This article is about the Reuters news agency. For the current parent company, seeThomson Reuters. For the former parent company prior to its 2008 acquisition by The Thomson Corporation, seeReuters Group.
The agency was established in London in 1851 by the GermanbaronPaul Reuter. TheThomson Corporation of Canada acquired the agency in a 2008 corporate merger, resulting in the formation of the Thomson Reuters Corporation.[8]
In December 2024, Reuters was ranked as the 27th most visited news site in the world, with over 105 million monthly readers.[9]
Paul Julius Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm inBerlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of theRevolutions of 1848. These publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service inAachen usinghoming pigeons and electrictelegraphy from 1851 on, in order to transmit messages betweenBrussels and Aachen,[10] in what today is Aachen's Reuters House.
Reuter moved toLondon in 1851 and established anews wire agency at theLondon Royal Exchange. Headquartered in London, Reuter's company initially covered commercial news, serving banks, brokerage houses, and business firms.[11] The first newspaper client to subscribe was the LondonMorning Advertiser in 1858, and more began to subscribe soon after.[11][12] According to theEncyclopædia Britannica: "the value of Reuters to newspapers lay not only in the financial news it provided but in its ability to be the first to report on stories of international importance."[11] It was the first to reportAbraham Lincoln's assassination inEurope, for instance, in 1865.[11][13]
In 1865, Reuter incorporated his private business, under the name Reuter's Telegram Company Limited; Reuter was appointed managing director of the company.[14]
In 1870 the press agencies FrenchHavas (founded in 1835), British Reuter's (founded in 1851) and German Wolff (founded in 1849) signed an agreement (known as the Ring Combination) that set 'reserved territories' for the three agencies. Each agency made its own separate contracts with national agencies or other subscribers within its territory. In practice, Reuters, who came up with the idea, tended to dominate the Ring Combination. Its influence was greatest because its reserved territories were larger or of greater news importance than most others. It also had more staff andstringers throughout the world and thus contributed more original news to the pool. British control of cable lines made London itself an unrivalled centre for world news, further enhanced by Britain's wide-ranging commercial, financial and imperial activities.[15]
In 1872, Reuter's expanded into theFar East, followed by South America in 1874. Both expansions were made possible by advances in overland telegraphs and undersea cables.[13] In 1878, Reuter retired as managing director, and was succeeded by his eldest son,Herbert de Reuter.[14] In 1883, Reuter's began transmitting messages electrically to London newspapers.[13]
Reuter's son Herbert de Reuter continued as general manager until his death by suicide in 1915. The company returned to private ownership in 1916, when all shares were purchased byRoderick Jones and Mark Napier; they renamed the company "Reuters Limited" and dropped the apostrophe.[14] In 1919, a number of Reuters reports falsely described the anti-colonialMarch 1st Movement protests in Korea as violentBolshevik uprisings. South Korean researchers found that a number of the reports were cited in a number of international newspapers and possibly negatively influenced international opinion on Korea.[16] In 1923, Reuters began using radio to transmit news internationally, a pioneering act.[13] In 1925, thePress Association (PA) ofGreat Britain acquired a majority interest in Reuters, and full ownership some years later.[11]
During the world wars,The Manchester Guardian reported that Reuters: "came under pressure from the British government to serve national interests. In 1941, Reuters deflected the pressure by restructuring itself as a private company."[13] In 1941, the PA sold half of Reuters to theNewspaper Proprietors' Association, and co-ownership was expanded in 1947 to associations that represented daily newspapers in New Zealand and Australia.[11] The new owners formed the Reuters Trust. The Reuters Trust Principles were put in place to maintain the company's independence.[17] At that point, Reuters had become "one of the world's major news agencies, supplying both text and images to newspapers, other news agencies, and radio and television broadcasters."[11] Also at that point, it directly or through national news agencies provided service to most countries, reaching virtually all the world's leading newspapers and many thousands of smaller ones, according toBritannica.[11]
In 1961, Reuters scooped news of the erection of theBerlin Wall.[18] Reuters was one of the first news agencies to transmit financial data over oceans via computers in the 1960s.[11] In 1973, Reuters "began making computer-terminal displays of foreign-exchange rates available to clients."[11] In 1981, Reuters began supporting electronic transactions on its computer network and afterwards developed a number of electronic brokerage and trading services.[11] Reuters was floated as a public company in 1984,[18] when Reuters Trust was listed onstock exchanges[13] including theLondon Stock Exchange (LSE) andNASDAQ.[11] Reuters later published the first story of the Berlin Wall being breached in 1989.[18]
Reuters was the dominant news service on theInternet in the 1990s. It earned this position by developing a partnership withClariNet andPointCast, two early Internet-based news providers.[19]
