Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1600
- 1619)
WEDNESDAY 16 JANUARY 2008
Mr David Schlesinger, Mr Pierre Lesourd and Mr Tony
Watson
Q1600 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Well, it is interesting that you put it like that because you
imply that it is obvious which sources have standing and which
do not, but I would have thought, as a lay person, that the number
of sources that are arising almost daily which offer themselves
as authentic is quite alarming, given that journalists are often
under pressure, so really where does the authenticity of sources
come from, how is it derived?
Mr Schlesinger: Well, you have to develop the
relationship with the source.
Mr Lesourd: We have internal rules which are
regularly updated. For example, it was interesting that you cited
Wikipedia, for example. We have a written rule inside our company
which forbids any journalist from using Wikipedia. We have the
same thing, which has been updated last week, for Facebook because
there was an incident last week with Bilawal Bhutto in Oxford
where some newspaper picked up some pictures on the Facebook site
about Mr Bhutto which turned out to be fake, so we are trying
to be vigilant about it, but obviously every day you have new
possible virtual sources where we have to be very careful and
journalists have to recruit their sources normally, so he cannot
follow only one source.
Mr Watson: I agree with all of that. It comes
back down to the guidance that you give your staff, how it is
updated and good training. We have got a saying in the agency,
that we must be first, but first we must be right, and that is
the sort of standard that we live by and we take a very, very
serious view of making sure our information is accurate because
we have this incredible responsibility because it is going out
to so many news sources.
Q1601 Chairman:
But you must be inundated, both in your old regional newspaper
job and now in PA, by the press releases from the PR companies
and the rest.
Mr Watson: Yes, and I imagine many of them end
up in the bin, but there are certain sectors of the news industry
where it is a necessary fact of life. For example, within the
entertainment arena, the people who control access to celebrities
and people in show business, you have to deal with them, but it
is a balance of deciding whether the restrictions they place on
that access are worth that particular assignment, so that is an
ongoing process.
Q1602 Chairman:
The amount of these kinds of releases, and I was going to say
"pressure", but that is overstating it perhaps, but
that has increased, has it, over the last ten or 20 years?
Mr Watson: Yes, it has, with the advent of email.
Lord Inglewood: First, I feel I should declare
an interest as Chairman of the Cumberland Newspaper Group and
we are one of the shareholders of PA.
Chairman: Actually, our interests are on the
side there, and perhaps I should just mention that I am Chairman
of the Thomson Foundation which trains journalists mainly in developing
countries. It took its name from Roy Thomson, but in fact our
connection is an historic connection and not a current financial
connection.
Q1603 Lord Inglewood:
You explained to us that in fact, it seems for all of you, there
has been an increase in demand for the services you supply, but
have you noticed in your experience a change in the character
both of the customers in terms of who they are and also what they
may be wanting and, in particular, has there been any change in
the demand for what you might call `hard news'?
Mr Schlesinger: I think absolutely. I mentioned
that the list of customers was very similar to what it was a decade
ago in the UK, but you have to remember that three of those at
one point had 24-hour television stations and now two still do
and that was not something they had ten years ago. Also, now all
of our newspaper customers have websites and that is something
they did not have ten years ago, so there is an absolutely voracious
demand for news of all kinds, hard, soft, all kinds.
Q1604 Lord Inglewood:
But, for example, is there more demand for soft news, do you think,
than there was previously?
Mr Watson: I think there is, but it is in addition
to rather than instead of, and that is reflected in the increased
numbers of journalists that all three agencies have talked about.
Yes, there is a very great interest in celebrity. Now, we might
not regard that as serious news, but it is a fact of life and,
if you are supplying a news media that deals in that output, you
have to reflect it in your own output.
Q1605 Lord Inglewood:
Would it then be fair to say, if we can put it this way, that
there has been an increase in demand for news and information
about celebrity which has driven you to supply more of that?
Mr Watson: Yes, I think that is fair comment,
just speaking for the PA.
Mr Lesourd: Yes, we have too. Inside the AFP,
it is a big debate because the traditional view is that people
say we should not go too much on these kinds of subjects, but
obviously we have to, but where are the limits and so on, particularly
in France where you have very strict privacy laws on photos, on
texts, and there is also the debate about our President—
Q1606 Lord Inglewood:
Which category is that in?
