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Engagementasanemergingnorminnewsagencywork
John Jirik, Ph.D.1
Introduction
Nowhere is objectivity in journalism more prominent than in the work of the dominant global
news agencies, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters.2 Because their client base is not restricted to
a particular geographical region, or cultural or ideological space, agency journalists and their
editors are extremely sensitive to the possibility of bias in their reports, since almost any event,
situation or state of affairs invites a range of readings (Boyd‐Barrett & Rantanen, 1998;
Hampton, 2008; Paterson, 2007). In an increasingly inter‐connected world, any antagonistic
situation inevitably invites the scrutiny of news from clients in different situations and
audiences at odds with one another. No agency journalist or editor wants to deal with an irate
client or audience whether the average reader or a national government. But even strict
1 The author worked for Visnews/Reuters Television from August 1992 to March 1999.
2 This chapter focuses on AP and Reuters. The third global news agency is Agence France‐Presse (AFP). But AFP does not have the reach of its Anglophone competitors, although it is strong in Francophone regions (Thussu, 2000: 152). AFP did not begin developing its video arm until 2001 and did not launch this service internationally until 2007, when it established production centers in twelve major cities (AFP, 2007). This has put it at a distinct disadvantage in the television and online markets. Nevertheless AFP’s strong ties with Francophone regions and its availability in Arabic, English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish suggests it should be considered a strong second‐tier agency.
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impartiality is no guarantee that the agencies will avoid criticism for taking sides. The imagined
middle is never the place in a story that an audience invested in the news positions themselves.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Reuters was criticized for an
internal memo in which global 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” (Kurtz, 2001). Reuters later apologized for the insensitivity of the
memo, but the policy remained in place:
“As a global news organization reporting from 160 countries, Reuters mission is to
provide accurate and impartial accounts of events so that individuals, organizations and
governments can make their own decisions based on the facts ... Our policy is to avoid
the use of emotional terms and not make value judgments concerning the facts we
attempt to report accurately and fairly” (Reuters, 2001).
The al Qaeda attacks were the most reported event in contemporary media history. If CNN’s
1991 coverage of the U.S.‐led U.N. coalition that ended the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait launched
the era of the global audience, a decade later multiple audiences globally would better
characterize the way people watched 9/11. Multiple audiences and multiple broadcasters: Al
Jazeera, BBC, CNN, etc., each of them claiming impartiality, each of them shaping the story for
their particular audience, and each of them relying on AP or Reuters for much of the raw
material of that story.
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Satellite television and increasingly the internet are changing the way the agencies are seen. If
in the past they could service their clients within national borders without the problem of
overlap, satellites and the internet have unleashed multiple objectivities in the news, leading to
a mediascape in which the reality of multiple audience subjectivities has replaced the myth of a
single objectivity. “Reuters, like the BBC, the CBC in Canada, and ABC in Australia, have all
emphasized that digital media and satellite television have turned formerly local viewers into
global ones—word choices are now scrutinized by a larger and more diverse audience” (Moeller,
2008: 14).
This chapter focuses on the two global news agencies: AP with its long roots in U.S. press
history; and Reuters with an equally long association with British news culture. I look at the
concept of objectivity, its relevance for the news agencies, and the problem war reporting has
consistency posed for objectivity. I then examine the emerging divergence between AP and
Reuters under impact of different business models and the internet. Finally, I look at Reuters
online news model, and its implications for the evolution of news.
Theconceptofobjectivity
Allan’s (2004: 7‐24) summary of the literature indicates that in the United States and Britain
various currents of the discourse on objectivity have been shaping elements of the newspaper
industry and journalistic practice since the early nineteenth century. The penny and popular
press replaced the partisan and elite press. Commercial pressure to maximize readership
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produced the human interest story that avoided politics and focused on both the normal and
the abnormal in everyday life. A paid (hence the term ‘professional’) press corps developed as
the mass reading public expanded under conditions of industrialization and democratization.
Norms of fact‐based and impartial reporting were embraced by proprietors and journalists to
justify the term ‘professional’ and address in times of peace public disillusion with the yellow
press and the official propaganda of war years. The telegraph fostered preference for a strong
lead, brevity and facts. Improvements to the printing press made newspapers a mass medium.
