Talk:Reuters

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Recent 'allegations of bias' addition

I'd like to suggest that the recent addition be reviewed (as a new user, I'm a little wary of touching it myself).

Whilst I'm not going to argue that the allegations of bias haven't happened, the 'Wall Street Journal' reference cited is pretty tenuous - the linked op-ed article merely states that the BBC's editorial guidelines on use of the word 'terrorist' is 'Reutervillian', no doubt pejoratively, but not quite a statement of criticism on Reuters' alleged anti-israeli/anti-american bias (the link placed directly after this claim).

Jherad 22:11, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's actually not a recent add; sentiments along those lines have been added and removed since January 2004, and the "Allegations of bias" section was added later that year. Considering the heft of the Wall Street Journal and the fact that it isn't the only notable criticizing party, I believe these belong in here, in spite of opponents wanting to sanitize this from the article. However, you're right that someone could work on the links. I chose the link in question because it showed that Reuter's "rule" against calling civilian-killers "terrorists" is not followed consistently. Past links, e.g., http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/2003_Dishonest_Reporting_-Award-.asp, charge Reuters with deception in covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by, for example, misstating the goals of Hamas and using deceptive and slanted language against Israel. Clearly the source has an agenda, but anyone who seeks to expose bias - left, right, pro-Western, anti-Western, or otherwise - has one by definition. By the way, critics criticize Reuters more than AP and UPI, and this should probably be stated in the article. (The real root of the difference among the news agencies could be their country of origin, but the difference remains, no matter what its cause.) Calbaer 03:31, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Calbaer - as stated, I'm not really arguing against the 'feeling' of the addition, as I am well aware of criticisms levelled at Reuters for their (lack of) use of the 'T' word. Simply an issue with the given link, and its position in the text given what the article actually states. Anyway, as before, I'm not gonna touch this myself - Just thought it might be worth commenting on, as it surprised me a little. The WSJ link was the only one I took issue with - the other being much more meaty and relevent, even if the source is (at least in my opinion) on shakier bias terrority. Which of course doesn't matter in the slightest, as anyone can look that up for themselves! Jherad 23:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Well there's some new concerns about the bias, one of their recent images from Beirut was doctored very heavily; http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut&only which is quite disconcerting about other news they put out. Only a quick look at the image shows repeating patterns in the smoke, which is about as equally likely to happen as seeing God, finding out the meaning of life and then seeing Jesus doing a hula dance on national TV in the next 5 minutes. Also it's been spotted as a doctored image by professional photographers; http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=21302 --[[User:|User:]] 02:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I see there's been some disagreement about who discovered the fake photograph in the article revisions. For the record, I believe it was Johnson. Before anyone removes it again, please provide a source for your belief that it was discovered first elsewhere. Also, while we're on the subject, I believe Johnson is worth mentioning, given the relative notoriety of his blog and his past interaction with Reuters (the death threat) and the effect his work had on during the "Rathergate" affair. I don't particularly like Johnson, but I believe he is significant enough to be worthy of mention in this section. Stephen Aquila 04:17, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I am convinced it was Johnson of Little Green Footballs as well. I first saw a link early yesterday to LGF at PajamasMedia.com about this, which seems IMHO to be the most copious source of information on the Lebanon War (the other copious source is the pro-Hezbollah site http://angryarab.blogspot.com). The death threat incident where a Reuters employee wrote "I can't wait to see you blogger pigs get your throats cut" firmly established the meme that the Reuters' cultural atmosphere and the Blogosphere atmosphere are locked in some kind of ideological struggle. Since this article is about Reuters, more attention needs to be paid as to the economic reasons why a public company, especially one with the likes of Rupert Murdoch owning 15%, would bear so hard to the left wing according to the accusations of others. Maybe facts need to be stated regarding where Reuters wants to expand and how Reuters might think that the people in these expansion areas need to see news skewed to their prejudices or average IQ level? Is Reuters perceiving its "readership" to be more the underclass than the more affluent people who can read the Internet blogs? Does Reuters see the Muslim world as a growth market? One can be sure that today's "retraction" in regard to the doctored Beirut cityscape will not be reported on by most of the world's newspaper customers of Reuters, many of which have already printed the doctored photos on their front pages and will never run a correction for their millions of readers. How did Reuters skew their news during World War One and World War Two and Vietnam? There is no such thing as a free press and I doubt Reuters was unbiased for most of its long existence. The article makes it seem that Reuters has only developed a bias problem since 9-11. The Blogosphere and Wikipedia feature tons of businesspeople and those not in the journalistic field, while news services like Reuters tend to employ the type of people who have chosen journalism as a profession. Are there salary expectations as well as ideological and personality differences between a photographer who earns $2,000 per month roaming the third world and a businessman who makes $9,000 per month sitting in a London office building? If the businessman earning $9,000 per month instantly spots image fakery in a Reuters photograph and gets a third world citizen fired via exposure of such fraud...isn't that part of a wider class war where the lower classes gather within the low-paid journalistic field to do battle with the richer businessmen? Another question: has someone strategically decided that this class war will be played out as a "cat and mouse game" where journalists manipulate events via wire services and businesspeople use blogs to catch them? This would be like a proxy war where violence is not allowed outside certain proxy areas like Iraq and Lebanon, but biased words fly everywhere like bombs. Meanwhile, where is mention in the article of the denials by Reuters that much of the Qana incident was staged? Reuters responded to the charges, meaning they are relevant to the article. --EnglishGarden 10:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the May 29th Reuters death threat incident was not "hearsay". Attempts to delete mention of this extremely important development in the history of the Reuters company and its employment policies...would be news in and of itself and we can take this to arbitration. By claiming "hearsay" one is saying that Ed Johnson, Communications Director of Reuters, did NOT suspend an employee for that incident and you are calling a competitor of Reuters a liar whose accusations cannot be proven and are not worth repeating. --EnglishGarden 11:09, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