Mr Lesourd:—so it is a big debate. Obviously
the clients want more and more content on celebrities and sometimes
it is difficult to fix a limit of what is still news and what
is not really news, and then we are back on to the PR stuff on
things like that.
Mr Schlesinger: But this is a question that
is beyond just the media clients for us. We know from our usage
statistics that our financial clients who, you would think, would
be spending their time trying to make millions at every second,
in fact the most-read stories tend to be sport and celebrity even
amongst our financial guys, so in any moment of downtime they
are checking their team or checking their sites.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale: That explains Northern
Rock!
Q1607 Lord Inglewood:
And Newcastle United!
Mr Lesourd: For example, we have a huge databank
of photos with millions of digital photos and things like that
and last year worldwide the picture which has been most downloaded,
probably hundreds of thousands of times, was a photo of Prince
William with Kate Middleton and probably not a special, quality
picture, but people are just fascinated by celebrity here in this
country.
Q1608 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
I was just thinking, apart from celebrity and sport which I think
we all appreciate, given the coverage that everybody has now internationally,
globally, is there any reflection of that in the demand for foreign
stories and international stories?
Mr Schlesinger: That is our bread and butter
at Reuters because we are in fact not local anywhere.
Q1609 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
But is there any increased demand? Is that one of your growth
areas?
Mr Schlesinger: I think the real growth is in
what I would call the `emerging markets'. There is always going
to be interest in, say, the G8 countries, but what is growing
now is interest in the Gulf, interest in developing Africa and
we are seeing growth there.
Mr Watson: Yes, I think it has. We have actually
located two journalists in LA for the first time over the last
couple of years and in New York to service that particular demand.
Mr Lesourd: Our main zone of development in
this is Asia, China obviously, but India also is very important.
Q1610 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
The question I want to ask is about foreign bureaux and I know
that the Press Association does not have any and, as far as I
can work out for AFP, you say you have them in quite a number
of countries, but I think you have probably got something like
55 countries where you have not got a bureau.
Mr Lesourd: No, we have a bureau in 110 countries,
at least one, and, for example, in the US we have more than one
bureau.
Q1611 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Quite, but, out of the 165 countries that you span, it says in
the background information that 110 have bureaux, so you presumably
have some without bureaux?
Mr Lesourd: What I am told is that AFP has bureaux
in 110 countries and that means we probably have 150 or 160 bureaux
overall.
Chairman: Which is 150 more.
Q1612 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Indeed. That must have grown quite considerably over the years?
Mr Lesourd: Yes, in the last ten years there
has been a lot of development.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: You have answered
the question about the foreign affairs stories, so that is covered,
thank you.
Q1613 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
I think it must be true to say that recently there has been a
huge change throughout the whole news industry both from your
point of view and from the point of view of your clients because
of the advent of mass media both from where they can receive their
information and also the variety of platforms over which they
can now distribute the information they receive from you. When
looking at the question of quality and what internal checks you
have to ensure the quality, accuracy and impartiality of your
stories, I imagine that what you have to do in that area has become
much more complicated. We have been given two examples from AFP
of what they now do, which is ban access to Wikipedia and Facebook
from the point of view of acquiring material to then distribute
to their clients, but it would be interesting to hear some more
from all three of you of both the effect of this change which
has caused you to alter the way you control this particular area
and what your methods are.
Mr Watson: I think that one can get too caught
up in the delivery mechanism for content. The internet, mobile
phones, they are a delivery pipe as opposed to a printed newspaper
or linear broadcast. The controls that you apply to the gathering
of the content are the same irrespective of which mechanism you
use to deliver it to your customers and our customers deliver
to their customers. I think it comes back to having experienced
hands who are running your news desks, good training, as we have
talked about, strong, clear guidance and things like, for example,
the Reuters Trust and the PA has just recently established a Trust
so that there is an independent view of how we are performing
in some of these areas. Yes, there is a multiplicity of information
sources out there, but we would still expect our journalists to
focus on trusted, verifiable sources.
Q1614 Chairman:
Tell us about the PA Trust because it is a very important point
that Lady Eccles has made.
