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However, when reporting the [[7 July 2005 London bombings]], the service reported, "Police said they suspected terrorists were behind the bombings." This line appeared to break with their previous policy and was also criticised.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006927#bbc |title=The Wall Street Journal Online – Best of the Web Today |publisher=Opinionjournal.com |accessdate=3 October 2010}}</ref> Reuters later clarified by pointing out they include the word "when we are quoting someone directly or in indirect speech," and the headline was an example of the latter.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://about.reuters.com/aboutus/editorial/ | work=Market Update & News Provided by Reuters.com | title=Reuters – About Reuters – About us}}</ref> The news organisation has subsequently used "terrorist" without quotations when the article clarifies that it is someone else's words.
However, when reporting the [[7 July 2005 London bombings]], the service reported, "Police said they suspected terrorists were behind the bombings." This line appeared to break with their previous policy and was also criticised.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006927#bbc |title=The Wall Street Journal Online – Best of the Web Today |publisher=Opinionjournal.com |accessdate=3 October 2010}}</ref> Reuters later clarified by pointing out they include the word "when we are quoting someone directly or in indirect speech," and the headline was an example of the latter.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://about.reuters.com/aboutus/editorial/ | work=Market Update & News Provided by Reuters.com | title=Reuters – About Reuters – About us}}</ref> The news organisation has subsequently used "terrorist" without quotations when the article clarifies that it is someone else's words.

In 2011, the [Journal of Applied Business Research]] published research by Henry I. Silverman, of [[Roosevelt University]] which concluded that 'Reuters engages in systematically biased storytelling in favor of the Arabs/Palestinians'


===Photograph controversies / Accusations of anti-Israel bias===
===Photograph controversies / Accusations of anti-Israel bias===

Revision as of 23:23, 9 January 2012

This article is about the Reuters news agency. For the current parent company, see Thomson Reuters. For the former parent company prior to its 2008 merger with the Thomson Corporation, see Reuters Group.
Reuters
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryNews agency
FoundedOctober 1851
HeadquartersLondon, United Kingdom
OwnerThomson Reuters
Websitewww.reuters.com

Reuters (/[invalid input: 'icon']ˈrɔɪtərz/) is a news agency headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data. Since the merger between Reuters Group and the Thomson Corporation the Reuters news agency has been a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, forming part of its Markets Division.

History

The 23 November 1878 Reuters Telegram telling of the Battle of Ali Masjid.

Paul Julius Reuter was born in 1816 in Kassel, Germany. With the electric telegraph, news no longer required days or weeks to travel long distances. In the 1850s, the 34-year-old Reuter was based in Aachen – then in the Kingdom of Prussia, now in Germany – close to the borders with the Netherlands and Belgium. He began using the newly opened Berlin–Aachen telegraph line to send news to Berlin. However, the telegraph did not extend the 76 miles (122 km) to Brussels, Belgium's capital city and financial center. Reuter saw an opportunity to speed up news service between Brussels and Berlin by using homing pigeons to bridge that gap.

In 1851, Reuter moved to London. After failures in 1847 and 1850, attempts by the Submarine Telegraph Company to lay an undersea telegraph cable across the English Channel, from Dover to Calais, promised success. Reuter set up his "Submarine Telegraph" office in October 1851 just before the opening of that undersea cable in November, and he negotiated a contract with the London Stock Exchange to provide stock prices from exchanges in continental Europe in return for access to the London prices, which he then supplied to stockbrokers in Paris. In 1865, Reuter's private firm was restructured, and it became a limited company (a corporation) called the Reuter's Telegram Company. Reuter had been naturalised as a British subject in 1857.

Reuter's agency built a reputation in Europe for being the first to report news scoops from abroad, such as Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Almost every major news outlet in the world now subscribes to Reuters' services, which operates in over 200 cities in 94 countries in about 20 languages.

The last surviving member of the Reuters family founders, Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, died at age 96 on 25 January 2009, after having suffered a series of strokes.[1]

Journalists

Reuters employs several thousand journalists, sometimes at the cost of their lives. In May 2000, Kurt Schork, an American reporter, was killed in an ambush while on assignment in Sierra Leone. In April and August 2003, news cameramen Taras Protsyuk and Mazen Dana were killed in separate incidents by US troops in Iraq. In July 2007, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed when they were fired upon by a US military Apache helicopter in Baghdad[2] after having been mistakenly identified as carrying weapons.[3] During 2004, cameramen Adlan Khasanov in Chechnya and Dhia Najim in Iraq were also killed. In April 2008, cameraman Fadel Shana was killed in the Gaza Strip after being hit by an Israeli tank using flechettes.[4] The first Reuters journalist to be taken hostage in action was Anthony Grey. Detained while covering the Cultural Revolution in Peking in the late 1960s, it was said to be in response to the jailing of several Chinese journalists by the colonial British Government in Hong Kong.[5] He was considered to be the first political hostage of the modern age and was released after almost 2 years of solitary confinement. Awarded an OBE by the British Government in recognition of this, he went on to become a best selling author.