After World War One, objectivity came of age as an editorial and reporting norm. In the United
States, Walter Lippmann (1998; 2007) challenged the press to limit itself to reporting the facts
and “fight for the extension of reportable truth” (Lippmann, 1998: 361). Lippmann argued that
“news and truth are not the same thing … The function of news is to signalize an event, the
function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts … and make a picture of reality on which
men can act” (Lippmann, 1998: 358). In 1923, the American Society of Newspaper Editors
(ASME) announced their ‘canons’ of journalism. The fifth canon read: “Impartiality – Sound
practice makes clear distinction between news reports and expressions of opinion. News
reports should be free from opinion or bias of any kind” (Allan, 2004: 22).
In Britain, objectivity was not canonized in a set of standards. Despite similarities in the two
press systems, especially the commitment to a fact‐based journalism, Hampton (2008) draws
attention to differences in the two news cultures. In Britain, “Rather than objectivity, notions of
truth, independence and “fair play” held greater appeal” (Hampton, 2008: 478). Instead of
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codified norms as a sign of professionalism, British journalists formalized their profession within
the world’s first trade union for journalists, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), founded in
1907 (Allan, 2004: 20). Partisanship was accepted. British journalists saw no “contradiction
between truthfulness and commitment to specific political principles” (Hampton, 2008: 483).
The different discourses on objectivity in the U.S. and British press indicate that no single
definition of the concept can adequately describe journalism. The ideal typical press implied by
ASME’s codification of objectivity in professional norms has never existed. Rather, what the
British experience teaches is that objectivity has a history and that under different historical
circumstances diverging discourses will produce different practices. What matters is what
journalists do. Objectivity has been an important guideline that helps journalists make decisions.
But it has never been more than a guideline. The practice of journalism has consistency shown
its limits.
Theproblemofwarreportingforobjectivity
Beginning with the Crimean War (1853‐6) for Reuters and the American Civil War (1861‐5) for
AP, reporting conflict became the stock‐in‐trade of agency work, “their major product”
(Paterson, 2011: 134). Objectivity assumes that the event precedes the reporting of a singular
reality. The Reuters’ Handbook of Journalism states, “our images and stories must reflect reality”
(Reuters, 2009). But as the 9/11 example shows, the contextualization of news produces
readings at odds with authorial intention. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even before
AP began to train its journalists in the norms of impartial reporting, war consistently showed
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the limits of objectivity. AP sent “platoons” (Associated Press, 2011a) of reporters to the Civil
War. They were part of the “Bohemian Brigade,” which according to Starr (1987) was not above
“bribery, subterfuge, plagiarism, and outright fakery” (Starr, 1987, cited in Nilsen, 2009: 39).
The problem was not the reporters so much as the news culture in which they were embedded.
Even as fact‐based journalism was asserting itself as a reporting norm, from the outset
objectivity was a relative concept. It was relative to the long history of AP’s and Reuters’
relationships with the imperial, colonial and hegemonic metropoles and relative to their major
audiences. This was the U.S. press for AP, and the British and financial press for Reuters. Put
simply, objectivity was an ideology and took sides.
Soon after the United States entered World War One, President Wilson issued a presidential
proclamation that made treasonous any “news or statements that gave aid or comfort to the
enemy” (Nilsen, 2009). The 1918 Sedition Act threatened fines or imprisonment for any story
that impugned the government, military, Constitution or flag (ibid.) However, the threat to
impartiality implied by Congress’s attitude to war reporting did not threaten the press. Apart
from the Hearst chain,3 most of the U.S. newspapers (which AP served) “believed the war was
being waged to defend democracy, so coverage tended to be positive and patriotic” (Thompson,
2001).
3 Hearst opposed the British Empire and U.S. entry into WWI.
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For its part, Reuters historically functioned as a de‐facto agent of British imperialism. In 1911,
the agency agreed to circulate British government speeches to all corners of the empire (Thussu,
2006: 22). During World War One, Reuters set up a special wartime news service alongside its
main wire. Reuters Managing Director at the time, George Jones, was also in charge of cable
and wireless propaganda for the British Department of Information (ibid.). In 1917, a British
official noted, “At Reuters the work done is that of an independent news agency of an objective
character, with propaganda secretly infused” (Read, 1992:127‐8, cited in Thussu, 2006: 22).
