Society
World stage: Is Reuters risking its reputation?
Published 24 July 2006
A small revolution occurred in the media world last month, although I doubt if many people noticed. A story published by the Reuters international news agency appeared with the word "I" in it.
It wasn't a slip, nor was the subject matter so contentious that the reporter needed to prove he had witnessed it first hand. No, the "I" appeared in a new type of article offered to subscribers by Reuters. Under the tag "Witness", reporters are given leeway to tell "the stories behind their stories", as the guidelines issued to staff explain, "in the way they might tell friends or family".
To understand why this is quite so earth- shaking, you need to know how the news business works. Until I joined Reuters I, like many people, assumed it was responsible for the dry little paragraphs from obscure destinations used to fill gaps in a newspaper. For the interesting stuff, I read the chunky pieces penned by the paper's star reporters and columnists, never wondering how these individuals could have such a wide-ranging grasp of world affairs.
Nothing, I discovered, could be further from the truth. If it hadn't been for Reuters, those writers may not have had the faintest idea what was going on. News agencies are virtually the only organisations with the staff numbers and infrastructure to cover the globe. The invisible foundations on which the media world is built, they provide the prima donnas with the raw material for their flourishes.
As reader numbers have plummeted, the showbiz factor in the rest of the media has mushroomed. The only way to combat public indifference, editors decided, was to turn writers into celebrities. With the facts available to anyone who has access to the internet, only passion would keep readers faithful. Writers must become extrovert polemicists, appreciated not for the information they provide but for their flamboyant personalities. Hence the photo bylines, the reporter biographies on newspaper websites, and the rants that replace front-page news. Once we columnists were the only ones allowed to parade egos; now every reporter gets a chance.
But never Reuters. The first principle that it drummed into us on arrival was self-effacement. No one was interested in your views. You were there to provide the neutral, fact-rich clay from which a thousand opinion pieces and academic treatises could be moulded by others. The only opinions in your articles should come from the mouths of named, credible sources.
It went with working as a team. If you were "in the slot" when a story broke, your job was to turn a few rushed quotations from a reporter in the field into a limpid piece of prose, complete with background and context - then nobly file it under the reporter's name. You did it for them, because one day they'd do it for you. If you found it frustrating, well, you were free to join a newspaper and show off there.
That puritanical training left an indelible mark. Even today, I still experience a shudder of distaste every time my finger stretches towards that letter on the keyboard. Using what George Bush Sr called "the Big I" requires a conscious effort. It feels vulgar. That's why this new Reuters directive so depresses me.
It seems to have been prompted by the agency's desire to keep up with the latest manifestation of the news-as-showbiz phenomenon: the newspaper website blog. These days, after filing their set pieces to the desk, newspaper reporters are expected to write a chatty account of the pro b lems experienced in covering the story, stresses endured, amusing incidents weathered. Yes, it's "the story behind the story".
I loathe that phrase. If "the story behind the story" is really more interesting than the story itself, someone clearly missed the lead. But no, what we're actually being offered is the ultimate in journalistic narcissism. Never mind the pro spects for war in the Middle East: how did John Newshound feel, rushing from his pregnant girlfriend's bedside to cover the crisis?
I wonder how much more of this the market can stand. Freesheets such as London's Metro are popular primarily because they cost nothing. But that they also provide their readers with plain reporting, stripped of comment, could also have something to do with it.
Media outlets embracing the blog with such enthusiasm seem oblivious to the dangers of turning reporters into celebrities. The better the blog, the more it reveals about the writer's quirks and prejudices. Readers start reading their reports in a different light. When the line between opinion and fact blurs, trust is the casualty.
The editor promoting the "Witness" concept will no doubt respond that these features represent a tiny fraction of Reuters's output, otherwise as unbiased and solidly factual as ever. True, but I wonder how the agency's famed teamwork will fare once staffers are given a formal outlet for vanity. And whether subscribers will feel the same confidence in a newswire that puts its writers' human foibles prominently on display.
A founding principle of news-agency journalism has been violated, a breach made in one of the last bulwarks against the rising tide of Me journalism. What a shame.
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