Reuters is a news agency headquartered in London, but they report on news around the globe. Often other news just recite Reuters news instead of traveling the world themself. How trustworthy and unbiased you think they are?
mmm…unconscious nonsense…that hits the spot. Its like coffee for the soul!
Since they generally report in a shorter format, they tend to not provide much context.
On the one hand, one could say this tends towards less bias, but on the other, context is absolutely critical to assessing a situation.
I think they have their place in the news cycle, and they are a useful source. I think that if they report an event you can be confident it has occurred, BUT they are very, very good at putting spin in only a few words, e.g. “murdered” vs “killed”. They also leave out extremely important context when it doesn’t fit their narrative/bias/click farming.
I am extremely critical of Reuters. But if they are one source amongst many they are useful. Particularly if you look at local news sources or other Reuters news snippets for context around the event.
They deliberately choose “killed” over “murdered” not because of spin, but becauss “killed” is value neutral, and “murder” requires malice of forethought.
Sometimes yes, sometimes it is correct to use murder.
But I was just using it as well known an example of how even a short sentence can have implicit bias while appearing to be simply factual. Not referring to anything specific.
Sometimes using killed is the most factual, sometimes it isn’t. Saying someone died is often factual as well. It’s really dependent on context what word to choose and they can create a very different narrative.
It also can simply be passive versus active voice in sentence structure.
There was an interesting case where Reuters headline was about police in South Africa killed protesting miners. They had a headline video that showed the police opening fire and an officer getting them to stop shooting. And a second “uncut” video on their RSS feed that wasn’t published in any headline that showed the miners were actually a giant mob carrying machetes, sticks, clubs and a few had guns which were fired into the air. The mob started charging the police line and when they opened fire the mob scattered. There was no mention of the police officer that had been beaten to death in the same area the night before by the protesters.
Both were completely factual reports, but they lacked context, and were subsequently widely used to demonise the police.
(Now, don’t get me wrong, cops are usually at fault, and the wider situation of why did those miners need to protest etc is a different topic. But in that specific instance there was a lot of context missing to the individual actions)
I trust them to generally do their due diligence and report the truth. As with all press agencies, there will be exceptions to this and instances where journalists spread false information. In those instances, I expect them to correct their errors, which I believe they usually do. There will also always be some level of bias with any journalism, at the very least in choosing what to report on and what not to.
No.
They are a British government and intelligence cut-out. That doesn’t mean they always lie but they skew coverage, are manipulative, dishonest, and serve the interests of the British state. They’ve been that way for decades, receiving funding in the 1960s and 1970s from MI6.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/
A series of official documents declassified in January 2020 revealed that Reuters was secretly funded by the British government throughout the 1960s and 1970s to assist an anti-Soviet propaganda organization run by the MI6 intelligence agency. The UK government used the BBC as a pass-through to conceal payments to the news group.
In the modern era they still target Russia under the direction and funding of the UK government. One cannot be in bed with spies like these and hope to hold them and their friends like the US, EU, etc to account.
The fourth estate in general in the west is highly compromised. Russia and China and many others openly fund state media and the west decries it as propaganda, but they never hide it. Whereas the west secretly funds, manipulates, and controls supposedly independent press and declares itself the free one while it lies to the rest of the world and their own populations.
As a wire agency Reuters does tend to have less room for deception than say Fox News due to a lot of short form news breaks. So in that regard they’re more trustworthy than say CNN or Fox News but that doesn’t mean a lot.
Less than AP. Way more than Fox.
@glowing_hans Very, the entire business model of them and the other agencies is to provide the basic facts for their customer newspapers to apply their own spin and bias to.
So you trust them very much? So you think the controversey section on wikipedia is fake?
An investigation by The Intercept, The Nation, and DeSmog found that Reuters is one of the leading media outlets that publishes advertising for the fossil fuel industry.[76] Journalists who cover climate change for Reuters are concerned that conflicts of interest with the companies and industries that caused climate change and obstructed action will reduce the credibility of their reporting on climate change and cause readers to downplay the climate crisis.[76]
@glowing_hans That boils down to the problem of making advertising blend in with real articles, rather than any bias within those. Still a big issue, but not to point of discrediting everything else.
No
It’s worth reading, because it’s very factual, as in, they don’t inject any particular viewpoint or opinion into the writing, unlike some other outlets. Whether or not they chose to report on certain events over others due to bias, I do not know.
I remember them being wrong one time point though, because they reported on something chaotic that had just happened or was still happening where details were unclear.
Yes.
I also come from a very international background. It makes me trust what they write more, not less.
1·1 year agoIf it’s mainstream, it’s likely Christofascist, no matter what part of the left/right spectrum. My producer and I obviously had stopped trusting mainstream sources for personal reasons.
They’re better than most.
I’d trust them more than CNN or Fox.