As the British Empire began to disintegrate following World War One and then with the slow
collapse of colonialism post‐World War Two, Reuters and AP moved to shore up their
credentials as impartial observers of global events. But as the example of war shows, the
agencies are not neutral. The actions of each is enabled and constrained by a particular set of
political, economic, cultural and technological contexts, producing what Paterson has called a
“bland and homogeneous, but ideologically distinctive, view of the world” (Paterson, 2007: 60‐
61).
Objectivityinnewsagencywork
AP and Reuters were founded in the mid‐nineteenth century, decades before the discourse on
objectivity was formalized. Five New York newspapers in 1846 launched the forerunner of AP to
cut costs by sharing news, including news from the Mexican war (1846‐8) (Associated Press,
2011a). In London, Reuters by 1851 was using the telegraph to cable stock market information
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between the British capital and the European bourses. From the outset the agencies had a
vested interest in objectivity as a news value, although neither characterized the evolution of
fact‐based reporting in this way. From its inception, AP was serving newspapers that served
different audiences. Its copy had to appear free of bias. Reuters had no interest in its core
constituency of financial clients believing the agency did not provide them equal access to
market‐impacting news and bourse prices.
AP and Reuters were born in an era when capitalism and industrialization were changing the
‘world system’ (Wallerstein, 2004). Boyd‐Barrett (1997:142) described them as “agents of
globalization” in modernity. Local, national and global forms of consciousness were constituted
reflexively with the spread of Europe and U.S.‐centered capitalism, imperialism and
colonization (Bayart, 2007). These mutually constituted discourses of the ‘national’ and
‘international’ were mediated by the news agencies, which traded information as commodities
(Boyd‐Barrett & Rantanen, 1998). The globalization they mediated was not inclusive. It was the
deliberate crafting of a world functional to the demands of its principals, the expanding
European empires, including into the Americas (ibid.).
The news agencies generated and channeled much of the flow of information that was crucial
to the maintenance of the world system. As Wallerstein (2004) notes, this system was not co‐
extensive with the world. It represented the limits of the capitalist mode of production that
originated in Europe and the Americas in the 16th century and then gradually spread. As Boyd‐
Barrett notes: “Study of news agencies confirms that globalisation is Westernisation. Agencies
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themselves inflected globalisation as Westernisation when taking Western‐interests‐as‐norm”
(Boyd‐Barrett, 1997: 143).
In the 1970s and 1980s proponents of the New World Information and Communication Order
(NWICO) were right to point out the imbalance in news flow between North and South, core
and periphery. Their argument rested on a normative premise that information was a public
interest that should not be traded as a commodity. This was nonsensical to the agencies which
equated fair flow of news with free flow as defined by the market in information. This market
treated information‐as‐commodity as part of a natural not a constructed order. The public
interest was the interest of ‘civil society,’ the propertied public of the emerging capitalist order.
As Gerald Long, Reuters Managing Director in 1980, made clear in outlining his company’s
opposition to the UNESCO‐backed attempt to replace the ‘free flow’ of information with a ‘free
and fair flow’: “We are being asked to put up the money and provide the technical, human and
operational resources to spread throughout the world that very view of information that is
most repugnant to us” (Kleinwachter, 1993: 16; Nordenstreng, 1995: 431).
Mediaconstructionofreality
Historically domiciled in emergent modern states, the agencies saw the world in similar ways.
They developed a similar range of services for clients operating in text, radio, pictures and
television. Editorial and journalistic practice eventually normalized around an ethos of public
service and professionalism, codified in journalism handbooks and institutionalized in
newsrooms. As businesses, the agencies cooperated and competed to supply news retailers
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with a modular product that any subscriber could plug into their content, further ensuring
homogeneity across their respective files. From senior executives to junior staffers, personnel
moved freely between the different agencies. Technologies were utilized and developed to
foster a competitive edge. But any margin of advantage was quickly eroded, returning the field
to a comfortably competitive mean that did not threaten the survival of agency news as such,
even if mergers, acquisitions and innovations changed the configuration of players in the field
during any given period.
