Reuters Editors

Reuters Photographers blog

Welcome to the Reuters Photographers blog. We would like to make this a meeting place for people who love photography – a place where we can have a discussion about Reuters pictures, talk about your own images, encourage quality photography and exchange ideas.

The blog will be run by one of our most experienced photo editors, David Viggers (in the picture), with regular contributions by some of the best photographers and editors in the business.

Our You Witness site has been up and running for a couple of months now and we have received hundreds of excellent pictures. We will regularly talk about these images.

The best and most newsworthy pictures will be used on the Reuters wire and could end up on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

Tom Szlukovenyi is Reuters Global Pictures News Editor

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly blog

When we launched our ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (GBU) feedback pages we wanted to come clean about the mistakes you spotted (we know we’re not perfect) and, in the interests of balance, also share some of the plaudits that came our way (we’re only human).

lt launched in the spring of 1997 as an attachment sent to editorial managers, but quickly spread to journalists, sales people, and others who asked to be on the mailing list. It later became a weekly fixture on the internal website for journalists, and then the Daily Briefing — the internal site for all Reuters staff. Two years ago, the bold and controversial decision was made to actually let the PUBLIC see it, and we unveiled it on reuters.com.

Over the years, many of our most controversial incidents, including some in which we had to withdraw stories, were first uncovered by reader feedback. It is also fair to say that while most reader feedback dwells on the negative, perhaps because that’s just human nature, some comments have been very complimentary. This is especially true of comments on our photos.

Since we first launched GBU on the open Web, the world has changed. There’s been an explosion in blogging and readers have been looking for greater transparency and ways to have their say on matters of fact, tone and accuracy in news content.

That’s why we’re turning The Good, the Bad and the Ugly into a blog. It will still cover the same ground. But rather than appear once a week it will be updated as soon and often as possible by editor Robert Basler.

And, because we do want to encourage readers to join the conversation,the blog means we’ll not always have the last word — readers will be able to comment on the comments from Bob and our team of specialist editors and correspondents. No reader comments will go directly onto the blog; all will be moderated by reuters.com editors.

If things turn really ugly, we’ll hand over to the ‘Reuters Editors’ blog — where our most senior news executives deal with editorial policy issues (among other things).

News about turkeys, not Turkey

I went to an interesting session at Chatham House on Monday, where Harvards Professor Joseph Nye spoke on soft power in the information age.

Soft power is a concept Nye has theorized about that deals with ones ability to persuade and attract others to do what you want, rather than coerce them through the hard power of force.

At one point he bemoaned the fact that the news during his stay in London had been dominated by turkeys and not Turkey, referring to the blanket coverage in local media about an outbreak of H5N1 avian flu on a farm in rural England and a relative absence of foreign news.

His point was, I think, that in an information age people need good access to a wide smorgasbord of information from all over in order to make informed decisions. News reports that are dominated only by local stories dont give people the tools they need to operate in a globalizing world.

The balance of news that people want and that news providers give obviously changes by location and by the degree to which people are personally affected by a story. You cant force people to read something they just dont care about.

Without question, the spread of avian flu and its potential mutation is a global story and not just a local one the key is keeping it in context, and making sure that it isnt the only world story you report on!

Like any story, it needs the right balance of expertise, transparency of sourcing, accuracy, balance and insight.

Reader comments on Reuters photo standards

We’re living in a world where readers expect a conversation and a high degree of interaction with their news providers. I’ve been pleased with the responses we’ve received to the various editors’ blogs we’ve posted. Most have been thoughtful and constructive. Many have posed new questions, and we’ve tried to respond.

As part of this new environment, various people and organizations often start organized email campaigns or coordinated responses to blogs about issues that concern them. Sometimes we get dozens of emails; sometimes hundreds.

Recently, one website — Honest Reporting — suggested its readers send in responses to my posting on photo standards to raise the issue of Reuters 2007 calendar. The calendar became a topic of discussion because one month’s photograph was of a Palestinian militant. That photo stood out as most of the others selected for other months were of dancers, swimmers, performers or farmers.

