Reuters
Awards
Ignore
Censorship
Bids By Its UN
Bureau,
Adler's
Stonewall
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.
, 