Today AP deploys some 2,500 journalists in 300 locations. Reuters employs some 3,000
journalists in almost 200 bureaus. Between them, according to their own estimates AP and
Reuters on any given day generate news seen by over half the world’s population (Associated
Press, 2011b; Thomson Reuters, 2011). For most of their history, little distinguished their
product. Analysis of the kinds of information, events, sources and places in the agency file
consistently has produced a picture that privileges powerful nations, institutions and people as
stories and story sources without in any way questioning the ideological assumptions that
would privilege such a world (Boyd‐Barrett, 1980, 1997; Boyd‐Barrett & Rantanen, 1998;
Paterson, 1996, 2007, 2011; Rantanen, 1997). From the agencies’ point of view, their file only
reflects reality. However, critical analysis of news agency file has consistently shown that
dissemination of the particular picture of the world that the news agencies produce privileges
one media construction of reality over other social constructions of reality in which agency
clients are invested (ibid.).
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Attempting to account for the different stories that equally professional organizations such as
Al Jazeera, the BBC and CNN will tell about the same event, situation, person or facts (always
relying to some degree on the agencies), El‐Nawawy and Iskandar (2002) describe the process
of the social construction of multiple realities in the news as ‘contextual objectivity.’ Contextual
objectivity maintains that the news will reflect “all sides of any story while retaining the values,
beliefs, and sentiments of the target audience” (El‐Nawawy & Iskandar, 2002: 27). The audience
for news agency stories is clients. Used to analyze the supplier‐client relationship that
characterizes agency work, contextual objectivity acknowledges one of the claims agencies
have traditionally made, that their job is to provide the raw material for stories, which clients
then tell as they like (Hampton, 2008: 479; Paterson, 2011: 20‐22). However, contextual
objectivity does not address the much stronger claim critics level against agencies, that they are
not so much reporting as creating reality. Allan (2004) sums up the critical position:
“ … ‘news’ exhibits certain evolving yet characteristic features which are shaped in
accordance with cultural rules or conventions about what constitutes ‘the world out
there’ … while journalists typically present a news account as an ‘objective’, ‘impartial’
translation of reality, it may instead be understood to be providing an ideological
construction of contending truth‐claims about reality ... the news account, far from
simply ‘reflecting’ the reality of an event, is effectively providing a codified definition of
what should count as the reality of the event” (4).
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In 1998, Boyd‐Barrett (1998) made an analogous point with reference to the work of AP and
Reuters:
“In general terms the agencies are still mainly providers of ‘spot‐news’, following in the
Anglo‐Saxon tradition, developed in the 19th century and honed in the 20th, of a
‘journalism of information’, which privileges ‘facts’ together with the routines in which
this style of journalism engages to convince readers of the authenticity of such ‘facts’.
The ‘facts’ thus privileged overwhelmingly favour certain categories of information and
event over others, certain sources over others, and certain locations over others.”
(Boyd‐Barrett, 1998: 20)
Divergenceandengagementinagencynews
Despite its limitations, the strength of contextual objectivity as a concept is that it
acknowledges as valid the truth claims news makers make about their work. Objectivity is not
dismissed as a canard but put into a framework that allows for meaningful analysis of the
similarities and differences in agency output as the contexts generating the file change. In the
case of AP and Reuters, two key breaks in their business models have led to subtle but
increasingly visible changes in the way they report news, even if the stories made available to
subscribers appear indistinguishable. The first break was Reuters’ diversification into financial
services. The second is the agencies’ approach to the internet.
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DifferencesintheAP,Reutersbusinessmodels
AP was founded as a cooperative and exists today as a not‐for‐profit corporation. In 2010 it had
1,400 US daily newspapers as its core members with broadcasters and non‐daily newspapers as
associate members (Associated Press, 2011d). The scope of AP’s business is determined by the
needs of its members. Reuters is a for‐profit company that has latitude to change its business.