All the pictures in the calendar, selected by a group outside Editorial. were taken by Reuters photographers as part of the extensive and balanced file of photographs we send to subscribers around the world and publish on the Web.

The many comments we have received about the selection will certainly be taken into account the next time any company committee puts together a selection of images for a calendar or other purposes.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Report on Reuters actions after publishing altered photographs

Last August, Reuters published and then withdrew two photographs from Lebanon that had been digitally altered.

At that time, we immediately terminated our relationship with the freelance photographer who took and altered the images and said wed share with the public the results of our internal investigations.

Experienced photo editors and other senior editorial staff went through thousands of images published during the Lebanon conflict. We are satisfied no other images were digitally altered.

We were not satisfied with the degree of oversight that we had that allowed these two images to slip through. We have tightened procedures, taken appropriate disciplinary action and appointed one of our most experienced editors to supervise photo operations in the Middle East.

Stephen Crisp started in this role this month; most recently he managed the transition to Reuters of our Action Images subsidiary. A British citizen, he has run pictures operations in Europe, Asia and globally while working for Reuters since 1985.

His predecessor in the Middle-East role was dismissed in the course of the investigation for his handling of the case.

We called together our senior photographers to strengthen our existing exacting guidelines on ethical issues in photography and wrote a new code of conduct for photographers, appended to this note.

Graphic images — how far is too far?

Every day at Reuters we deal with hundreds of pieces of news video, ranging from war to showbiz. Through decades of experience and client feedback, we have an institutionalized understanding of what our subscribers want and need, and much of our production process is second-nature.

Occasionally, there’ll be a story where we have to take a closer look at the ethics of the footage, and make judgments on what we put out, what we hold back, and really have to examine what our responsibility is in regard to our clients, our viewers, and society as a whole.

Most recently, the video of Saddam Hussein’s execution prompted wide discussion within the news service. We ran the first “official” footage of the former President  being led to the gallows and having the noose put around his neck, after only a brief discussion.

Later came the more graphic cameraphone footage of Saddam being taunted and jeered at the actual execution, and then his body partially wrapped on the ground. The audio of the taunting was actually more important than the video, as it fed into the global political debate about the manner of the execution. We therefore distributed this taunting, but opted not to show the actual “drop” of Saddam -  the instant of his death – (although we did show the later footage of his body on the ground).

I have to admit that part of me believed we should run the whole thing, as this was Iraqi justice in action, conducted at the end of a long-running trial, made possible by a hugely controversial war and occupation.

However, we chose not to - few if any broadcasters would have run the actual moment of execution, and the showing of the body was proof to anyone who needed it (and certainly the Iraqi people needed that visual proof) that he was, in fact, dead.

Anyone who really wanted to see the entire execution could easily have gone to the internet and found it anyway, posted on any one of several social networking sites, so perhaps we got off the hook in that regard!

Deadly news

Every year at this season, the statistics come out about the number of journalists around the world who died for the story.

There are a couple of key organizations who make the count; their methodologies vary as do their figures, but the end result is clear: journalism can be a deadly profession, and 2006 proved the point.

The Brussels-based International News Safety Institute, of which Im a board member, on Tuesday called 2006 the worst year on record for news media casualties. It counted a total of 167 journalists and support staff who died trying to cover the news in 37 countries in 2006.

As an organization that focuses on safety, INSI counts all deaths, including accidents.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which Reuters also supports, said 55 journalists were killed in direct connection to their work in 2006, and it is investigating another 27 deaths to determine whether they were work-related. The CPJ, which focuses on press freedom issues, doesnt include accidental deaths or count support staff, which is why its numbers are lower than other tallies.

Both organizations detail each case they count on their websites (INSI, CPJ) the lists make sobering reading about brave men and women who died, mostly in their home countries.

Another important tally is by Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based NGO, which we reported on earlier this week. Iraq is a very deadly conflict to cover, and particularly for local journalists.

News never takes a holiday

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.

To embed or not to embed

How closely can journalists work with combatant forces in a war and still remain independent and impartial? That’s a question dozens of news organisations – including Reuters – have been asking ever since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, when the practice of “embedding” with US and British forces became commonplace.   Just in the last couple of weeks, we made a decision to embed one of our French television crews, Laurent Hamida, with British forces in Afghanistan, and he has agreed to describe his experience and answer your questions about how he goes about his job. 

