Reuters

Reuters Group Limited, Reuters Group PLC (2008), now a subsidiary of Canadian corporation Thomson Reuters (2008) ( /ˈrɔɪtərz/) is a United Kingdom-based news service and former financial market data provider that provides news reports from around the world to news media. News reporting once accounted for less than 10% of the company's income. Its main focus was on supplying the financial markets with information and trading products. These included market data, research and analytics, as well as computer-based trading systems. Among other services, the most notable was analysis of 40,000 companies, debt instruments, and 3 million economic series. Competitors included Bloomberg L.P. and Dow Jones Newswires.

History

 Beginnings

The 23 November 1878 Reuters Telegram telling of the Battle of Ali Masjid.

Reuters Docklands Technical Centre, London

Paul Julius Reuter noticed that, with the electric telegraph, news no longer required days or weeks to travel long distances. In 1850, 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 (IPO)

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. 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.

Thomson merger

On 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, 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. 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.

Fatalities

Name Nationality Location Date

Kurt Schork American Sierra Leone 24 May 2000

Taras Protsyuk Ukrainian Iraq 8 April 2003

Mazen Dana Palestinian Iraq 17 August 2003

Adlan Khasanov Chechen Chechnya 9 May 2004

Dhia Najim Iraqi Iraq 1 November 2004

Waleed Khaled Iraqi Iraq 28 August 2005

Namir Noor-Eldeen Iraqi Iraq 12 July 2007[10]

Saeed Chmagh Iraqi Iraq 12 July 2007[10]

Fadel Shana Palestinian Gaza Strip 16 April 2008

Hiro Muramoto Japanese Thailand 10 April 2010

Acquisitions & Investments

* Action Images — In September 2005, Reuters purchased North London-based Action Images, a collection of sports photography of more than 8 million images, of which 1.7 million are online.

* Application Networks — In June 2006, Reuters acquired Application Networks, Inc., a provider of trade and risk management software based on JRisk, and agreed to acquire Feri Fund Market Information Ltd (FERI FMI) and its fund database subsidiary, FI Datenservice GmbH (FID).

* AVT Technologies — In December 2002, Reuters announced that it would acquire AVT Technologies, a specialist in foreign exchange transaction technology. Concurrent with the deal, Reuters established an Automated Dealing Technologies business unit, headed up by Mark Redwood, CEO of AVT Technologies.

* Bridge Information Systems — On 28 September 2001, it completed the largest acquisition in its history with a partial acquisition 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.

* ClearForest — In June 2007, Reuters acquired ClearForest, a provider of Text Analytics solutions, whose tagging platform and analytical products allow clients to derive business information from textual content.

* EcoWin — In November 2005, Reuters acquired EcoWin, a Gothenburg (Sweden) based provider of global fianancial, equities, and economic data.

* Factiva — In May 1999, Reuters entered a joint venture with rival Dow Jones & Company to form Factiva, a business news and information provider. In December 2006, Reuters sold its 50% share in Factiva to Dow Jones, who is now sole owner.

* Instinet — In May 2001, Instinet completed an IPO on NASDAQ; Reuters sold its majority stake in Instinet to The Nasdaq Stock Market in 2005.

* Multex.com Inc. — In March 2003, Reuters acquired Multex.com, Inc., a provider of global financial information.

* TIBCO Software — In July 1999, TIBCO Software completed an IPO on NASDAQ; Reuters retains a substantial proportion of the shares. Reuters announced, in early 2000, initiatives designed to migrate core business to an internet-based model.

Corporate locations

The Reuters Building in Canary Wharf, London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Thomson Reuters Building at Times Square, Midtown Manhattan

From 1939, corporate headquarters was in London's famous Fleet Street in a building designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. In 2005, Reuters moved to a larger building in the more modern Canary Wharf. The Reuters Building at 30 South Colonnade is near the One Canada Square tower, Jubilee Park and Canary Wharf tube station. The open space below the Reuters building has since been renamed Reuters Plaza.

The company's North American headquarters is the Reuters Building at 3 Times Square, New York. It is on Seventh Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, and was constructed from 1998 to 2001. Asian headquarters is located in Singapore, having moved there from Hong Kong ahead of the British handover to China in 1997. It has two offices in Singapore, one in the city centre at One Raffles Quay, and another at 18 Science Park Drive next to the National University of Singapore.

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, 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".

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 / Anti-Israel Bias

2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict photographs controversies

Adnan Hajj photographs controversy

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.

(source:wikipedia)