targeted and bespoke when required and allow time for key staff to trial the change. Identify talented individuals; they will find new ways to make the change even more successful.

6.       Ensure that change happens locally

Change programmes are often most effective when run centrally but day-to-day business ownership should be held by local teams if it is to be put into practice. Be flexible about how the change is achieved and be supportive of local adaptations and problem solving. However, remember that those in the media industry are busy and therefore funding should be available for change work. Employees need to be taken out of the business to contribute to the change programme, without fearing the penalty of not delivering a day job.

7.       Anticipate the behavioural changes required to make the change successful

Provide a forum for feedback and listen, so that you can judge the level of awareness and commitment, as well as the success of your communications. All individuals should feel that they have been afforded time to assess the change for themselves and debate is a fundamental part of the acceptance process. You must learn to recognise and appropriately respond to the key stages of the emotional transition curve: shock, anger, rejection, depression, acceptance, readiness, approval.

8.       Put measurements for success in place in advance

Performance indicators and local cost implications need to be understood fully from the outset to limit surprises. Extra work required to produce indicators or metrics is likely to be received negatively. Regardless of the method chosen, in a competitive industry like the media you must always link back to the benefits and when possible tie back to market competition.

9.       Make sure that the technology works first time

Delays and problems extend the change period and add layers of frustration which in turn will damage the reputation of the project and impede success. Make sure adequate user testing has taken place and any issues are addressed in the training programme, and maintain an on ongoing dialogue with users.

10.   Don’t be tempted to start on your next change programme until the first is embedded and you have measured its success

Change is time consuming and tiring. Fatigue makes for cynicism even when projects have full support.

- Mic Wright is Online News Editor at Stuff. The views expressed are his own -

Google juice – it sure isn’t tasty but it is vital for anyone writing news online. The slightly irksome term refers to the mysterious combination of keywords and linking that will drag a webpage to the top of Google’s search pages.

While the exact way Google’s search algorithm works is largely a mystery to outsiders, news sites know it’s vital to write headlines stuffed with the keywords that the search engine seeks out.

Online, the perfect punning headlines created by The Sun newspaper’s super sub-editors just won’t cut it. News stories on the web are all about the facts and the most successful sites are constantly checking to see what keywords will send you soaring up the Google search rankings. If you story isn’t on the front page, it’s not getting clicks, the less clicks you get the less likely it is that your advertisers’ ads are going to get seen.

Now Google has announced that it’s been working on a brand new version of its search engine and it’s likely that online headlines are about to get even more straight forward. The new iteration of Google’s most profitable invention is codenamed Caffeine thanks to its speediness. It has already been made available for users to test and besides the noticeable increase in speed, it appears to make search a more real time experience than we’ve previously seen.

The move to real time search, showing web pages in search results as soon as they appear, is a response to the instantaneous nature of Twitter which has recently got the jump on Google when it comes to breaking news. Currently there is a slight but noticeable lag with Google results – its search crawlers (programmes that scour the web to see what sites have been updated) don’t grab changes immediately. But with the new version of the search engine they will.

This slight change in approach will make the way news organisations write their headlines even more important. It will also be like pressing the fast forward button. News writers will need to get their stories up faster and add new information swiftly to ensure that they remain high in the Google search rankings. A test by Mashable found that the new Google Search algorithm rewarding news gatherers for adding new information to their stories by placing them higher in the search results.

The new Google relies even more on keywords than the old version. Headline writers jobs have just got a lot harder. For readers, it’ll mean more and more matter of fact headlines carefully crafted to include the keywords that Google’s crawlers are after rather than created to entertain you. The days of the pithy, pun packed headline are over, at least online.

-Padraig Reidy is news editor at Index on Censorship. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Mainstream consumer media is, it is agreed, in trouble. The idea of paying for one or two newspapers a day is now confined, it seems, to quaintly old-fashioned types who boast of their ignorance of the Internet, or business who actually need the information in the pages of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Wire services’ content is processed so fast by subscribers that one can barely spot the time difference. Local newspapers are seeing their stock in trade diminished. When one’s entire life is catalogued on Facebook and Flickr, there’s little thrill in having your picture in the local paper, or indeed huge necessity in publishing births, deaths and marriages. And why place a classified ad in a newspaper, when we have eBay and Gumtree?