From 1925 until 1984, Reuters’ majority owners were the British press (Mooney & Simpson,
2003). Despite superficial similarities with AP during this period, Reuters lacked AP’s
institutional base, several dozen British newspapers compared to AP’s 1,700 newspapers in the
United States (Mooney & Simpson, 2003: 9). After World War Two, with the medium of
television expanding rapidly and taking away readers from newspapers, Reuters was struggling
financially and in the words of a senior manager “could easily have disappeared in the 1960s.”4
The company sought to diversify its business away from over‐dependence on press
subscriptions.
Looking to its history of servicing business, Reuters in 1964 launched Stockmaster, the first of a
series of products that serviced financial institutions and would eventually turn Reuters into a
multi‐billion dollar business (Mooney & Simpson, 2003: 9‐12; Read, 1992). In 1984 Reuters’
owners, the still struggling British press, saw an opportunity for windfall gains that could bolster
their own businesses. They sold the company in a listing on the London Stock Exchange. If in the
4 Michael Nelson, Reuters’ Manager of Economic Services (1962‐1974) and Reuters’ General Manager (1976‐1989), cited in Mooney & Simpson (2003: 9).
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mid‐1970s Reuters and AP were still recognizably similar businesses and on a par financially, by
1995 Reuters’ revenue had increased forty times to 2.7 billion British Pounds. The bulk of
revenue was from financial services. Media only accounted for 6% (Boyd‐Barrett, 1997: 139).
Nevertheless, as a news and financial services company Reuters remained captive to
fluctuations in global business cycles and to competition in fields it pioneered from vendors
such as Bloomberg (founded in 1981). In the midst of the global financial meltdown in the late
2000s, Reuters’ board determined that the company was vulnerable as a stand‐alone entity and
in April 2008 sold it to Canada‐based transnational Thomson (Edgecliffe‐Johnson, 2007). In
2007, its last year as an independent company, 6.6% percent of Reuters’ revenue was from
media (Reuters, 2007). In 2010, reflecting the further diminution of media revenue in the
enlarged company, only 2.5% (324 million USD) of revenue was from media (Thomson Reuters,
2011).
Unlike Reuters, AP’s business model locks it into the news business. As a non‐profit corporation,
it exists to serve its members, not delivers its shareholders a dividend. It cannot diversify,
unless its institutional structure is changed. While the relevance of news for Thomson Reuters’
bottom line is shrinking, AP’s commitment to news directly reflects its members’ appetite for
news. In 2010, revenue was 631 million USD, just under double Reuters’ media revenue for the
period (Associated Press, 2011d).
The different business models have put AP and Reuters on different developmental trajectories.
Whereas AP is protected by its members’ need for news, it must follow the lead of its members.
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Reuters is free to innovate, but does so at risk of failure. As Bielsa (2008) points out, making
money from news has always been difficult, especially for the agencies. Despite their size and
monopoly of the business at the global level, profit margins from media for AP and Reuters
have historically been thin. In 2010, AP reported a net loss, its first since 2004 (Associated Press,
2011c: 9). As noted, Reuters might have disappeared in the 1960s. Then in 2008, the board sold
the company, ostensibly to protect it. While the raison d’etre of AP is clear and the corporation
will exist as long as its members need news they are not willing to make themselves or buy
from an alternate source (Reuters?), the rationale for Thomson Reuters staying in the media
business is less obvious. At 2.5% of company revenue in 2010, why not get out? Bielsa (2008)
provides at least part of the answer. She argues that the symbolic capital the agencies derive
from the branding associated with making news is the key reason:
“the continued predominance of a noneconomic principle embodied in the symbolic
value of information … is pivotal in shaping and determining participation in the public
sphere… This is why both governments and profit‐making organizations like news
agencies have often invested in maintaining global networks that cannot guarantee
economic returns. This is also why news agencies, with their wide agenda‐setting
powers, were and have remained the most important players in the field of global news”
(Bielsa, 2008: 349‐350).
Evidence for Bielsa’s argument is reflected in the way the two companies have approached the
challenge of the internet to their traditional work.
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TheimpactoftheinternetonAPandReuters
Research indicates that utopian hopes for news on the internet are either unfounded or still too
faintly realized to be exerting any significant impact on definitions of news (Paterson, 2007).