Fatalities

Name Nationality Location Date
Kurt Schork American Sierra Leone 24 May 2000
Taras Protsyuk Ukrainian Iraq 8 April 2003
Mazen Dana Palestinian Iraq 17 August 2003
Adlan Khasanov Russian Chechnya 9 May 2004
Dhia Najim Iraqi Iraq 1 November 2004
Waleed Khaled Iraqi Iraq 28 August 2005
Namir Noor-Eldeen Iraqi Iraq 12 July 2007[6]
Saeed Chmagh Iraqi Iraq 12 July 2007[6]
Fadel Shana Palestinian Gaza Strip 16 April 2008
Hiro Muramoto Japanese Thailand 10 April 2010
Sabah al-Bazee Iraqi Iraq 29 March 2011

Criticism and controversy

Policy of objective language

Reuters has a strict policy towards upholding journalistic objectivity. This policy has caused comment on the possible insensitivity of its non-use of the word terrorist in reports, including the 11 September attacks. Reuters has been careful to only use the word terrorist in quotes, whether quotations or scare quotes. Reuters global news editor Stephen Jukes wrote, "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist." The Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz responded, "After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and again after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Reuters allowed the events to be described as acts of terror. But as of last week, even that terminology is banned." Reuters later apologised for this characterisation of their policy,[7] although they maintained the policy itself.

The 20 September 2004 edition of The New York Times reported that the Reuters Global Managing Editor, David A. Schlesinger, objected to Canadian newspapers' editing of Reuters articles by inserting the word terrorist, stating that "my goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity".[8]

However, when reporting the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the service reported, "Police said they suspected terrorists were behind the bombings." This line appeared to break with their previous policy and was also criticised.[9] Reuters later clarified by pointing out they include the word "when we are quoting someone directly or in indirect speech," and the headline was an example of the latter.[10] The news organisation has subsequently used "terrorist" without quotations when the article clarifies that it is someone else's words.

In 2011, the [Journal of Applied Business Research]] published research by Henry I. Silverman, of Roosevelt University which concluded that 'Reuters engages in systematically biased storytelling in favor of the Arabs/Palestinians'

Photograph controversies / Accusations of anti-Israel bias

Reuters was accused of bias against Israel in its coverage of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, in which the company used two doctored photos by a Lebanese freelance photographer Adnan Hajj.[11] On 7 August 2006, Reuters announced[12] it had severed all ties with Hajj and said his photographs would be removed from its database.

In 2010, Reuters was criticised again for 'anti-Israeli' bias when it allegedly cropped out activists' knives and a naval commando's blood from photographs taken aboard the Mavi Marmara during the Gaza flotilla raid, a raid which left 9 Turkish Activists dead.

It has been alleged that in two separate photographs, knives held by the activists were edited out of the versions of the pictures published by Reuters.[13][14][15] The live arms wielded by the Israeli forces who had boarded the ship were not cropped out. Reuters denied these allegations.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Baroness de Reuter, last link to news dynasty, dies". ABC News (Australia). Reuters. 26 January 2009. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
  2. ^ (YouTube) “Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq”—“Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad.”
  3. ^ TimesOnline, April 6, 2010: “Profiles: Iraq journalists killed by US gunships”Retrieved 25-07-2011.
  4. ^ News.Yahoo.com Yahoo! News[dead link]
  5. ^ "Foreign Correspondents:The Tiny World of Anthony Grey". Time. 20 December 1968. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  6. ^ a b Tyson, Ann Scott, "Military's Killing Of 2 Journalists In Iraq Detailed In New Book", The Washington Post, 15 September 2009, p. 7.
  7. ^ "Reuters Terrorist Explanation". Homepage.mac.com. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
  8. ^ Austen, Ian (20 September 2004). "Reuters Asks a Chain to Remove Its Bylines". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  9. ^ "The Wall Street Journal Online – Best of the Web Today". Opinionjournal.com. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
  10. ^ "Reuters – About Reuters – About us". Market Update & News Provided by Reuters.com.
  11. ^ Reuters admits altering Beirut photo, Ynetnews, Retrieved on 3 June 2008
  12. ^ "Reuters Says Freelancer Manipulated Lebanon Photos". Pdnonline.com. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
  13. ^ Mozgovaya, Natasha (8 June 2010). "Reuters under fire for removing weapons, blood from images of Gaza flotilla". Haaretz. Retrieved 8 June 2010.
  14. ^ "Did Reuters Crop a Photo to Remove a Peace Activist's Weapon?". 6 June 2010. Retrieved 8 June 2010.
  15. ^ "Another Cropped Reuters Photo Deletes Another Knife – And a Pool of Blood". 6 June 2010. Retrieved 8 June 2010.

References

  • Read, Donald (1992). The Power of News: The History of Reuters 1849–1989. Oxford, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821776-5.
  • Mooney, Brian; Simspon, Barry (2003). Breaking News: How the wheels came off at Reuters. Capstone. ISBN 1-84112-545-8.
  • Fenby, Jonathan (12 February 1986). The International News Services. Schocken Books. p. 275. ISBN 0805239952, ISBN 0805239959.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (1 January 1989). Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 1: The Formative Years: From Pretelegraph to 1865. Northwestern University Press. p. 370. ISBN 0810108186, ISBN 0810108189.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (1 February 1990). Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 2: The Rush to Institution: From 1865 to 1920. Northwestern University Press. p. 366. ISBN 0810108194, ISBN 0810108196.
  • Schwarzlose, Richard (June 1979). The American Wire Services. Ayer Co Pub. p. 453. ISBN 0405117744.

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Reuters Group.


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