In terms of general editorial policy: on any subject, controversy must be discussed in Wikipedia articles because it is censorship to leave things out, even when you are convinced that those things are irrelevant or worse: PR lobbying by professional organizations. Here is an example: I checked the article on "Mail Order Bride" and found that a lawyer in Washington DC had added a section describing her view of the three murders of "mail order brides" in the past 15 years in the USA (the DC law firm of Arnold & Porter is doing pro bono work to try to regulate dating websites). Knowing that thousands of American women were murdered by their husbands in the same time period, it should have been clear that the long descriptions of the 3 murders were PR added by an employee of a law firm and did not belong to an article on "mail order brides" anymore than a description of 10,000 domestic American murders belonged in an article on "marriage" or "divorce".

But I did not delete the 3 paragraphs about the 3 "mail order bride murders" because they are "being talked about" ...sensationalized in 2 major lawsuits involving the freedom of Americans to meet foreigners online without governmental interference. I kept them in with only a blurb to provide perspective. The murders are not hearsay. They did happen. The law firm is allowed to spread word about the murders, including manipulation of Wikipedia articles, and it is up to the intelligence of the American public to put these murders into perspective (and to read the history section of every Wikipedia article to see what's been deleted).

The same is true regarding Reuters. The company is under attack regarding bias incidents that the company admits happened. If a Reuters PR agent wants to counter the accusations and/or attack the credibility of Charles Johson...Wikipedia readers will be glad to see more information to help them make better judgments of the world they live in. But deletion is censorship. I don't engage in that. Neither should anyone here.--EnglishGarden 11:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I hate to contribute too much today, but the issue of the news services featuring photos of the same Lebanese woman losing a different home every week is downright creepy and needs Wikipedia documentation. This particular link below doesn't apply to Reuters, but a little research will probably find that Reuters has featured this woman who apparently keeps building new homes every week in order to have the Israelis bomb them: http://drinkingfromhome.blogspot.com/2006/08/extreme-makeover-beirut-edition.html. Looks like there will be a Yahoo scandal in the next day or so. Those photos don't lie. Apparently, a massive fraud has been perpetrated by Hezbollah on Yahoo and Reuters in the past month.

I've also researched the possible causes of the "bias problem" and have learned that Reuters is conducting "outsourcing" where they have as few actual employees as possible. In the Middle East, Islamist death threats make it so Reuters stringers must tow the Islamist line or they do not survive and Reuters does not continue to have "access" to "events." Some other editor needs to form a paragraph, preferably an honest Reuters employee who can speak with more authority.--EnglishGarden 13:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I've got a problem with the email to Charles Johnson being called a "death threat." "I hope you die" is different from "I'm going to kill you." In this case, presumably, Johnson's correspondent was somewhere overseas. Additionally there is an element of heresay... I will leave the fact that this email existed in the article, but I am going to call it something other than a "death threat." --AStanhope 16:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

One must place such things in their context. Given the surprising frequency of throat-slitting as a method of dissent suppression by advocates of a certain ideology (e.g., Mohammed Bouyeri), this could reasonably be characterized as either a wish, a threat, or even a call to action. I think calling it "arguably threatening" is fair.