The solution? Some, such as “Wired” magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, would suggest simply giving things away. Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” is available for free from the web until 1 August, while the hardback edition will be sold, at a price, in shops and on Amazon.

The idea, Anderson tells the Los Angeles Times is that some of those who download for free will also buy the book, if they are sufficiently impressed, of course. It’s a principle that has already been seen at work in the music world, where Radiohead released ‘In Rainbows’ freely on the web, and later released the album to shops, without any noticeable decline in sales.

But can this model work for news, long term? Books and songs are thing we accumulate, collect and return to. Professionals, academics and institutions aside, very few people retain newspaper articles in any way. Yesterday’s news tends to be precisely that, condemned, at best, to the recycling bin. Online, trends tend to move so fast that one could seriously question Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ theory.

Old news articles’ major purpose now seems to be for cutting and pasting into online arguments on forums and messageboards, useful for those engaged in debate, but perhaps not so much for anyone wishing to create revenue from content.

Some have put forward the idea that governments could fund local and national media to a much greater extent. But while the continued high reputation of the BBC shows that state ownership is not necessarily a bad thing, but in the UK there are already fears that local government funded media, such as freesheets and online TV stations, all too quickly become nothing more than propaganda for the leading party in the council chamber.

And internationally, while government-funded media may be relatively trustworthy in liberal democracies, there are far too many examples of state-run media in less free countries about the capability of reporters to stray from the party line, and governments have proved adept at manipulating media, even to the point of slowing Internet connections — the 21st century equivalent of smashing the printing presses.

Independent media needs independent funding. But how will this be done, in the age of free? Is it too late to ask people to pay for news online?

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

The recent election in Iran was one of the more dramatic stories this year, with powerful images of protests and street-fighting dominating television and online coverage.

Because traditional news organizations were essentially shut down by the authorities, it fell to citizen journalists -- many of whom were among the protesters -- to provide the images that the world would see, using such social media as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

This has raised a number of ethics, standards and legal questions for mainstream journalists. My colleague John Clarke, Reuters Global Television Editor, found himself in the middle of the issue as images became available and clients demanded coverage of the election's aftermath. John discusses the issues raised, the lessons learned and the opportunities for the future below. As always, his opinions are his own.

-----

Protests following the controversial Iranian election have put citizen journalism even more firmly in the spotlight. With traditional news gathering organizations effectively shut down by authorities, text, video and stills being produced and posted on social websites by the protesters themselves became the main way that much information was getting out of the country. This dramatic coverage -- regardless of (and perhaps even enhanced by) its shaky nature -- was accessed by Reuters (and other news organizations) and distributed to clients and viewers around the world.

Citizen journalism isn't new. We have long accessed amateur footage of stories around the world, from plane crashes to wars to natural disasters. However, the internet and mobile devices have resulted in a dramatic increase in the amount of content available and the speed of delivery, the ability to deliver outside of normal controls, more uncertainty over origin, ownership and verification, and the viral nature in which it can all spread around the globe.

At Reuters, we have used video from social networking websites for several years. We put in place strict rules about how such material can be accessed and used, with only senior editors authorized to approve running this material.

Verification is a major issue. Video or photos might not be what they purport to be, either because of sloppy information from the person posting it, or deliberate deceit, either to create mischief or for political or other reasons.

Another important consideration is that copyright still applies to the internet. The person posting material might hold copyright, or worse, they might not hold copyright. The material could originate from a private individual, a company or another news organization. Wherever possible, we have sought to find and seek permission from the originator of the material, as we would do for any third-party material accessed in any other way. This can apply to hard news and lighter material, including funny visual postings that have gone viral and have become stories in their own right.

When the Iran story broke, even when we were able to operate, we still accessed internet-posted amateur video. But such footage became even more important when our operations were hampered by authorities –- the sheer number of mini-cams and mobile phones taking visual images meant there would be good material we would want, even if we were able to operate freely ourselves.

