Reuters' Tom Glocer on Why Covering Iraq is Important

Why cover Iraq?

Because the war has come to define the geopolitics of the first decade of the Twenty-First Century? Because untold thousands have died and millions have been displaced? Because readers need to know what's going on?

It's not a philosophical question, as global news coverage scales back. Large metros -- from the L.A. Times to Dallas Morning News to Philadelphia Inquirer -- have all scaled back their international bureaus. More cuts are coming. Those cutbacks raise the profile and importance of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC -- and of two wires on which we depend for so much daily coverage, AP and Reuters.  Their editorial numbers are often under-estimated: AP has about 3000 journalists and Reuters has about 2400.

It's Reuters that is the story of the week.

As Thomson swallows Reuters,  how Reuters news operation will be affected is at question. So this is how Tom Glocer, current CEO of Reuters and would-be CEO of the new Thomson, answers the question, in today's Times:

“Covering the war in Iraq is so central to what oil traders need to know, what the markets need to know,” he said. “I can’t imagine a general news story that doesn’t have relevance to the markets.”

Relevance to markets, who have been responsible for 90% of Reuters revenue and 95% of its profits. Relevance to those that pay the freight. It's not a new concept, but for Reuters -- long driven by  public interest principles of the Reuters Trust. Those trust principles are a good example of the old rules, the rules that say, yes, advertisers pay most of the freight, subscribers pay a small, but meaningful part of it and that the public's right to know is right up there with profit-seeking as a reason for being.

Anyone who's ever worked in a news company knows there are all kinds of a real-life trade-offs, always budgetary ones, sometimes the pressures of car dealers or home builders or publisher's friends. But that principle of generally trying to serve the public iinterest is paramount.

That's why Tom Glocer's first, big public answer to "Why cover news?" is so troubling.

Comments

[Barry Graubart]

The concept of "relevance to those that pay the freight" may also explain why Americans have heard practically nothing about Darfur and Sudan via the mainstream media.