If youve heard of the old Windmill Theatre in London, its motto during World War Two was We Never Closed. Reuters never closes either. Over the holiday season someone, somewhere will be covering the news for Reuters every second of every day in every region of the world.
For our journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be work as usual over the next two weeks, with the added stories of American and other foreign troops marking Christmas amid the conflicts. As every year, well have reporters, photographers and camera crews covering Christmas at the Vatican and Midnight Mass in Bethlehem, along with New Years Eve celebrations in Times Square, New York, Sydney Harbour, Trafalgar Square in London and most of the places where crowds gather to see in another year. Many of our financial reporters will also be on duty covering the worlds markets, even though trading volumes will be down.
December 29 sees the start of the haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca which is expected to draw 1.5 million Muslims from around the world to Saudi Arabia. Past years have witnessed deadly stampedes and political protests and we will have full coverage from a multimedia team.
Staff will also be hard at work in Europe, with Romania and Bulgaria joining the European Union on Jan. 1 and Slovenia adopting the euro as its currency on the same day. In Nairobi, our journalists will all be staying on base because of the conflict in Somalia since we anchor that story from our East Africa operations centre in the Kenyan capital.
Unexpected news never takes a holiday, which is why many newsrooms will have weekend-level staffing at this time of the year and other journalists will be on call.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began on December 24, 1979. Romanias dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown on December 22, 1989 in the year communism collapsed in Eastern Europe. Three years ago, an earthquake killed 31,000 people in southeastern Iran on December 26, 2003, devastating the city of Bam. The Asian tsunami struck on December 26 2004, killing 230,000 people in a dozen countries. Violence in Iraq was the biggest story over the holiday season in 2005/2006 but it was generally quieter elsewhere than in previous years.
Lets all hope that this year is even quieter everywhere.
Best wishes to all from the journalists of Reuters.
Paul Holmes, Editor, Political & General News
Image shows Palestinians at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony outside the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, December 15, 2006. REUTERS/Nayef Hashlamoun
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4 comments so far
Remember Reuters was the one who first covered the Berlin wall..Reuters has got the royal nose for news,which is very rare. i salute all the journalists..Holidays can be enjoyed later, but news is more important..work with the same attitude.
- Posted by Syed AbrarAll the best
Abrar!
“News never takes a holiday”, but Reuters, AP, etc… seem to never present simple and straight news anymore. Reuters and others love to editorialize the news rather than just simply REPORT the news. Example, I was not aware that America “sponsored” Saddam’s trial, yet your two editors (not real reporters), Mariam Karouny and Alastair Macdonald, seemed very determined to state this lie. Saddam’s trial IS Iraqi’s sponsored trial. The US played no part in the actual trial!!!!
Why do you, Reuters, and others, editorialize news today? You corrupt the news to fit your agenda.
Pathetic!!!
- Posted by Jim TanksleyIn response to Jim Tanksley. There is no doubt that the court which tried Saddam Hussein consisted of Iraqi judges and lawyers and was established under Iraqi law. It is equally true, however, that the court had its genesis in statutes promulgated by the Coalition Provisional Authority when Iraq was formally under U.S. occupation. Saddam Hussein was held throughout his trial and up to his execution in U.S. military custody and U.S. marshals controlled security in the courtroom. Journalist Dana Lewis of Fox News wrote an interesting piece in 2005 about how intensively those marshals questioned correspondents before they were allowed to cover the trial, including about their religion and other matters seemingly unconnected with establishing a journalist’s credentials. Lionel Beehner, a staff writer for the non-partisan U.S. Council on Foreign Relations has also noted that the tribunal was originally established with the help of some $75 million in U.S. funds and that the United States supplied the court with legal experts and training. For all those reasons, I am comfortable that the use of “U.S.-sponsored” is a legitimate term.
As for for my colleagues Mariam Karouny and Alastair Macdonald, they are very real reporters and extremely good ones too. We do not have an agenda, other than to report events dispassionately, fairly and without opinion. Mariam, Alastair and their colleagues from Reuters and other news organisations do a great job from Iraq and without them there to do the real reporting, the world would be far less informed.
- Posted by Paul HolmesNews never does take a break… I fact, this weekend the NOAA.gov website was hacked and despite me posting all over the place about it and emailing the FBI, the hacked pages are still there and no one seems to care.
While news does not take a break, it seems that a Sunday night is the best time to hack the US government and get away with it - for a while at least.
- Posted by Thor Schrock