- This article is primarily about Reuters prior to its 2008
merger with Thomson. For its new parent company, see
Thomson Reuters.
Reuters Group Limited ( ) is
a UK
-based, Canadian-controlled news service and former financial market data
provider that provides reports from around the world to newspapers
and broadcasters. 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, such as share prices and
currency rates, research and analytics, as
well as trading systems that allowed dealers to buy and sell such
assets as currencies and shares on a computer screen instead of by
telephone or on a trading floor like that of the New York Stock
Exchange
. 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. It is now part of
Thomson
Reuters.
History
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
, close to
the borders with the Netherlands
and Belgium, and he began using the newly opened
Berlin–Aachen telegraph line to send news to Berlin.
However,
there was a gap in the line between Aachen and Brussels
, the Belgian
capital city and the financial center of that country.
Reuter saw there was an opportunity to speed up news service
between Brussels and Berlin by using
homing pigeons to bridge that gap in the
telegraph lines.
In 1851, Reuter moved to London.
After failures in 1847 and 1850, attempts
by the Submarine Telegraph Company to lay an undersea telegraph
cable from Dover
to Calais
appeared to
promise 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 the continental exchanges 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, like
the news of
Abraham Lincoln’s
assassination. After many decades of progress, almost every major
news outlet in the world subscribes to the Reuters company's
services. It operates in at least 200 cities in 94 countries,
supplying news text in about 20 languages.
Reuters was financed as a public company in 1984 on the
London Stock Exchange and on the
NASDAQ in the USA. 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. The acquisition meant
that Murdoch then held more than 15%, and then he was compelled to
reduce the holding to less than 15% to stay in line with the
rules.
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 is a company whose sole
task is to protect the integrity of the company's news output. It
holds one "Founders Share" which can outvote all other shares in
the event that an attempt is made to alter any of the rules
relating to the Reuters Trust Principles. These principles set out
the company's aim to preserve its independence, integrity, and
freedom from bias in its news reporting. Subsequent to the forming
of Thomson Reuters the trust principles continue to live on, with
the RFSC now holding a Founders Share in each of Thomson Reuters
Corporation and Thomson Reuters PLC.
Reuters began to grow rapidly in the 1980s, widening the range of
its business products and expanding its global reporting network
for media, financial and economic services. Recent 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 a range of start-up technology companies, initially
in the USA, only.
On 15 May 2007, Canada's
The
Thomson Corporation reached an agreement with Reuters to
combine the two companies, in a deal valued at
US $17.2 billion. Thomson now controls
about 53% of the new company, named
Thomson Reuters. The new chief of
Thomson Reuters is
Tom Glocer, the former
head of Reuters. The earlier rule of 15% ownership (see above) was
waived; the reason as given by
Pehr
Gyllenhammar, the chairman of the Reuters Founders Share
Company, was "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. On 26 March 2008,
shareholders of both organisations agreed to the merger. The
acquisition was closed on 17 April 2008.
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.
The last surviving member of the original Reuters family,
Marguerite, Baroness de
Reuter, died aged 96 on 25 January 2009 after having suffered a
series of strokes in late
2008.
Journalists
Reuters has a team of several thousand journalists who over the
years have covered major news events, sometimes at the cost of
their lives.
For example, 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 both killed in two separate
incidents by US troops in Iraq
.
During
2004, cameramen Adlan Khasanov in Chechnya
and Dhia Najim in Iraq
were also killed. In April 2008 Fadel
Shana, a cameraman, was killed in the
Gaza
Strip
after he was 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, 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 eventually released after almost
2 years solitary confinement. Awarded an
OBE by the British Government in
recognition of this, he went on to become a best selling
author.
Fatalities
Investments
Notable investments include:
- Action Images — In September 2005, Reuters purchased North
London-based Action Images, a deep collection of sports photography
that includes 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 agrees 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 September 28, 2001, it
completed the largest acquisition in its history 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.
- 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
long-time 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 the 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 a range of major initiatives designed to accelerate
its use of internet technologies, open new markets and migrate its
core business to an internet-based model.
Main corporate locations
From
1939, the Reuters corporate headquarters was in London's famous
Fleet
Street
in a building designed for it by Sir Edwin Lutyens, but 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
7th Avenue between 42nd and 43rd
Streets, and was constructed from 1998 to 2001.
Reuters' Asian headquarters is located in the city state of
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 objectiveness. This
policy has caused comment on the possible insensitivity of its
non-use of the word
terrorist in reports covering major
global events, including the
September 11 attacks. In the
enforcement of this policy, 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."
The Washington Post Reuters later apologised
for this characterisation of their policy, although they maintained
the policy itself.
The 20 September 2004 edition of the
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 the term
"terrorist" without quotations when the article clarifies that it
is someone else's words.
Photographs controversies
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 August 7, 2006, Reuters announced it severed
all ties with Hajj and said his photographs would be removed from
its database.
See also
References
- Read, Donald (1992). The Power of News. The
History of Reuters 1849–1989. Oxford, Oxford University Press. ISBN
0-19-821776-5
Further reading
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