Reuters' share price grew during thedotcom boom, then fell after the banking troubles in 2001.[13] In 2002,Britannica wrote that most news throughout the world came from three major agencies: theAssociated Press, Reuters, andAgence France-Presse.[7]
Until 2008, the Reuters news agency formed part of an independent company,Reuters Group plc. Reuters was acquired byThomson Corporation in Canada in 2008, forming Thomson Reuters.[11] In 2009, Thomson Reuters withdrew from the LSE and the NASDAQ, instead listing its shares on theToronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and theNew York Stock Exchange (NYSE).[11] The last surviving member of the Reuters family founders,Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, died at age 96 on 25 January 2009.[20] The parent company Thomson Reuters is headquartered inToronto, and provides financial information to clients while also maintaining its traditional news-agency business.[11]
In 2012, Thomson Reuters appointed Jim Smith as CEO.[17] In July 2016, Thomson Reuters agreed to sell its intellectual property and science operation for $3.55 billion to private equity firms.[21] In October 2016, Thomson Reuters announced expansions and relocations toToronto.[21] As part of cuts and restructuring, in November 2016, Thomson Reuters Corp. eliminated 2,000 jobs worldwide out of its estimated 50,000 employees.[21] On 15 March 2020, Steve Hasker was appointed president and CEO.[22]
In April 2021, Reuters announced that its website would go behind apaywall, following rivals who have done the same.[23][24]
In March 2024,Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, signed an agreement with Reuters to use the wire service's global content after cancelling its contract with theAssociated Press.[25]
Reuters employs some 2,500 journalists and 600photojournalists[27] in about 200 locations worldwide.[28][29][8] Reuters journalists use theStandards and Values as a guide for fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests, to "maintain the values of integrity and freedom upon which their reputation for reliability, accuracy, speed and exclusivity relies."[30][31]
While covering China'sCultural Revolution inPeking in the late 1960s for Reuters, journalistAnthony Grey was detained by the Chinese government in response to the jailing of several Chinese journalists by the colonial British government ofHong Kong.[36] He was released after being imprisoned for 27 months from 1967 to 1969 and was awarded anOBE by the British Government. After his release, he went on to become a best-selling historical novelist.[37]
In May 2016, the Ukrainian websiteMyrotvorets published the names and personal data of 4,508 journalists, including Reuters reporters, and other media staff from all over the world, who were accredited by the self-proclaimed authorities in theseparatist-controlled regions of easternUkraine.[38]
In 2018, two Reuters journalists were convicted inMyanmar of obtaining state secrets while investigating a massacre in aRohingya village.[39] The arrest and convictions were widely condemned as an attack onpress freedom. The journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, received several awards, including the Foreign Press Association Media Award and thePulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and were named as part of theTime Person of the Year for 2018 along with other persecuted journalists.[40][41][42] After 511 days in prison, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were freed on 7 March 2019 after receiving a presidential pardon.[43]
In February 2023, a team of Reuters journalists won theSelden Ring Award for their investigation that exposed human-rights abuses by the Nigerian military.[44]
In 1977,Rolling Stone andThe New York Times said that according to information fromCIA officials, Reuters cooperated with the CIA.[46][47][48] In response to that, Reuters' then-managing director, Gerald Long, had asked for evidence of the charges, but none was provided, according to Reuters' then-managing editor for North America,[48] Desmond Maberly.[49][50]
Reuters has a policy of taking a "value-neutral approach," which extends to not using the wordterrorist in its stories. The practice attracted criticism following theSeptember 11 attacks.[51] Reuters' editorial policy states: "Reuters may refer without attribution to terrorism and counterterrorism in general, but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor does Reuters use the wordterrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events."[52] By contrast, theAssociated Press usesthe termterrorist in reference to non-governmental organizations that carry out attacks on civilian populations.[51] In 2004, Reuters asked CanWest Global Communications, a Canadian newspaper chain, to remove Reuters'bylines, as the chain had edited Reuters articles to insert the wordterrorist. A spokesman for Reuters stated: "My goal is to protect my reporters and protect our editorial integrity."[53]
In July 2013, David Fogarty, former Reutersclimate change correspondent in Asia, resigned after a career of almost 20 years with the company and wrote that "progressively, getting any climate change-themed story published got harder" after comments from then-deputy editor-in-chiefPaul Ingrassia that he was a "climate change sceptic." In his comments, Fogarty stated:[54][55][56]
By mid-October, I was informed that climate change just wasn't a big story for the present, but that it would be if there was a significant shift in global policy, such as the US introducing an emissions cap-and-trade system. Very soon after that conversation I was told my climate change role was abolished.
