It has certainly been a busy — and historic — week for journalists in the United States. We love big stories, and we got them. We love surprises, and we got them.

In Denver, the Democrats nominated the first African-American candidate of a major party, while orchestrating a clockwork convention designed to show unity after a divisive primary campaign.

Barack Obama had hardly given his acceptance speech in a rock-star setting in front of  75,000 supporters  before John McCain grabbed the headlines and surprised the world by picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the first woman for a top slot in the GOP’s history.

Oh, yes. A major hurricane bore down on New Orleans. Gustav disrupted the script of  the Republican convention, revived memories of 2005’s Katrina and the devastation of a great American city and reminded many of the damage the response to that storm did to the reputation of the Bush administration.

Then on Monday, in a development worthy of a soap opera, the McCain campaign revealed that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was pregnant, in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

The story raises a number of ethical issues for journalists, which is why I’m writing today.

First, an introduction: I am Reuters’ newly named Editor for Ethics, Innovation and News Values. One of my missions is to lead discussions on ethics and standards wherever journalism is practiced at Thomson Reuters — and the Palin story seems a good place to start. It raises important issues for journalism: the right of public figures’ families to privacy; the mainstream media’s relationship with bloggers and other media; and the relationship between journalists and the people they cover.

The pregnancy story — like many stories now — got its start in the blogosphere, with liberal bloggers, such as those on the Daily Kos discussing rumors that the governor’s fifth child, born in April, was in fact her daughter’s. Conservative blogs, such as Townhall.com  launched furious rebuttals. The McCain campaign chose to reveal Bristol’s pregnancy on a major U.S. holiday, at a time when much of the public’s attention was still focused on barbecues and beaches and the  media’s attention was focused on Hurricane Gustav.

But the story was neither overlooked by the public nor overshadowed by Gustav.

There was instant debate over whether Bristol’s pregnancy was anyone’s business but hers and her family’s; whether candidates’ children should be off-limits (Obama thought so); whether GOP delegates would stand by Palin (all signs are that they are); and whether the McCain campaign’s vetting process had been less than thorough.

So let’s have some debate (or at least discussion) here. What do you think of the media’s coverage of this story?

–Does the public have a right to know whether Sarah Palin’s (or any candidate’s) daughter is pregnant or not?

–Should the private lives of family members of presidential and vice-presidential candidates be off-limits?

–How aggressively should the mainstream media pursue allegations and rumors in the blogosphere and tabloid media?

–Should journalists have reported the Palin pregnancy story before the McCain campaign’s announcement?

I’m looking forward to your views on this story -and on other stories in the future. Reuters and other news organizations don’t operate in a vacuum. We wouldn’t be in business were it not for you, our customers, clients and users.

Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Values
 

(Photo credit: REUTERS/Matt Sullivan)

I’ve written before  that a camera is not a weapon, that a journalist is not a combatant, that the pen and the sword should not be confused.

Yet the Israel Defense Forces seem to be putting the camera very much in the category of weapon in a report on the death in April of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana.

I’ve given a quote to our reporters about my disappointment in the report.

That it does state that the death was a “tragedy” does not counteract the fact that it condoned the firing of two deadly shells at people it admitted had not been identified clearly and whose only crime was to put a camera on a tripod.

Said the report: “Two persons were spotted leaving the vehicle, carrying a large black object. The black object was placed on a tripod above a dirt mound, and directed at the tank…. The tank crew reported the spotting to its superiors. The latter authorized firing a tank shell at the characters, in light of the genuine suspicion that the object mounted on the tripod and directed at the tank was an anti-tank missile or mortar, a suspicion consistent with the characteristics of that day’s hostilities…”

I do understand the stresses of the battlefield.

I do understand that wars are horribly dangerous – Reuters has had close calls in Georgia; colleagues from other organizations have been killed.

I do not understand the deliberate decision to fire on the basis of suspicion and uncertainty.

I wonder how journalists can do their job if doing that job raises such suspicion in the eyes of the Israeli or any other military.

The dangers seem too great.

And yet, the stakes of not reporting a war to the world are too high as well.

“…the tank crew was unable to determine the nature of the object mounted on the tripod and positively identify it as an anti-tank missile, a mortar, or a television camera,” the report said.

To me, killing on the basis of such little certainty makes the death of Fadel Shana much more than just a tragedy.