Traditional media are remaking themselves to attempt to meet the challenges of the medium,
while shaping the medium to meet their needs (ibid.). As the internet siphons off advertising as
a source of revenue for text, radio and television, traditional media are moving online, using the
internet to deliver much the same product that was available offline. Most visibly, the ‘letters
to the editor’ section has been made a virtual space that invites reader feedback. The only
other differences appear to be a minute or so of video, invariably from AP or Reuters,
embedded in the online version of a traditional newspaper, or a streaming video image of an
announcer or news reader speaking into a microphone on what used to be called radio.
Television online is still television.
Not surprisingly, the online news audience behaves in much the same way as the offline news
audience. It ‘chooses’ “a few favorite channels of information, and develops a loyalty to these
that is extraordinary in view of the potential for taking in a wider view of the world” that the
internet offers (Paterson, 2007: 59). The “top news sites correspond almost precisely to the top
media companies worldwide” (Paterson, 2007: 60).
Reflecting the different businesses that they have become, AP and Reuters have adopted
divergent approaches to the internet:
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“While Reuters and the Associated Press are equally ubiquitous in cyberspace, they have
pursued different online strategies. Reuters aggressively moved away from its roots it
terms of distribution, while the AP has mostly remained tied to the subscription model it
has relied on for 150 years” (Paterson, 2007: 61).
Whereas AP content is only available online through its clients’ online services, Reuters has put
part of its file online and directly competes with the online offerings of many of its own retail
subscribers, including media as different as The New York Times and Yahoo. Paterson (2007)
argues that Reuters has “gone into competition with its subscribers” (61). However, my own
reading of Reuters’ move online is that the file available at www.reuters.com showcases the
company’s content without attempting to replace the core content of its traditional subscribers’
offerings online. Reuters online is primarily competing only with The New York Times online
international news. The rest of The New York Times content is not threatened by Reuters.
Offline, Reuters’ subscribers have the option of protesting the company’s move online by
dropping the service and taking AP. But even so, they remain dependent on an agency for much
of their foreign news content. Moreover as the news industry seeks to cut production costs, the
agencies are expanding their client base as portals like Yahoo expand their news service and
traditional retailers moving online simultaneously cut back on original news production
(Paterson, 2007).
The internet has fostered some changes at the agencies in the drive to cut costs and maximize
revenues. AP offers Custom News (http://hosted2admin.ap.org/), which allows subscribers to
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create news modules in their online content that are filled with AP content. Custom News takes
the hard work out of news making, removing the need for original reporting that has always
been one of the agencies’ key selling points. Custom News is a good indicator of the further
homogenization of news that Paterson (2007) has shown counter‐intuitively that the internet
fosters.
Relying on the internet as an increasingly integrated feature of their news distribution systems,
AP and Reuters are expanding their roles as news clearing houses for third party content. The
agenda‐setting function for third parties has always been one of the most powerful functions of
the agencies. Whereas AP and Reuters boast resources that retailers cannot match, their
combined 5,500 journalists in 500 locations is a paltry sum in a world of 7 billion people.
Accordingly, the agencies draw much of their material from members and clients. In the case of
AP, members provide their output to AP, which then circulates it to other members. Reuters
also relies on agreements with its subscribers to ensure access to their material. Although exact
figures are difficult to calculate, my research on television indicates that in 2011, Reuters
produced about 44% of the video on its wire. 56% was from third parties (Jirik, 2011).
Relying on third‐party content undermines agency control over content. In this context, one
development in particular is worth noting. In early 2011, AP and Reuters began distributing
unedited stories from China Central Television (CCTV). The CCTV feed allows China’s state‐
owned broadcaster to inject its news directly into the agency feeds. Reuters stated that the
deal “allows CCTV to broaden its reach into the global broadcasting community while
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simultaneously satisfying our clients’ increasing appetite for news from China” (Associated
Press, 2010; McAthy, 2011). The agency CCTV agreement is unique and recalls the post‐WWI,
pre‐WWII era for Reuters when the British Foreign office paid the agency to “circulate specific
messages on its international wires” (Thussu, 2006: 22). Given China’s drive in recent years to
use media to bolster its ‘soft power’ (Jirik, 2010), using the agencies and their credibility to
deliver its stories worldwide is surely a coup for the Chinese state broadcaster worthy of further
investigation.
