By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 6 -- Reuters may be a fine company. They certain have some fine reporters. But they have some dubious and bizarre ones as well, including a UN bureau which has tried to get more investigative Press thrown out, and has refused to answer questions.
And when this was raised to the top executives at Thomson Reuters, there was no response.
Documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act from the Voice of America reflect that these Reuters big wigs adopted a POLICY of not responding to questions, about their policies on attacking or taking stories from smaller media, even on putting journalists at risk from government's like Sri Lanka's.
Those formally written to at Reuters, who have never responded, include Stephen J. Adler, Walden Siew, and Paul Ingrassia.
And so when March 6 began with ThomsonReuters' “corporation responsibility programME manager” tweeter Rachel Moseley, with 57 followers, promoting the company, Inner City Press fired back, including Reuters' main and usually informative social media man Anthony De Rosa in. He asked for a link that worked, and got one. But then... no response.
Later on March 6, AntDeRosa began live tweeting the #ReutersAwards: Tom Bergin, Asmaa Waguih, Luke MacGregor, Pascal Fletcher. We are sure that the photographs of the moon, stories on Starbucks, and team coverage of Myanmar, were all good -- promise.
We converse routinely with Reuters' correspondents and stringers in Africa. (We won't identify them here, since it might seem they'd be retaliated against.)
But what's up not only with Reuters UN Bureau, but with the big wigs who oversee them?
Is censorship OK? Is it OK for the UN Bureau Chief to tell the Press, on the record, that “the fundamental problems is your website”? Doesn't this violate some basic canon of freedom of the press, and call into question these self-congratulatory Reuters Awards?
Inner City Press has asked. But there was been no response. At Reuters, the band plays on. Watch this site.