For a little more investigation, a little more military intelligence, would have shown clearly that he was just a professional doing his job.

And that his camera was a weapon only for the truth.

 Photo:  

Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana looks out of the window at the Reuters office in Gaza City April 4, 2006. Shana, 23, and two other Palestinian civilians were killed on April 16, 2008, in what local residents said was an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip. Picture taken April 4, 2006. REUTERS/Don Pessin

To bring you the stunning choreography of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Reuters photographers and photo editors do a complex dance of their own -- and then a brutal Darwinian whittling down to select just the best and most iconic images to send to subscribers.The team shot a staggering 18,000 frames during the four hours of the ceremony. Only about 850 shots made it to the "wire" -- our file of photos to customers. That's just five percent. Less than a 10th of those were selected for our web slideshow and a typical newspaper subscriber might only print one two or three shots from the selection.

In a brutally competitive world like this, nothing can be left to chance.

One of our most experienced Olympic photographers and editors, Gary Hershorn, attended rehearsals of the opening ceremony in order to plot out key moments that simply had to be captured.

That advanced planning helped the team of 12 photographers in the stadium, nine immediately outside and six in Tiananmen Square and on the Great Wall get ready to tell the story in images through a mixture of bread-and-butter set-up shots and imaginative compositions that matched the dreamy romance of the show itself.

The 12 in the stadium had set positions from the roof catwalk down to the stage and scattered all around the Bird's Nest. Four were directly cabled into the editors' computer system (and, in fact, we had two senior editors, including the global head Tom Szlukovenyi, in the stadium itself to do on-the-scene selection of the key shots); the rest sent their computer disks to the editors via runners.The gargantuan task of editing the file was split between the editors in the venue, six editors and 15 processors in the main press centre and a further specialist desk in Paris that selected photographs of VIPs for magazine use.

This type of volume would have been absolutely impossible in the days before digital photography -18,000 prospective shots would have taken some 600 rolls of film, a physical and financial impossibility!

After the dramatic spectacle, the grind of chronicling 204 delegations began. Editors made sure we had shots of the delegation from every place we have clients as well as every place that was somehow newsworthy.

After just a couple of hours sleep, the team regrouped to start the work of capturing the actual sport.

Photo credits: (from top) Mike Blake/Reuters, Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters, David Gray/Reuters

            As the world waits for the opening ceremony to inaugurate the Beijing Olympics in a blaze of fireworks and pageantry, I thought I'd give you a peek behind the scenes at the temporary newsroom that will give you the story throughout the Games.

            Situated in the main press centre in the Olympic Village, the centre is home to the more than 30,000 journalists and support staff from the world's media who gather to cover the games.

The halls are filled with impromptu reunions of people who last saw each other at the last summer Olympics in Athens or the last winter ones in Turin.

Reuters has been covering the Olympics since the modern Games began in 1896, so we're well prepared for the logistical puzzle that will spit out 150-200 stories, 1,000 photographs and many minutes of video highlights every day, along with a complete run of results.

Our team is a mix of sport experts, China experts and all-around journalists who bring myriad talents to bear on a story that runs from results to human interest to politics and economics. And, of course, the technical geniuses who make sure that the temporary set-up in Beijing works as well as, if not better than, our permanent bureaux around the world.

            As soon as the actual competitions begin, the newsroom will house only a steady crew of editors while the reporters and photographers will fan out to various events in a complex logistical dance. With 28 sports, 302 events and demanding subscribers interested in every country represented and nearly every athlete competing, the combinations are mind boggling!

((Photos: Laszlo Balogh/Reuters. From top: the newsroom, planning photo coverage, editors at work)

Slate’s Jack Shafer wrote about “Anonymice” and tracked use of anonymous sources in the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Portfolio’s Zubin Jelveh then followed up with a post that included some statistics about Reuters use vs. other news organizations.

