Reuters Editors

Link economy and journalism

The following is a guest column by Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters.

Last summer, I published a blog post that laid out my feelings about the link economy and its positive contribution to the evolution of the business of journalism. One year later, Reuters.com continues to encourage linking to the rich content we offer and even pulling interesting excerpts for discussion in a different forum.   In exchange for that occasional use of our content, we ask others to respect the hard work our journalists put into their craft and in some cases risk their lives in doing so by offering prominent links and attribution.

We encourage bloggers and individuals to use a teaser and perhaps add their own perspective to enhance the online experience.  The RSS feeds on Reuters.com are designed to make this easy to do.

Recently, we engaged in a controlled experiment with Attributor to identify websites that republish complete or near complete versions of Reuters articles and have a commercial model, without a license or agreement. In many cases those websites utilize third party ad networks to monetize their audiences.  Some question why we object to websites posting full copies of our stories without a licensing agreement. The answer is simple – we believe it is neither fair nor legal nor ethical.

Our efforts to identify such environments are focused on opening up a conversation with these publishers to create a mutually beneficial relationship.  In the last few days, we received many emails about this experiment, varied in tone from humorous to helpful to downright nasty.  It seems, however, that some of the facts are being overlooked.

First, we absolutely respect and encourage people to discuss and debate breaking news, particularly when referencing our reporting.  We believe it makes societies stronger and are delighted when it happens.  Second, we expect websites and users to kindly respect how we wish our content is linked to and excerpted as opposed to copying and pasting (again, that is why we make our RSS feeds available and always welcome linking to the Reuters.com network).  Third, if websites are commercial in nature (i.e. take advertising) and want to post our full articles we should have a fair commercial relationship.

We have established commercial license agreements with some of the biggest brands in the world to utilize the work of our journalists, but we also have tailor made agreements for smaller publishers, bloggers and individuals to create a model that works well for all parties.

from From Reuters.com:

Welcome to our new home

Reuters is a news power house - our 2,800 journalists in 190 different bureaus around the world are dedicated to being the indispensable news source. News has been in our blood for more than a century and a half, but we've always been restlessly innovating and always looking to the future.

For Reuters.com, the future is now.

This is our redesign, a year in the making. That's a year of extensive discussions with people like you, our elite audience of business professionals, about what would make the site better and faster and easier to use for you as you drive business activity around the world.

We want this to be the world’s best website covering business and finance news, analysis, and opinion. Full stop.

We want you to be able to come for a quick glance at the top headlines, or a longer deep dive into a topic that's important to you. We want you to scan the output of the 2,800 men and women or hone in on a favorite writer or photographer.

This site is for you; we want it to be your ticket to a wealth of news, information, and analysis presented in a cutting-edge format, including text, video, pictures, graphics, user interaction, and personalization features (try the new toolbar at the bottom of every page).

Are we now too speedy for our own good?

Last week I was told that Reuters has lost its ethical bearings. You’ve sacrificed the sacred tenet of accuracy by rushing to publish information without checking if it is true. Your credibility has suffered, the value of your brand will wither and the service you offer to clients has been devalued, I heard.

It was a meaty accusation, especially as it came in the midst of a debate on ethics in journalism held at the London home of ThomsonReuters, the parent of the Reuters news organisation. The charge came from former Reuters journalists and a senior member of the trustees body that monitors Reuters compliance with its core ethical principles.

So what specifically were we being accused of and what defence did I offer?

On the 8th anniversary of the Sept 11th attacks, a day of more than normal sensitivity to security matters, CNN in the United States reported that the U.S. Coast Guard had fired on a boat in the Potomac River in Washington D.C. President Obama was visiting the nearby Pentagon at the time. Reuters rushed out a story on the reports of gunfire, citing CNN as the source for the information, while urgently checking with law enforcement officials. It transpired that CNN had been monitoring radio traffic on an unencrypted Marine frequency and had overheard a training exercise in which crew members shouted ‘bang bang’. Quickly we put out an update to our story making clear it was a false alarm.

I had played a part in crafting our policy on handling such stories and from my place on the debate panel I offered another example for the audience to chew on.  On Oct. 21 Britain’s Sky News reported that the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi had died in Libya. We put out a story, sourced to Sky News and repeating how it said it had the information of the death, while checking with officials and al-Megrahi’s legal team in Scotland. We quickly established that Sky had it wrong and updated our story to say so.

It is grating for any journalist to publish information that turns out to be incorrect. Even if we can say that the original error was made elsewhere some of the flak hits those who replicate the mistake. After all, those who republish a libel are as liable for it as its originator. 

from For the Record:

After the warm glow, telling the cold, hard truths

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.

from For the Record:

Reporting in Gaza: Striving for fairness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Typewriters, Technology and Trust

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

A little girl in my family got a typewriter for Christmas.

Not a laptop. Nothing with a screen. A typewriter. The old-fashioned manual kind with a smeary ribbon and keys that stick.

Typewriters had pretty much gone the way of dodo birds, car tail fins and cigar-chomping editors who yell “Stop the Presses” quite some years before my granddaughter was born. But it was the typewriter used by the school-age, aspiring journalist in the movie “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl” that captivated her.