Closely related to the expansion of third‐party content on the Reuters system are changes it is
making to the role its contributors play in shaping the file. If traditionally the global news
system has sustained the illusion that newspapers and broadcasters were doing the foreign
reporting that the agencies were doing,5 Reuters’ decision to brand its product by showcasing it
online changes the audience relationship with the news source. As a result, engagement is
increasing in Reuters reporting.
Engagementreplacesobjectivity
In 2008, a senior AP executive noted that television audiences do not understand that “most of
the most dangerous pictures are taken by the agency photographers, not by the people who
work for the branded networks (Eric Braun, former APTN Vice President, cited in Paterson, 2011:
5 That the illusion was intended is obvious from the way television broadcasters use agency material. Most broadcasters pay a premium to use news agency material without acknowledging the source. Some retailers will pay a lesser fee for use of the same material, but with the understanding that they will flash a brief ‘AP’ or ‘Reuters’ on their screens for a few seconds at the top of the story.
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134). Until Reuters opened its online portal, the agencies had remained the unseen bulwark of
the foreign news business. That has now changed. Visitors to www.reuters.com are able to see
the work of one of the two companies that provide much of the world’s foreign news. As a
British TV news editor noted in 1986, “The role of the agencies is the crucial thing … the major
force deciding what ends up on television screens from abroad” (Harrison, 1986: 73, cited in
Paterson, 1996: 148).
In keeping with the character of the internet as an interactive medium, Reuters stories online
invite comments and feedback. For an institution whose marketability was historically its
invisibility, inviting feedback on the file is a radical innovation. Click through on a journalist’s
byline and you are taken to his or her ‘feed.’ Reuters is attempting to turn its correspondents
into ‘names,’ if not ‘stars.’ The audience is invited to get to know the journalists. The feed
usually includes a brief biography sometimes accompanied by a photograph, in some cases an
email address. The journalist usually tells the reader where he or she is from, when he or she
joined Reuters and the focus of their work.
The feed itself offers three channels: Article, Post, Twitter. Articles are news stories, by‐lined
reports that constitute the Reuters file. Posts are personal observations that range from re‐
posts of third party content through to anecdotes about work. A photographer might post
about his or her work, the reason why such‐and‐such a picture was taken in such‐and‐such a
way. Previously mute images are finding voice. A journalist will post about an experience at a
conference he or she is covering. Twitter can direct a reader to an article, post, or simply
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provide background chatter to the news making process. Closely related to the reporter feeds is
the increased use by Reuters of comment from third parties, which is mixed in with
observations from Reuters journalists and filed under ‘Analysis & Opinion.’
These changes are blurring the traditional distinction between reporting and opinion. Reuters
former Editor‐in‐Chief, David Schlesinger (2010), explained the move. He defines value in terms
of scarcity and acknowledges that the internet undermines value by providing facts free of
charge that the agencies once charged for. He suggests that “technology has created a
completely new concept of community,” giving that community “new powers to inform and
connect” through social media such as Facebook, blogging and Twitter (ibid.). Technology has
“upended the power equation to give control to the end consumer” (ibid.). In order for Reuters
to survive, Schlesinger believes it must abandon the paternalism of editorial authority and
embrace a push pull publishing model that “embraces both the professionalism of the journalist
and the power of the community” (ibid.). What matters today is “context, connectedness and
community” (ibid.).
Schlesinger points to the global financial crisis triggered by the banks, insurance companies and
housing industry in 2007 and its knock on effect not only on these industries, but on Reuters as
well, and the simultaneous impact of the internet on the news business as the triggers for
change. What Reuters learned from its reporting of the crisis was that “pure facts are not
enough. Pure facts don’t tell enough of the story; pure facts won’t earn their way … The facts
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were there. But they weren’t put together in a way that was compelling enough or powerful
enough to change the course of events” (ibid.).