In the interest of transparency, I’m posting Reuters basic guidance on sourcing (we also have detailed guidance that expands on the points below):

Sourcing

Accuracy entails honesty in sourcing. Our reputation for that accuracy, and for freedom from bias, rests on the credibility of our sources. A Reuters journalist or camera is always the best source on a witnessed event. A named source is always preferable to an unnamed source. We should never deliberately mislead in our sourcing, quote a source saying one thing on the record and something contradictory on background, or cite sources in the plural when we have only one. Anonymous sources are the weakest sources. …

Here are some handy tips:

• Use named sources wherever possible because they are responsible for the information they provide, even though we remain liable for accuracy, balance and legal dangers. Press your sources to go on the record.
• Reuters will use unnamed sources where necessary when they provide information of market or public interest that is not available on the record. We alone are responsible for the accuracy of such information.
• When talking to sources, always make sure the ground rules are clear. Take notes and record interviews.
• Cross-check information wherever possible. Two or more sources are better than one. In assessing information from unnamed sources, weigh the source’s track record, position and motive. Use your common sense. If it sounds wrong, check further.
• Talk to sources on all sides of a deal, dispute, negotiation or conflict.
• Be honest in sourcing and in obtaining information. Give as much context and detail as you can about sources, whether named or anonymous, to authenticate information they provide. Be explicit about what you don’t know.
• Reuters will publish news from a single, anonymous source in exceptional cases, when it is credible information from a trusted source with direct knowledge of the situation. Single-source stories are subject to a special authorisation procedure.
• A source’s compact is with Reuters, not with the reporter. If asked on legitimate editorial grounds, you are expected to disclose your source to your supervisor. Protecting the confidentiality of sources, by both the reporter and supervisor, is paramount.
• When doing initiative reporting, try to disprove as well as prove your story.
• Accuracy always comes first. It’s better to be late than wrong. Before pushing the button, think how you would withstand a challenge or a denial.
• Know your sources well. Consider carefully if the person you are communicating with is an imposter. Sources can provide information by whatever means available - telephone, in person, email, instant messaging, text message. But be aware that any communication can be interfered with.
• Reuters will stand by a reporter who has followed the sourcing guidelines and the proper approval procedures.

We don’t always get it right. There are times we should have pressed harder to get a source to go on the record with his or her name; there are times when we should have spiked (thrown away) a story because the sourcing wasn’t totally up to our standards.

But I think the record of our 2,500 journalists is on balance a good one: we use anonymous sources judiciously and in the interest of getting important stories. In the end it’s what you, our readers, think that matters - you’re the ultimate arbiter of our credibility.

 (photo credit: Journalists wait outside the Lenval Hospital where U.S. actress Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins in Nice, southern France, July 13, 2008. REUTERS/Chris Serrano)

The Biblical image of alchemy is powerful:They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

Yet, once again, the alchemy went the wrong way: a soldier mistook a camera for a weapon, fired his real weapon, and a journalist was killed.

Fadel Shana, 24, filming an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip was killed by that very tank on April 16.

Two months later, there are still no satisfactory answers.

What about his camera could have been confused for a weapon?

What about his “Press”-emblazoned car or flak jacket was ambiguous?

What about his peaceful actions filming a news story could possibly have seemed aggressive?

What motivated the tank commander to fire thousands of flechettes, sharp and deadly steel darts, before positively identifying his target and without warning?

Answers to these questions are important. They are important for Fadel Shana’s family and colleagues; they are important for justice; they are important to save the lives of journalists in the future; they are important for all of us who rely upon journalists in places, near and far, safe and unsafe, to bring us the stories that let us know what is really happening in the world.

A television camera is not a weapon; it is a potent tool for truth. A pen is not a sword; its blade separates truth and fiction and empowers readers to judge their world. A journalist is not a combatant; a journalist is an agent for exposing the facts and giving the world needed transparency.

These truths hold in the corridors of Congress; these truths hold in the banking halls of London’s City; these truths must hold on the battlefields from Baghdad to Gaza as well.

The world needs to know. The world’s citizens need to know. And if journalists are killed while doing their job or for doing their job, the world loses a bit of its brightness and transparency, and the truth will be hidden.

The Israel Defense Forces issued a welcome statement immediately after Fadel Shana was killed, saying: “The IDF wishes to emphasize that unlike terrorist organizations not only does not it deliberately target uninvolved civilians; it also uses means to avoid such incidents.”

The best way to ensure these ideals to be realized would be for the IDF and other military to work intimately with news organizations so tragedies like that of Fadel Shana’s death won’t happen again.

A military that has sophisticated intelligence and identification methods can learn to tell a camera from a gun. A military that works hard to prevent deaths of its own by friendly fire can learn to investigate vehicles and garments clearly marked as “Press”. A military that seeks to save “uninvolved civilians” can use restraint with the firing of shells filled with indiscriminate, deadly darts.

