News organs: Reuters

No political type books to share today. I thought I'd share info on the various news agencies and news organs - both "mainsteam" media and niche radio - from which we get our information.

I'll start today with Reuters.
From Wikipedia:

(To begin with, their possible biases)
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 September 11 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,[17] 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".[18]

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. 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. The news organisation has subsequently used "terrorist" without quotations when the article clarifies that it is someone else's words.

Photograph controversies
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. On 7 August 2006, Reuters announced it 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 cropped out activists' knives and a naval commando's blood from photographs taken aboard the Mavi Marmara during the Gaza flotilla raid. In two separate photographs, knives held by the activists were edited out of the versions of the pictures published by Reuters. The live arms wielded by the Israeli forces who had boarded the ship were not cropped out.

Now, history.

Reuters Group Limited (informally Reuters, pronounced Roy-ters, is a global news agency headquartered in London, United Kingdom owned by Thomson Reuters. Until its merger with The Thomson Corporation in 2008, the Reuters news agency formed part of an independent company, Reuters Group PLC, which was also a provider of financial market data, with news reporting comprising less than 10% of the company's income. All of Thomson Reuters' financial market data activities have now been combined into a single Markets Division, of which the Reuters news agency forms a part.

History
Beginnings
Paul Julius Reuter noticed that, 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, there was a 76-mile (122 km) gap in the line between Aachen and 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.

Initial Public Offering
Reuters was financed as a public company in 1984 on the London Stock Exchange and on the NASDAQ in the United States. However, there were concerns that the company's tradition for objective reporting might be jeopardised if control of the company later fell into the hands of a single shareholder. To counter that possibility, the constitution of the company at the time of the stock offering included a rule that no individual was allowed to own more than 15% of the company. If this limit is exceeded, the directors can order the shareholder to reduce the holding to less than 15%. That rule was applied in the late 1980s when Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which already held around 15% of Reuters, bought an Australian news company that also owned stock in Reuters. Murdoch was subsequently compelled to reduce his holdings to less than 15%.

Further protecting Reuters from owner actions that might threaten its independence is Reuters Founders Share Company Limited, formed in 1984 as part of the share float. This company's stated mission is to protect the integrity of the company's news output. It holds one "Founders Share," which can veto all other shares if an attempt is made to alter any of the rules relating to the Reuters Trust Principles. These principles set out the company's aims of independence, integrity, and freedom from bias in its news reporting.[4] Subsequent to the forming of Thomson Reuters the trust principles continued, with the RFSC now holding a Founders Share in each of Thomson Reuters Corporation and Thomson Reuters PLC.

Post-IPO Expansion
Reuters grew rapidly after its 1984 IPO, widening the range of its business products and global reporting network for media, financial and economic services. In 1988, Reuters formed a joint-venture with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to build an automated futures trading system named "Globex" at a cost of over USD$100 million. Key product launches include Equities 2000 (1987), Dealing 2000-2 (1992), Business Briefing (1994), Reuters Television for the financial markets (1994), 3000 Series (1996) and the Reuters 3000 Xtra service (1999).

In the mid-1990s, the Reuters company engaged in a brief foray in the radio sector — with London Radio's two radio stations, London News 97.3 FM and London News Talk 1152 AM. A Reuters Radio News service was also set up to compete with the Independent Radio News. In 1995, Reuters established its "Greenhouse Fund" to take minority investments in start-up technology companies, initially in the USA, only. In October 2007, Reuters Market Light, a division of Reuters, launched a mobile phone service for Indian farmers to provide local and customised commodity pricing information, news, and weather updates.

[edit] Thomson mergerOn 15 May 2007, Canada's The Thomson Corporation merged with Reuters in a deal valued at US $17.2 billion. Thomson now controls about 53 percent of the new company, named Thomson Reuters. The chief of Thomson Reuters is Tom Glocer, the former head of Reuters. An earlier rule of 15-percent maximum ownership was waived; the reason as given by Pehr Gyllenhammar, the chairman of the Reuters Founders Share Company, as that the "future of Reuters takes precedence over the principles. If Reuters were not strong enough to continue on its own, the principles would have no meaning." citing the recent bad financial performance of the company. The acquisition was closed on 17 April 2008.

Journalists
Reuters employs several thousand journalists, who conduct their work all over the world including in "hot spots" - 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 after having been mistakenly identified as carrying weapons.

During 2004, cameramen Adlan Khasanov in Chechnya and Dhia Najim in Iraq were also killed [by whom???????].

In April 2008, cameraman Fadel Shana was killed in the Gaza Strip after being hit by an Israeli tank using flechettes.

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. 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.

Antitrust issues
In November 2009, The European Commission opened formal anti-trust proceedings against Thomson Reuters concerning a potential infringement of the EC Treaty's rules on abuse of a dominant market position (Article 82). The Commission will investigate Thomson Reuters' practices in the area of real-time market datafeeds, and in particular whether customers or competitors are prevented from translating Reuters Instrument Codes (RICs) to alternative identification codes of other datafeed suppliers (so-called 'mapping') to the detriment of competition.

The opening of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of an infringement. It signifies that the Commission will conduct an in-depth investigation of the case as a matter of priority.