Or maybe it was the way the typewriter was used. In the movie, a tween-ish girl, played winningly by Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine“), does old-fashioned journalism and writes stories that help right a wrong in Depression-era Cincinnati. Kit may be young, but in a challenging environment she keeps her wits—and a strong sense of ethics—about her.

In today’s rapidly realigning media landscape, typewriters have long since given way to laptops, BlackBerries, camera phones, video phones and Twitter. But here at Thomson Reuters, and in the media as a whole, the need for a strong sense of ethics has never been more necessary.

Not all Hollywood depictions of our profession are that inspiring to would-be journalists — mainly because of the way some on-screen reporters behave.

Keeping the faith: Connecting the dots with religion and ethics coverage

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

Some years ago, an American reporter who covered religion was at Tel Aviv airport leaving Israel.

As she was subjected to the usual questions from Israeli security, she was asked what she did for a living. “I write about religion,” she replied. “Which one?” the security officer responded. “Well, all of them,” the reporter said.

“How is that possible?” the officer asked. After 20 more minutes of questions, the reporter was allowed to board her plane, but it was clear from the conversation that the security officer could not conceive of a journalist writing about a faith to which she did not subscribe.

It’s an interesting question during this season of religious celebrations: Does a journalist have to be “religious” to cover religion? Is it desirable to have a reporter of one faith covering stories about another? What about atheist or agnostic reporters?

Reuters News Religion Editor Tom Heneghan, who produces the excellent FaithWorld blog, says reporters “need to know enough about the religion they’re covering to get beyond the usual clichés about the faith.” But, importantly, “they have to be ready to put aside the usual ‘either/or’ approach they learned covering politics or business. Religion often doesn’t fit into those categories, but into a ‘both/and’ perspective.”

For example, “Pope John Paul II was both liberal in some political issues such as defense of the poor or opposition to the Iraq War, and conservative in Catholic theology. Islam has radicals who commit violence in the name of God and moderates who say Islam is a religion of peace.”

And the band played on: covering the economic crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does foreign news exist anymore?

One of the side remarks at a debate on journalism I attended was that large British news organisations no longer cover ‘foreign news’. They cover ‘world news’. The argument at a London awards ceremony was that in a globalised world, where a multiplicity of perspectives are available on the Internet, news editors should no longer get correspondents (us) to write about foreigners (them). The belief is that the Us/Them dichotomy reinforces harmful stereotypes and encourages shallow reporting rather than deep and detailed journalism.

Much of the debate was about whether contemporary Anglo-Saxon journalism is doing enough to get beyond stereotyping. Amid that was the nagging fear that audiences do not want to part with their prejudices and that news editors will not give correspondents the opportunity to persuade them. The panel of correspondents lamented the diminishing volume of international reporting in the pages of the mainstream press and on the news programmes of major broadcasters. We know the reasons – competition for viewers and readers, pressure on budgets, an assumption that news from distant places is hard to make relevant to fickle audiences. There was a touch of vocational insecurity to the discussion. Nobody likes to think their profession is changing and is being pushed from the limelight. The panelists were reminded there never really was a golden age for foreign news (if I may be excused the term) and correspondents abroad had always struggled to grab the front page. There was some irony as well to hearing BBC friends worry about the corporation’s appetite for international journalism when, as panel moderator Allan Little pointed out, its roster of foreign correspondents has gone from 10 to over 200 in the last two decades. 

The thornier question was does mainstream English-language journalism deliver an accurate portrayal of the world? Who better to probe the issue than the winners of the annual Kurt Schork award, which celebrates compelling and insightful journalism? Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who won for his bold exposes of human trafficking in his native Ghana, doubted if journalists parachuted from abroad could understand his country effectively. You don’t have the language skills and you don’t have the time it needs, he remarked. Nicholas Schmidle, a young American, won in the freelance category for his stories from Pakistan and Afghanistan on the complexities of the Islamist insurgency. He too spent months on his articles and noted they could not have been done without a network of trusted local guides to help him navigate the issues. 

The BBC’s Bridget Kendall spoke of the tyrannous power of televison images that solidify a cliched view of the world. Print and radio’s spoken word allow more freedom to challenge the settled view. The United States, in particular, was accused of living in a bubble of isolation that its television news programmes rarely challenge with fresh global perspectives. Schmidle said it was not as if Americans did not want to know. “The demand is there, but the demand is not meeting the funds.” 

How else to better reflect the realities of the world? The internet is making space for different views but is mainstream journalism opening the door to seeing things differently? Panel participant Peter Apps, a Reuters correspondent left in a wheelchair by a horrific traffic accident while on assignment in Sri Lanka, called for a more racially diverse workforce in journalism. He recalled being sharply but correctly upbraided by non-white colleagues in South Africa if his articles contained a hint of colonial colouring. Audience members reminded the panel that the BBC World Service does a fine job reporting  Africa from African perspectives. One view from the debate floor was that minority groups within newsrooms have a responsibility to challenge stereotypes.

Schork, who died while on assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone in 2000, spent his short journalistic career staring at the grimmer realities of the world and trying to strip the layers of obfuscation and deceit from around them. He was always ready to challenge the complacencies and self-deceptions within journalism as much as in the world he reported upon. Good journalism requires that neither challenge stop.

Anonymous sources – Reuters rules

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)