And governments and military that understand the role of the press in serving society’s need for truth must learn better to respect the lives of journalists working for that purpose.

This was the title of a panel I joined at the Social Media Influence event earlier this week in London. It was a slightly tongue-in-cheek question from Matthew Yeomans, one of the conference’s organisers, but interesting because it touches on a number of current trends — the phenomenal rise of video usage on the Web, the success of user-generated video sites and the impression that, perhaps, blogging has become a bit passe. Just this week we’ve seen a new study show that online video consumption has nearly doubled in the past year while new social video services are growing very quickly and Youtube recently appointed a citizen video news editor.

This was the full brief:

Okay, we’re joking…..sort of. But be it video-snacking, YouTube resumes, digital video activism or live-streaming to the web from your mobile phone, the world of Web 2.0 is being driven by the moving image. This panel will examine the role video is playing in shaping communication techniques within companies as well as helping reach new consumer audiences.

In a way the event answered the question itself. One of the participants, the BBC’s Robin Hamman, who I had thought was going to be on the panel instead streamed the proceedings live via his mobile phone to Qik where it is now archived. So now I’m thinking why blog about the event when you can see the whole thing on Qik? And, in my case, why write a note to my boss when I can just point him to the full recording and (slightly scary thought) he can make up his own mind on how it went?

In preparing for the event I did a couple of things. First, I thought about my professional experience within Reuters. We’ve got perhaps a couple of hundred journalists blogging on a regular basis but just a handful video blogging. That’s partly because video is still a bit tricky while blogging is relatively easy since, in essence, it’s just a text-based content management system and nearly all our journalists are writing on a very regular basis.

But that’s the view from a mainstream media organisation. What’s the picture in the blogging world? I asked a number of people in the Global Voices blogging network for a perspective. These are people who live and breathe blogging. They deal with the realities of handling content using social media day in, day out and from the four corners of the globe. I thought their answers gave the topic a deeper perspective that I struggled to get across to the London audience.

…there’s definitely lots going on with video, but I firmly believe most people spend so much time in their pyjamas they won’t want to be on video most of the time they spend online. It’s hard enough to get people to use their own names in discussion forms, blog and article comments.Someone sent us a link to this Wordpress plugin the other day that allows people to make comments in blogs with videos. It’s kind of neat and perhaps the kind of thing we’ll be seeing more of soon. It’s complimentary to the Web 2.0 activity that already exists rather than something that replaces it. Personally, I think we’re more likely to see video, still photos, and text mingling more effortlessly on the web, rather than a situation where moving images dominate. The multi-media experience is much more effective for interactive story-telling. Text is just too effective and easy to lose the battle.

Solana Larsen

I think the idea that the world of web 2.0 is being *driven* by the moving image is debatable, especially given the dominance of microblogging platforms like Twitter that are primarily text based. Nor is video as immediately “social” as text. Which is not to say that it’s not an important ingredient in the mix.

I think that as more individuals become versed in multiple forms of media we’re probably going to see them mixing them and harnessing them for various purposes at different times. Online video can be of immense value, nevertheless, in the places where television continues to be very effective - ie in live coverage. Bandwidth and service constraints notwithstanding, the day a live streaming service like Qik is deployed beyond US borders it going to be revolutionary. And unlike TV, this content is instantly archived.

And of course, and perhaps obviously, the existence of cell phone and other small digital video cameras has completely changed the game in terms of security and privacy, both for better (police torture videos in Egypt) and for worse (videos featuring schoolgirls in Trinidad having sex). I was thinking just the other day how difficult it used to be to take photographs in airports, in many of which I think it’s still illegal to do so.

Georgia Popplewell

“As long as connectivity speeds are an issue, videos will continue being food for few. I´m hoping that web 3.0 will make it easier to tag online videos and search them, but so far it is mostly manual labor: sitting through dozens of videos trying to find the ones that have useful tidbits of information. So in countries where connectivity is slow, watching videos online can be torturous at worst and annoying at best. I spend most of my time looking at icons that remind me that the video is still loading, so I know firsthand it can get frustrating. Likewise with uploading content when one has an intermittent connection. Uploading and viewing video has tech requirements that blogging in text doesn´t, so I don´t think it will substitute blogs anytime soon, they will continue growing in tandem, complimenting the other’s content. As long as we depend on typed tagging for videos, videos will still depend very heavily on written context.”

