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Reuters

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Reuters is a company supplying global financial markets and news media with a range of information products and transactional solutions, including real-time and historical market data, research and analytics, financial trading platforms, investment data and analytics plus news in text, video, graphics and photographs.

The company was founded by Paul Reuter, a pioneer of telegraphy services. In 1940, there was Hollywood a film about Paul Reuter: A Dispatch from Reuters. Edward G. Robinson played the German-Jewish immigrant to London who as early as 1851 began transmitting stock-market quotes between Paris and London via the new Calais-Dover Trans-Atlantic cable.

Reuter's agency built a reputation in Europe for being the first to report scoops from abroad, like the news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Today, almost every major news outlet in the world subscribes to Reuters. It operates in 200 cities in 94 countries. Reuters supplies text in 19 languages.

In the mid-1990s the company had a brief foray into the radio sector with London Radio's two stations, London News 97.3 FM and London News Talk 1152 AM, which replaced LBC in 1994. A Reuters Radio News service was also set up to compete with Independent Radio News.

On September 28 2001, the Group acquired certain businesses and assets of Bridge Information Systems Inc. Also during the year, the Group acquired 100% of Diagram fip SA and 92% of ProTrader Group LP. In October 2001, the Group disposed of its majority stake in VentureOne Corp.

Allegations of Bias

As with all media companies, accusations of lack of neutrality occur with Reuters. The Wall Street Journal 's OpinionJournal editor, James Taranto, felt the organization was biased against right-wing politicians and causes, often calling the organization "Reuterville" [1] [2]. (Taranto formerly worked for prominent conservative think tanks - the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation.) Most commentators feel that Reuters remains true to its founders principles of journalistic independence.

Passages which have been the source of debate include:

  • "Bush, who avoided combat in Vietnam while serving as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, calls himself a war president for his re-election campaign against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran" [3]
  • "The Bush administration insists its terror warnings should be taken in deadly earnest, but many Americans feel political motives, faulty intelligence and the "cry wolf" factor may be clouding their credibility" [4]

Stephen Jukes, Reuters’s global head of news, banned the use of the word "terrorist" across the board following the September 11, 2001 attacks, which was a controversial policy. Some supporters of Israel, such as Catholic Exchange and Honest Reporting, felt that Reuters's reporting on the Israel-Palestinian conflict had an unfair bias against Israel. * [5] [6]

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