As news editors, one of the most worrying decisions is sending such staff into war zones. While our 500-plus TV customers around the world can decide not to go to a place like Iraq, they expect Reuters Television to be there, and we have been – continuously – since before the war began, with some 30 foreign and local staff in Baghdad and in around a dozen locations around the country. We put our staff through hostile environment vourses, provide them with safety equipment, and all those who go in are volunteers, but safety concerns remain a constant part of our lives.   Embedding with US and British forces has been a fairly routine way for international news organisations to cover parts of the war and continuing conflict, both for safety reasons, and to get access to areas they might not otherwise be able to get to.   It’s a hot topic in the journalism industry though, with the media constantly debating whether embedding is ethically acceptable, whether journalists compromise themselves by abiding by military restrictions, and whether the military has used the embedding programme to manipulate news coverage.

In July, the journal “Foreign Policy” reported:

“…the military has started censoring many [embedded reporting] arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a storythey use the word slantwhat you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they dont like what you have done before, they refuse to take you.”    These restrictions (which many senior military officers say don’t exist) were a main topic of conversation at the television industry annual convention called NewsXchange in Istanbul this year, and have been for several years.

If embedding were the only method of reporting the conflict then that would be deeply troubling for myself and my fellow editors in text and pictures. It is clearly impossible to report a war in a balanced way if all you can – or are prepared to – do is travel with one of the combatant forces. Thankfully this is not the case for us. Most of our television reporting is independent (and we could not function without the outstanding work of our local Iraqi camera crews across the country), but we do occasionally embed. A good example was the US attack on Fallujah in 2004, where we had journalists both with American forces, and inside the city with the civilian population.   What is important is for us to accurately report not only the news, but also the circumstances around how that news is gathered, telling the public if we are embedded, and if there have been any restrictions on our coverage. As the public demands more insight into how news is gathered, we have to be more transparent about the newsgathering process.   In many ways too, embedding is just a fancy word for what journalists have always done – reporting from the front lines with combatant forces. We’ve been doing it since the Crimean War, through the Boer War, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, two Gulf Wars, and a myriad of smaller conflicts in Africa, Asia and Central America. However, just as we are not prepared to restrict our coverage to being embedded with forces allied to the United States and “the West” in general, we – and other respectable news organisations – insist on our right to report from the other side too, whether that’s travelling with the Taliban in Afghanistan (see the controversy over the BBC “embedding” with the Taliban in 2006, the Lords Rebel Army in Uganda, Communist rebels in Nepal, or the FARC in Colombia.    One of the challenges for us is to make sure that American, British and other “western” military forces understand that when we do this, we’re simply doing our job as impartial journalists.

John Clarke is Global Editor of Reuters Television. If you have any questions about TV newsgathering and the issue of embedding then contact John via the comment box below.  

You can follow Laurent Hamida’s experience of embedding in Afghanistan by reading his ‘Diary of a video embed’

Return to Kabul: responses to reader comments

Thanks to everyone for their interest in the work of the Reuters newsroom in Kabul. Here are some answers to the questions readers asked.

Answers from photographer Ahmad Masood

To Canon Fodder, who asks for some tricks of the trade in going from amateur to professional photographer:

Thank you for the nice compliment. I think the best way to learn how to take a picture is to take a picture. This worked out for me fine!   To Sara, who asks about the status of women journalists in Afghanistan:

I think in a way it may come as surprise to many people that women journalists are more privileged than men in Afghanistan. (Though of course, not in areas hit by the Taliban insurgency). The fact that they are women earns them a lot of respect; they get better access, they are treated better and they dont report from behind veils.

To Jonathan Gordon, who wonders if Masood misses writing:

I did try to write and take photographs for a while but I realized my progress with writing in English, which is not my native language, was slow. I could see the results of my progress with photography more quickly, so I dont miss the writing. I am confident I can also be successful outside Afghanistan and I am looking forward to taking photos in a different environment when I am in India. I think it will help my development.