Reuters Old British Guard None Too Enamored With The New Guard Thomson Reuters American Senior Team

Philip Stone May 5, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Behind the scenes the dialogue is getting downright personal over Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer’s public blog defense of major client Goldman Sachs, and also over complaints by former staff of the perceived lackluster company response to the leaked military footage showing two Reuters people shot dead in Iraq by the US military.

That Glocer would go public defending Goldman Sachs was a break in tradition for the news agency that had been British-operated until Glocer and his American team took over in July 2001, eventually overseeing in 2008 its majority sale to the Canadian Thomson family with his team transferring to the new company. The unwritten rule had been that management didn’t comment on news events for fear of perceptions of bias in the editorial reporting of those events. So now questions are publicly asked whether Glocer’s comments will be seen by the news side as a message to go easy with a major client.

In actual fact the opposite is true. If Glocer had been looking for a way to actually tell his news people to hit Goldman Sachs as hard as possible, and then some, he could have found no finer way of doing it than by publicly supporting the Wall Street firm. One thing that has not changed with ownership is ferocious editorial independence and the various corporate governances protecting that independence.

It’s very doubtful that editorial were best pleased by Glocer’s comments – The NY Newspaper Guild went as far as to ask  the Thomson Reuters board to appoint an independent editorial ombudsman – but now that Glocer has spoken so publicly editorial will go overboard to ensure there are no perceptions of its going easy on the story. But the Guild’s statement and news items by the likes of the New York Times were something that the news organization didn’t need. News reputations get built over the years; they can be lost overnight.

Behind the scenes longstanding retired editors on both sides of the Atlantic are none too happy. Howard Luxenberg, a Reuters journalist and editor in the US for near 32 years before his 2003 retirement, wrote on the Baron website which covers just about everything there is to know about former Reuters and its staff and current Thomson Reuters and its staff, “Tom Glocer should be mindful of his position as head of a news organization that does a considerable amount of business with Goldman Sachs…Glocer, as a trained lawyer should refrain from remarks that collide with Reuters business interests. Reuters reporters are held to the highest principles of journalistic ethics, but perhaps it’s too much to expect the same of the company’s top executive.”

Now if that wasn’t bad enough, Michael Reupke, former editor-in-chief from 1978 - 1989 with a short time also as general manager, also took Glocer to task.  “It is quite outrageous and inadmissible for any executive of Reuters, and now surely of Thomson Reuters, to express an opinion on the Goldman Sachs affair,” Reupke declared. “Are the trustees too sleepy to think of stepping in here? If that happened in my day I doubt he would have survived in his job.”

No punches pulled there. This was not the first time Reupke has taken aim at Glocer, and the American on the previous occasion shot back. The leaked military footage that showed the killing of Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh shocked most of the world, including even US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and while Reuters publicly seemed to be saying the right things there were many who complained the response was “too low-key”, “flakey” and so on.

And so Reupke wrote, also on The Baron, “The flabby response to the shameful murders…by reckless US forces is not reassuring. What of their families? Why do we leave it to others to make the running? Is this a Thomson effect?” He signed it “Michael Reupke (outraged and angry!)”

There was much internal debate and then 11 days after his first comment Reupke let loose with, “I am told many people have found Reuters response to the murder of two Reuters staff shown in the video …to have been surprisingly low key and are keen to understand what might have motivated such a response and why Reuters current statement is so inadequate. I cannot answer that, never having worked with Thomson Reuters, a very different company from Reuters, nor with the individuals at the head of Thomson Reuters.

“Much has changed since my day, one may have to look for the reasons there. The company is now largely owned by a Canadian shareholder whose heartbeat is seemingly governed by money, not by news or news people. The CEO and the Editor-in-Chief are American, but I would not speculate how far that might motivate them to refrain from irritating the Washington regime. I could see no direct link. The CEO is a lawyer, not a journalist. The new company is headquartered in New York.”

That was too much for Glocer who shot back within a day on the same Baron site, “I read with displeasure Michael Reupke’s rebuke of the editor. David (Schlesinger) and I are pursuing a quiet yet we believe more effective engagement with the US authorities. Our goal is protecting our journalists – that is paramount. If I believed our sounding off could achieve that goal or bring Namir or Saeed back I would not hesitate.”

So, it’s the quiet diplomacy similar to what the US used for years with the Soviet Union and China over human rights abuses. Did that actually work? And it seems that whereas Glocer doesn’t want to shout from the rooftop criticizing the killing of two Reuters staff because he doesn’t think that would do any good, he does shout from the rooftop about the innocence of a major client, so he thinks Goldman Sachs will benefit from that particular shouting? It’s that very perception that the CEO of a very proud news organization should always, not sometimes, strive to avoid.

Many years ago an old Reuters sage once advised a new manager, “Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean that you actually go and do it.” It was good advice then; it’s good advice for even a CEO to remember today.