Another corporate casualty
“For more than 150 years, Reuters has been one of the great independent news organisations. No longer,” writes the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston. “This morning it has agreed to be bought for £8.7bn by Thomson of Canada.”
Having been schooled in the dark arts of hackery by disciples of the Baron, it would be easy to get overly sentimental. A former colleague counsels against it:
There are some great journalists at Reuters, in print, video and pictures, and some great former ones who got killed in pursuit of their work. They are, or were, far better journalists than I could ever hope to be. Their organisation, however, is not the unblemished force for good that it likes to project as its image. It fails miserably to bring the independence, impartiality, integrity and freedom from bias that is needed to throw clear light on the world’s problems. That, in the very least, would demand unrelenting analysis and criticism of the issues presented by global capitalism and the holders of capital, most of whom are Reuters clients past or present. It can claim to do a better job than many other media organisations but that’s hardly difficult.
The rot started decades ago. Having survived without profits for 120 years, Reuters staked its future on a black box called the Monitor. This gizmo and its successors fed headlines and exchange rates to bankers at their desks, enabling them to sell currencies to each other. Ever since, the news agency this was supposed to be subsidising has taken a back seat to the business of flogging trading systems (and the bulletins that offer punters constantly updating reasons to gamble in a $2 trillion-a-day casino).
For a while it was a licence to print money, which is pretty much what the journalists who ran the company did. Then the markets got wise to their woeful grasp of management and the price of Reuters shares collapsed, just as I was being offered an option to buy some at five times their value.
Enter Tom Glocer, an American lawyer who’s spent the past couple of years negotiating himself a new corporate shell to get rich in. So much for the empty rhetoric he’s supposed to fill full of the promise of what Reuters once claimed to want to be. Not any more.
To quote a senior editor who takes day-to-day decisions about global coverage:
“We are a capitalist company providing capitalist news. We do not go in for campaigning.”
Err… except when it comes to framing stories according to the requirements of banking clients. Anyhow, enough of this directionless carping. Touchy-feely Tom is soliciting personal mind-bullets:
“If any of you have any pressing questions please, catch me in the corridor – as you often do – or send me an email. I’ll do my best to answer them.”
Very well then.
Subject: Your statement today
Date: 15 May 2007 17:09:48 BDT
To: tom.glocer@reuters.comDear Tom,
You say the sale of Reuters marks “a turning point in [its] 156-year history”. Absolutely: you’ve just shredded its code of ethics.
How can the Reuters Trust Principles “be adopted by the combined companies in full” if Thomson has already bought the right to violate them?
The first principle stipulates that “Reuters shall at no time pass into the hands of any one interest, group or faction”, while the company’s constitution bars anyone from holding more than 15 percent of its shares.
Now that you’ve exempted Thomson from these basic requirements, why should it care about such lofty abstractions as “integrity, independence and freedom from bias”?
Moreover, the Trust Principles mandate Reuters to provide “reliable news services to newspapers, news agencies, broadcasters and other media subscribers”. Why then does today’s deal only refer to news in the context of “creating a global leader in electronic information services [and] trading systems”?
Is all reporting now to be geared explicitly to the demands of financial markets? If so, how can it possibly be sold as “unbiased”?
Finally, The Observer reported on Sunday that you stood to make £30 million from the takeover. Is that figure accurate? If not, how big is your windfall?
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Daniel Simpson
Actually, I’m not at all sure I do.
May 16, 2007 at 8:15 am
It would be interesting to understand why the Director’s caved in and ignored the 15% rule – also what they get out of the almost £9 Billion.
Colin.
July 22, 2008 at 4:31 pm
[...] at no time pass into the hands of any one interest, group or faction.” With it new owners exempted, what future for such lofty Trust abstractions as “integrity, independence and freedom from [...]