Early on, we set up a 24-hour monitoring of Twitter and various social networking sites. We made a call early on that we would relax our rules on clearance –- protesters posting video and pictures on social networks wanted to get them to the world, and we were another conduit for that. Other news organizations followed a similar rationale.

Throughout the Iran story, however, we were extremely careful about what we wrote and said about material accessed from social networking sites, certainly not taking at face value what (little) information usually comes with such posts.

We have been clear when we are unable to verify content or location or date, and have also clearly stated that we’ve accessed it from a social networking site. Our subscribers (and their viewers) are also intelligent enough to know that no-one can 100 percent verify this type of material and are similarly circumspect, and the shaky, low-resolution quality of much of this material is an immediate signal to clients and viewers that it was shot by an amateur.

This approach does not, of course, absolve us of all responsibility. There have been many videos and photos we haven’t used because they have not rung true for one reason or another.

Iran was also a special case in that citizen journalism was not only a way to get video and photographs, but it was a very important part of the story itself. We didn’t just get video from citizen journalists, we did several stories, like the one below, about the importance of citizen journalism in Iran, which put our use of it in its proper context, too.

Iran was in many respects the culmination of trends in the way citizens have been using the web for the past few years –- a confluence of the proliferation of mobile recording devices, internet delivery and social networking sites that allow almost instantaneous interactions between users and an exchange of information and ideas.

How social networking intersects with traditional news organizations is also an evolutionary process.

It will not be good enough for traditional news companies to simply take from citizen journalists –- it needs to be a two-way exchange of content, information and ideas, with mainstream news companies contributing via blogs, chatrooms and other social networking sites, whether in the general news area or in specialist forums such as those for the financial community.

Verification, copyright and quality will always be significant issues -- even more so as millions of people around the world have the ability to distribute and exchange content. The combination of citizen journalism, and the standards of news organizations of companies such as Reuters, has the ability to produce a richer flow of information around the world.

Provided we clearly flag the origin of material and put the relevant context around it, our subscribers, our viewers and our readers –- who are already immersed in social networking as consumers and contributors themselves –- are smart enough to evaluate this content, without challenging our core journalistic values.

-- John Clarke, Global Editor, Television

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.

The president was inaugurated in front of adoring crowds and positive reviews in the media. As the unpopular incumbent sat on the platform with him, the new Democratic chief executive took office as the nation faced a crippling economic crisis. The incoming president was a charismatic figure who had run a brilliant campaign and had handled the press with aplomb. The media were ready to give him a break.

That was 1933, and in Franklin Roosevelt’s case, the media gave him a break.

For Barack Obama, the honeymoon was shorter.

Less than 36 hours after Obama took the oath of office, the White House denied news photographers access to the new president’s do-over swearing in, instead releasing official White House photos of the event. Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse protested and refused to distribute the official photos (which nevertheless showed up on the websites of a number of large U.S. newspapers).

This is an important issue for news organisations, the public and for an administration that has promised a new era of transparency in doing the people’s business. How are people to know, for example, that the official photos haven’t been staged?

All U.S. administrations seek to manage the flow of information and the White House and the news media have a complex, interdependent relationship. Each needs the other. But it’s important that media organisations remember who’s most important.

For Howard Goller, Reuters editor for political and general news for the U.S. and Canada, it’s clear who’s most important.

“A news organisation’s first obligation is to its clients," he says. "Our correspondents have a front-row seat at the White House, we ask questions at news conferences and briefings, and we travel with the president wherever he goes. Our photographers work just as hard for our customers. We became concerned when on taking office, the new administration prevented Reuters and other news organisations from taking our own photos. We’ve had several conversations with the new administration since those first days and we expect a more open relationship going forward.”