In calling for a journalism that will “change the course of events,” Schlesinger was abandoning
the bedrock assumption of objectivity, that the “images and stories must reflect reality”
(Reuters, 2009). This was a radical shift for a company that considers impartiality the grail of
journalism. Clearly Reuters actually wants to have it both ways. Schlesinger (2010) admits as
much, arguing that his job is “to ensure that the journalistic tradition of yesterday melds with
the social media ethos” (ibid.). But the canons of impartiality and objectivity cannot survive the
media construction of reality, even if reality remains fact‐based. What the new journalism at
Reuters does is put the reporter squarely in the story. The decision‐making process from story
selection to final crafting becomes a function of real people making real‐time decisions about
news. This overturns the idea that news is a reflection of reality. Foregrounded in the new
model is the question of whose reality, which reality, why this reality and not that reality?
Schlesinger has opened a Pandora’s Box for Reuters that is perhaps the single most honest
statement the company has made about its work in its 160‐year history.
Schlesinger’s (2010) post was entitled ‘Changing journalism; changing Reuters.’ The rise of the
internet and social media present an opportunity and a challenge. But it was not the technology
that forced Reuters’ hand. It was changing business conditions that necessitated the sale of the
company to Thomson. The shift to embrace social media and a more engaged journalism was a
strategic decision that the internet enabled, but did not compel. If technology was changing
23
news in the manner Schlesinger claims, then AP would have had to confront the same issues
that Reuters did. But AP operates in a protected business environment. AP’s business model
prevents it from diversifying in a manner inconsistent with the demands of its members. The
company has not made a single concession to the internet that redefines its traditional way of
doing news.
As the long history of agency research shows, every story privileges one reality over every other
unreported reality. Objectivity was a term relative to the interests of the news makers and their
subscribers. In a sense all that Reuters is now doing is attempting to put objectivity back into
context. What AP and Reuters have chosen to report and why has always depended on choices
made by the agencies, not on some naturally occurring phenomenon called news. Any short‐
term challenge to the global status quo of who and what gets in the news, where, when and
why is unlikely.
There is nothing new in Reuters’ recognition that facts are not enough. When Lippmann
outlined the argument for a fact‐based journalism devoid of opinion, he encountered the
opposition of John Dewey, who argued for media that would serve the public by mediating the
latter’s relationship with power (Carey, 1989; Schudson, 2008). Dewey believed the public
interest was best served by an engaged press. Reuters’ turn to engagement was driven by
commercial pressure and enabled by technology. Whether engagement can extend beyond
Reuters’ historically exclusive constituencies to embrace of a more inclusive public interest
remains to be seen.
24
Conclusion
War reporting lays bare the role of the reporter in making news. Its long history undermines
objectivity in reporting (Clarke, 2006; Paterson, 2011). Almost ten years after 9/11, al Qaeda
chose Ayman al‐Zawahri to replace Osama bin Laden as its leader. AP showed its commitment
to one reality, calling al Qaeda a “terror network” (Hendawi, 2011). Reuters showed its
commitment to a different reality, calling al Qaeda a “network” (Anabtawi, 2011) . In 2001,
Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz criticized Reuters for its “value‐neutral approach” to
9/11 (Moeller, 2008: 13). But Reuters was not being value neutral. Rather, refusal to use the
term ‘terrorist’ was an editorial commitment to an interest that set Reuters apart from the U.S.
press.
When AP and Reuters were founded in the mid‐19th century, the United States was beginning
to assert its independence in a world still dominated by Britain. Contextual objectivity helps
explain the different ways in which the two companies operationalized objectivity as a shared
journalistic norm. 9/11 clarified that different realities are now the norm in the news. The
changing business and technological environments in which news makers operate further
separate the types of work that AP and Reuters do. Whereas AP currently remains committed
to a traditional definition of reporting, Reuters has embraced engagement in the online
reporting environment. If short term the file pushed to clients is unlikely to change, the simple
fact remains that different business models and approaches to the internet are beginning to
pull the world’s two most powerful news agencies in different directions. Although war is a limit
case, the turn to engagement is likely to amplify differences. Engagement puts Reuters in a
25
different place than AP. Continued evolution of the U.S. press model will determine the
meaning of objectivity for AP. Reuters’ decision to foreground the work of its reporters
acknowledges that media construction of reality is not at odds with fact‐based reporting when
objectivity is put in context.
26
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