Ingrassia, formerly Reuters' managing editor, previously worked forThe Wall Street Journal andDow Jones for 31 years.[57][58] Reuters responded to Fogarty's piece by stating: "Reuters has a number of staff dedicated to covering this story, including a team of specialist reporters at Point Carbon and a columnist. There has been no change in our editorial policy."[59]
Subsequently, climate bloggerJoe Romm cited a Reuters article on climate as having a "false balance" and quoted Stefan Rahmstorf, co-chair of Earth System Analysis at thePotsdam Institute that "[s]imply, a lot of unrelated climate sceptics nonsense has been added to this Reuters piece. In the words of the late Steve Schneider, this is like adding some nonsense from theFlat Earth Society to a report about the latest generation of telecommunication satellites. It is absurd." Romm opined: "We can't know for certain who insisted on cramming this absurd and non-germane 'climate sceptics nonsense' into the piece, but we have a strong clue. If it had been part of the reporter's original reporting, you would have expected direct quotes from actual sceptics, because that is journalism 101. The fact that the blather was all inserted without attribution suggests it was added at the insistence of an editor."[60]
According toYnetnews, Reuters was accused of bias against Israel in its coverage of the2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict after the wire serviceused two doctored photos by aLebanese freelance photographer, Adnan Hajj.[61] In August 2006, Reuters announced it had severed all ties with Hajj and said his photographs would be removed from its database.[62][63]
In 2010, Reuters was criticised again byHaaretz for "anti-Israeli" bias when it cropped the edges of photos, removing commandos' knives held by activists and a naval commando's blood from photographs taken aboard theMavi Marmara during theGaza flotilla raid, a raid that left nine Turkish activists dead. It has been alleged that in two separate photographs, knives held by the activists were cropped out of the versions of the pictures published by Reuters.[64] Reuters said it is standard operating procedure to crop photos at the margins, and replaced the cropped images with the original ones after it was brought to the agency's attention.[64]
On 9 June 2020, three Reuters journalists (Jack Stubbs, Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing) incorrectly used the image of an Indian herbal medicine entrepreneur in an exclusive story titled "Obscure Indian cyber firm spied on politicians, investors worldwide."[65] Indian local media picked up the report, and the man whose image was wrongly used was invited and interrogated for nine hours by Indian police. Reuters admitted to the error, but Raphael Satter claimed that it had mistaken the man for the suspected hacker Sumit Gupta because both men share the same business address. A check by local media, however, showed that both men were in different buildings and not as claimed by Raphael Satter.[66][67] As the report of the inaccurate reporting trickled out to the public, Reuters' senior director of communication Heather Carpenter contacted media outlets to ask them to take down their posts.[67]
In March 2015, the Brazilian affiliate of Reuters released an excerpt from an interview with Brazilian ex-presidentFernando Henrique Cardoso aboutOperation Car Wash (Portuguese:Operação Lava Jato). In 2014, several politicians from Brazil were found to be involved in corruption, by accepting bribes from different corporations in exchange for government contracts. After the scandal, the excerpt from Brazil's president Fernando Henrique's interview was released. One paragraph by a formerPetrobras manager mentioned a comment in which he suggested corruption in the company may date back to Cardoso's presidency. Attached, was a comment between parenthesis: "Podemos tirar se achar melhor" ("we can take it out if 'you' think better"),[68] which was removed from the current version of the text.[69] This had the effect of confusing readers, and suggests that the former president was involved in corruption and the comment was attributed to him. Reuters later confirmed the error, and explained that the comment, originating from one of the local editors, was actually intended for the journalist who wrote the original text in English, and that it should not have been published.[70]
In November 2019, theUK Foreign Office released archive documents confirming that it had provided funding to Reuters during the 1960s and 1970s so that Reuters could expand its coverage in the Middle East. An agreement was made between theInformation Research Department (IRD) and Reuters for theUK Treasury to provide £350,000 over four years to fund Reuters' expansion. The UK government had already been funding the Latin American department of Reuters through a shell company, but that method was discounted for the Middle East operation since the accounting of the shell company looked suspicious, and the IRD stated that the company "already looks queer to anyone who might wish to investigate why such an inactive and unprofitable company continues to run."[71] Instead, theBBC was used to fund the project by paying for enhanced subscriptions to the news organisation for which the Treasury would reimburse the BBC at a later date. The IRD acknowledged that this agreement would not give them editorial control over Reuters, although the IRD believed it would give them political influence over Reuters' work, stating "this influence would flow, at the top level, from Reuters' willingness to consult and to listen to views expressed on the results of its work."[71][72]
On 1 June 2020, Reuters announced that Russian news agencyTASS had joined its "Reuters Connect" programme, comprising a then-total of 18 partner agencies. Reuters president Michael Friedenberg said he was "delighted that TASS and Reuters are building upon our valued partnership."[73] Two years later, TASS's membership in Reuters Connect came under scrutiny in the wake of the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine;Politico reported that Reuters staff members were "frustrated and embarrassed" that their agency had not suspended its partnership with TASS.[74]
On 23 March 2022, Reuters removed TASS from its "content marketplace." Matthew Keen, interim CEO of Reuters said "we believe making TASS content available on Reuters Connect is not aligned with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles."[75]
^"Podemos tirar, se achar melhor" ["We can take it off, if you think it's better"].CartaCapital (in Portuguese). Editora Confiança. 24 March 2015.Archived from the original on 19 June 2019. Retrieved24 March 2015.
Schwarzlose, Richard (1 January 1989).Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 1: The Formative Years: From Pretelegraph to 1865. Northwestern University Press. p. 370.ISBN0-8101-0818-6.