Most administrations get a bit of a honeymoon. Gallup polls show that every incoming, newly-elected president back to Dwight Eisenhower enjoyed majority approval ratings. Even the lowest-rated incoming presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, had job approval ratings of 51 percent and disapproval ratings of only 13 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Obama’s approval rating, 68 percent, was exceeded only by that of John F. Kennedy, who had a 72 percent rating. Even a plurality of Republicans—43 percent—give Obama positive marks.

The media have also generally been positive—or at least, not very negative-- about new presidents during their administrations’ first 100 days, one of those round numbers we seem to like so much.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism compared the coverage of the two most recent first-term elected presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In measuring the tone of coverage by network television, newspapers and a major weekly news magazine, the study found that only 28 percent of the coverage of both presidents’ first two months was “negative.”

No president has been more successful at managing the media than Roosevelt. So carefully did the administration control the president’s image that only a few pictures were published in newspapers of the president—disabled by polio-- using his wheelchair. Indeed, in a scene in the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942),” James Cagney was able with a straight face to portray Roosevelt in a song and dance number, as the “president” wittily told reporters what was on and what was off the record.

Betty Houchin Winfield, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, argues in “FDR and the News Media” that “FDR’s consummate news management skills served as a major key to his political artistry and leadership legacy” and that “a strong president such as Roosevelt can indeed influence the journalists’ newsgathering, the reporters’ reactions, and the final news stories.”

As Douglas McCollam notes in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, many believe much of the media are already in the tank for Obama.

A Pew Research Center poll during the heat of the campaign in September 2008 found that 36 percent of those questioned believed news organisations were biased in favor of Obama, while only 14 percent said the media were biased in favor of Republican John McCain. Forty percent detected no bias. A Rasmussen poll last summer was even more stark, with 49 percent saying they believed most reporters would “try to help the Democrat with their coverage.” Just 14 percent believed reporters would try to help McCain win and only 24 percent believed that “most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.”

Those are depressing numbers for a journalist to read—and the only way to respond is to aggressively cover the issues that matter to your audience.

For Reuters News, that’s a global audience and a financial audience.

Goller says that in response to the change in administrations, “We have made some big changes, especially in the way we work together to cover the big economic stories in the face of the financial crisis as well as the politics of climate change and health care….We’ve put more people on both the White House and the Congressional beats in part because the president…has promised change and both he and the Democratic-led Congress have made a priority of addressing the crisis, no small matter for our core financial clients.”

So how do we balance the need to be close to the newsmakers at the White House with the danger of being in a bubble where news can be managed?

Goller puts it well: “For Reuters, the key is to keep our eye on the issues, and that means to be aware of the impact a president’s words and actions or non-actions have on business, the economy, other countries and Americans as a people. We ask the tough questions in the briefings—and in the stories we write. If we don’t get the answers, our stories say so. This is our job.”

As in coverage of the Middle East, there are partisans who will never, ever be convinced that journalists can report objectively. As in the coverage of the recent Gaza fighting, all we can ask our audience to do is judge us on the journalism we produce—and tell us when we’re wrong.

It’s especially important now, as coverage of the new administration moves out of the warm, feel-good glow of the inauguration. As we saw Wednesday, the stimulus bill passed the House without a single Republican vote, a reminder of the deep divisions that remain and a sign that the story of the Obama administration is just beginning. It will be up to the hard-nosed, experienced journalists in Washington to push beyond the soft, easy, feel-good stories and tell the hard and complete truth.

The BBC has been roundly condemned at home for its refusal to broadcast an emergency appeal for Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 13 aid agencies.

It says it does not want to be seen to be taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that broadcasting the appeal could jeopardise its carefully cultivated position of impartiality. Sky News has followed suit.

But criticism has been fierce, including from the government and the Church of England.

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has accused the BBC of "taking sides". He said on Friday: "This is not a row about impartiality but rather about humanity.

Former BBC foreign correspondent Martin Bell said the BBC should admit it had made a mistake. He claimed "a culture of timidity had crept" into the corporation. "I am completely appalled," he said. "It is a grave humanitarian crisis and the people who are suffering are children. They have been caught out on this question of balance."

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said: "Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations. The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story."

What do you think? Are Sky and the BBC being too cautious or do they have a point?