Mr Watson: At the moment, the PA is owned by
mostly media companies and four large companies own something
like 67% of the business. While the shareholders have an interest
in the PA retaining a high-quality service, there is no real issue,
but I think we are looking to the future when possibly the ownership
structure may change, although there is nothing to suggest that
that is the case at the moment, and we wanted some mechanism which
sat outside of the business to actually look at how we performed
against the standards that we set for ourselves which can be summed
up as fast, fair and accurate. What we wanted to do was to ensure
that, in a changing media world where there are likely to be lots
of different commercial pressures, there was no dilution of those
core principles, and the Trust, although it reports to the Board,
is comprised of three respected figures from the industry who
have no relationship with any of our shareholders who interview
myself and the Editor on a regular basis and they then produce
a report for the Board on how we are performing against the standards
we have set ourselves.
Q1615 Chairman:
Would it be possible for you to send us an outline of that in
even more detail, if that were possible?
Mr Watson: It would. It is still in progress
because we have actually only just confirmed the Trust at the
beginning of this year, but yes, I am very happy to do that.
Q1616 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
But it was the increasing complexity of the media world that really
caused you to have a need for the Trust?
Mr Watson: Yes, and possibly imagining a different
ownership structure if some of the interests of the shareholders
did not remain the same over time.
Mr Schlesinger: For what it is worth, we have
mentioned some of the mechanisms we have, and training, I think,
is very important and it is not just training on the nuts and
bolts of how to run a story, but it is really training around
ethics and standards which we make sure everybody goes through,
but having the Reuters Founders Share Company, I think, is extremely
important. The difference between the Reuters Founders Share Company
and the Trust, as Mr Watson just described for the PA, is that
the Reuters Founders Share Company is completely separate from
the Board of the Group and in fact the Chairman of the Board of
the Group each year has to tell the Reuters Founders Share Company
that the Group as a whole is in accordance with the Trust, so
there is an obligation on the main Board to report to the Trust
that the company is still upholding all of those principles. I
have to meet with the trustees twice a year and the trustees,
in the course of their business dealings and also in their private
travel, visit bureaux around the world to find out for themselves
what the situation is on the ground, so it provides that outside
perspective to make sure that our internal standards are up to
what we say they are. In those internal standards, the one thing
we have not mentioned is the editing process. We believe strongly
in what we call the `two pairs of eyes rule', so no journalist
can put out his or her story directly to subscribers and it must
go through an editor who checks to make sure that it is up to
standard, and we have a very strict policy of correcting errors
and correcting them swiftly and openly, so all these things contribute
to, I think, an ethos within the organisation where, even as the
media winds change, we are maintaining our standards.
Q1617 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
And this ethos will be protected if the merger takes place?
Mr Schlesinger: Yes, because, as I said, the
Thomson family has accepted the Trust for the entire Group and
the majority shareholder has agreed to vote its shares in accordance
with the trustees of the Trust on matters pertaining to the Trust.
Q1618 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Is there anything you wish to add from AFP?
Mr Lesourd: Just to say that the editorial policy
is about the same and no story will go directly to a client, but
it has to go from one journalist who is writing the story or producing
the photos and it goes through what we call `the desk' and there
will be some editing and checking on everything. In terms of organisation,
the AFP has no trust per se, but we have what we call in French
`une haute autorité' which has three members above
the Board, so, if any clients think that something has not been
fair or there is something wrong, they can see these members who
are absolutely independent of the agency. Then we have the Board
and the Board elects the CEO of the agency. It is a 15-member
Board and eight, which means full majority, of this Board are
newspapers, French newspaper editors, two are elected from inside
the company, one representing journalists, one representing the
other members of the agency, and then you have two members who
are representing the public, radio and television, and three others
are representing the Government, so one is from the Foreign Ministry,
one is from the Finance Ministry and the last one is from the
Prime Minister Office. That means that you can say that five of
these members out of the 15 are representing the Government in
the agency.
Q1619 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Has the Board membership had to change at all to reflect the change
in the media world?
Mr Lesourd: No. Our President would like, yes,
this to be changed, for example, to be able to have on the Board
some representatives from foreign clients. We have huge clients
in Japan, for example, and some are a lot bigger than any French
clients we have, so why not be on the Board? It is one of the
things which is being proposed by our President right now.
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