Furthermore, where's the hearsay problem? No one appears to be denying that the e-mail did, in fact, exist, or that its content was other than Johnson described. Also, this would only be hearsay if we were quoting someone else saying X threatened Johnson. As is, we are quoting Johnson saying that he has been threatened and Reuters saying they took action, a level of source unbeatable except by asking Moira Whittle or Charles Johnson themselves to edit the page (which would be problematic). Stephen Aquila 15:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Keep "allegations of bias" section succinct

Otherwise the whole section will look biased. Instead of repeating or expanding on already included information add references for further reading. [[User:|User:]] 20:42, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

While succinct is always helpful to readers of any medium, shouldn't we examine the broader issue? There are at least two lexically identifiable camps regarding media bias - one uses the term "MSM" or "Main Stream Media" and the other uses the term "Corporate Media." In American politics, these camps are identified with the right and left respectively. Internet searches on either term will yield a great deal of content, most of which does nothing to substantively examine the questions at hand - are leading news media outlets (Reuters among them) biased? Are they "tilting" the news to play to unarticulated preassumptions of readers, leading the reader to conclusions that a mere statement of observations would not lead to? Are they simply ignoring substantive stories because they undermine an agenda of corporate gloablization? These are a fundamental questions affecting Reuters, and Reuters is very much in the thick of the debate.

Because so many people have an interest in the question of media bias, shouldn't readers looking at Reuters at least get more than a bland morsel of "some allegations have been made?" To my thinking, it is a fundamental question that Reuters tries to deal with - certainly some content here should reflect that, succinct or not. [[User:|User:]] 03:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

EnglishGarden brings up a number of points, but if we want to have a thorough resource of the whens, whats, wheres, hows, and speculative whys of Reuters bias, that should probably have its own page (so that that can be destroyed and/or marked with a POV tag, not this section). For now, a "bland morsel" - to which some very unbland links are attached - isn't a bad start. This section has gotten deleted and recreated so many times that we should constantly be on the watch for POV, so that no reasonable person can be justified in deleting it yet again. On a similar note, one fault with Wikipedia in general seems to be that, because it is new and always updated, recent events get a lot more space than older events. This can be seen in this section, where the events of the last few days dominate the section. This isn't horrible, but perhaps the more recent stuff should be shortened rather than (or in addition to) the older stuff being lengthened. Calbaer 16:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. At this point, we might want to consider moving much of the information from the most recent incident to its own page, perhaps using the term "Reutergate" (lots of blogs are calling it that, but I'm definitely open to better names if we can come up with one). That would allow us to examine the situation in the same detail, but without cluttering the Reuters page. A simple link and summary would suffice. Stephen Aquila 00:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind someone beefing things up with a World War Two bias paragraph and a Vietnam war bias paragraph, if there are facts to back up the text. All press organizations slant things "their way" and, therefore, important press organizations have become part of (and not neutral to) major transitional periods like wars. World War Two was largely successful within six years because the media overwhelmingly supported the Allies. Most people agree that the results of the Vietnam War were largely shaped by the press and not by battles on the ground (nobody knows why China changed its foreign policy). Reuters has been a very important news shaper and I am not necessarily saying that now, if they are purposefully biased instead of just outsourcing too much, the west will lose a civilizational war as a result. By giving anti-western Muslims the belief that they can "be heard" and "fight and win in a war of words"...the actual level of violence in the "war on terror" could be less than it would have been if the western media ignored their POV, forcing them to find ways, like 9-11, to speak louder. Take for instance, this film about Pallywood: http://youtube.com/watch?v=t_B1H-1opys. It is almost sweet to see young Palestinian teenage males being told by film directors to shoot into empty buildings so Reuters photogs or the six oclock news in Atlanta would see a brave "intifada" where Israeli troops are supposedly being shot at. It means that, at least in the case of this film expose, the Palestinians were content to play-act in front of western media "stringers" rather than seriously shoot bullets at actual Israeli troops. Similarly, if Hezbollah's main "weapon" in the current war is "the western media" it means that their main weapon is not a nuclear bomb; it means that they might intend to win only a media war. So Reuters might be sacrificing some of its credibility in the west in order to reduce the level of violence overall. Caveat emptor. Educated westerners are expected to read between the lines. --EnglishGarden 17:55, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Allegations section

I removed the first section, since the second section expanded and explained it. kc12286 23:30, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

That was — I should've just reverted his rewrite instead of fixing it, since obviously I didn't fix everything. Calbaer 02:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)