Juliana Rincon

Instead of writing this I could have recorded a two minute ‘piece to camera’ (will we start calling these items ‘pieces to mobile’?) and uploaded it to a social media platform. I haven’t done that because I just don’t think I’d have been able to tell the story as well. I like the flexibility that blogging gives me. I’ve got video here, I’ve been able to link to underlying sources, I’ve been able to use all the media there is. And very quickly.This feels like genuine multimedia production that plays to each medium’s strengths. I just can’t see video alone eclipsing this ability to weave media strands together.

Picture credit: Social Media Influence

Recently this map, which shows how the picture of the US gets distorted if states are sized according to how much news they generate, attracted my attention.

Originally credited to Science News magazine, it appeared in the blog Strange Maps and then was picked up in Adrian Monck’s journalism blog. It is based on an analysis of 72,000 wire-service news stories from 1994 to 1998 and shows how reporting on the government out of Washington, DC and on events in the northeast of the country dominate the news agenda.

I thought it would be interesting to share how the Reuters News map of the world looks. With 190 bureaus around the world we are hugely global, but the bulk of the news by volume that we put out is indeed about the G8 countries and the key emerging markets.

There are stories everywhere, but the news agenda is always a balance between the push of what journalists think is important and the pull of what you, the readers, want to know about.

Important stories from under-reported countries sometimes take a very long time to get the attention of journalists and then of the public.

It is our job as journalists and editors to make sure that we’re there to cover the news, wherever it may happen. Beyond that, we have a responsibility to ensure stories that deserve attention actually get it.

We do that with good writing; we do that with the quality of our sources; we do that by making the connections that show why something is important.

Let’s work together to make sure the long tail of news really works to illuminate all parts of our world.

There is no question that news is emotional.   

News is about real people, real issues, real money and real lives.

News is about history, and about how history - and different views of history - impact the present.

Readers of news services, including those of Reuters News, have strong views and often emotional views about how we cover stories that either directly affect their lives or their emotions.Every year brings to the headlines stories that have the power to stir bitter feelings.

Our job as journalists is to keep the emotion out of it, to strive for objectivity, to strive to be free from bias, to strive to tell the story as it is.

This year one important story that has polarized readers has been Tibet and the violence there involving Tibetans, ethnic Chinese and the Chinese authorities.

Our job as journalists is not to take sides. Our job is not to say who is right and who is wrong. Our job is to report as quickly, clearly and accurately as possible so that readers can make up their own minds and to let the facts - and the protagonists - speak for themselves.

This is particularly difficult in a story like Tibet were we have been restricted from reporting as freely as we believe is necessary. Our reporting has had to rely on sources, eyewitnesses, official accounts and documentary evidence.

Where we cannot count bodies ourselves, we must report on conflicting accounts of casualties. Where we cannot observe events ourselves, we must evaluate and triangulate eyewitness reports.

Our China bureau is staffed with men and women with expertise in the region who, like all the journalists in Reuters News, subscribe to the Trust Principles that bind all of Thomson Reuters and that ensure we report the news independently, accurately and free from bias.

  REUTERS photo by Stefan Wermuth  

This is Day One of the new Reuters News, a news organization that is part of Thomson Reuters, the company formed when two great leaders of news and information came together.

As Editor-in-Chief, I want to assure you that the Reuters News you will see will maintain its commitment to independent, trustworthy, useful news; news that is free from bias and filled with the insight you need.

That’s the excellence that saw us recently win, among other awards, a Pulitzer Prize for spot photography and a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for commentary.

Over the next weeks and months, we will combine the best from the old Reuters news and from Thomson Financial news; we’ll be bringing together people and services. Most of the difference will be seen immediately on our desktop products for financial professionals, but over time I’m sure you’ll see new bylines and data on our Reuters Media consumer-facing sites as well.

My commitment is for Reuters News to be the global, insightful and innovative powerhouse you want to serve your news needs in words, pictures and video. There are more than two and a half thousand professional journalists around the world backing up my words with their actions every minute of every day of the year.

David Schlesinger is Editor-in-Chief, Reuters News, Thomson Reuters