Tag Archives: reuters

Wired: Army intelligence analyst arrested over leaked video of Iraq helicopter attack

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A US Army intelligence analyst has been arrested in connection with a leaked video of a US Apache helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007, which killed more than 12 people, including two Reuters news staff, reports Wired.

According to Wired, Bradley Manning, was arrested nearly two weeks ago at an army base in Baghdad where he was stationed. Manning was reportedly turned in by a former computer hacker to whom he had spoken about leaking the Iraq video and several others to the website Wikileaks.

The attack took place on the morning of 12 July 2007 in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad killing two Saeed Chmagh, a 40-year-old Reuters driver and assistant, and Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old war photographer.

Reuters, which had previously requested the release of the video from the US military, has pressed the army to conduct a full and objective investigation into the killing of its two staff.

Full story at this link…

FT.com: Thomson Reuters’ video product Insider to launch on 11 May

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Thomson Reuters is planning to launch a series of new web products and overhaul its markets division as part of plans to streamline the company and reach growing audiences of younger, web-savvy readers and smaller business customers.

Among the developments:

  • An “enterprise platform” offering faster delivery of data to clients and online training and customer service support to smaller customers;
  • The launch of online video product Insider on May 11, which it has been testing since last year;
  • A new desktop platform, Eikon, to launch in autumn, offering a wider range of data and personalisation features.

Full story at this link…

Leaked US military video boosts donations to Wikileaks

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Whistleblowing website Wikileaks has received more than £150,000 in donations since Monday, when it published a leaked US military video of the killing of 12 civilians – including two Reuters staff – in Iraq in 2007. According to the Wikileaks site, the project requires $600,000 a year to run.

The video has been hailed as a turning point for the controversial site (see this Wired article from 2009), which uses a network of volunteers to release information and promises full confidentiality for its sources.

As the Editors Weblog summarises:

Many news outlets might find themselves in a love-hate relationship with the news outlet. Wikileaks is situated at an important spot within the news industry as the only place willing to publish stories others can’t or wont. The website can function as a voice capable of breaking high profile scandals news outlets don’t want to break.

While Wikileaks acts as an important watchdog against corruption, the sometimes-paranoid tone of the site might undermine the website’s value while making it a target for criticism. To an extent, Wikileaks has every right to indulge in their paranoia. Several democratic governments around the world, all of whom have laws protecting free speech, have passed or discussed creating new laws which block the public’s access to the website. Just last night, the UK passed the digital economy bill, which contains a clause that could be used to justify blocking Wikileaks. The site is also blacklisted in Denmark and Australia.

Democracy Now is claiming videos it has obtained feature eyewitness accounts of the 2007 attack from the day after event; while international media organisations have called for a fresh investigation of the incident by the US military.

CNN: Wikileaks editor on why it posted video of Reuters journalists’ deaths

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Julian Assange explains the process involved in receiving and breaking the encryption on the US military video published by the site earlier this week, which shows the slaying of 12 people including two Reuters journalists in an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007.

Any assertion that Wikileaks selectively edited the video is “an outrageous straw man”, says Assange.

“We have a mission to promote political reforms by releasing suppressed information,” he explains, when asked about Wikileak’s mission.

This is a special circumstance for us, because this is not what we normally report. This is an attack on our own, this is an attack on journalists in a difficult situation trying to report the truth and we have a responsibility to our sources who give us this sort of material to get it out there. In fact, our promise to them is that if they give us this type of material that is of significance and has been suppressed we will release it and try to get the maximum political impact for it.

Video available at this link…

Wikileaks releases video showing Apache shooting of Reuters news staff

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Wikileaks today released a video depicting the slaying of more than 12 people – including two Reuters news staff – by two Apache helicopters using 30mm cannon fire.

The attack took place on the morning of 12 July 2007 in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. Two children were also wounded.

Among the dead, were two Reuters news employees, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. Chmagh was a 40-year-old Reuters driver and assistant; Noor-Eldeen was a 22-year-old war photographer.

An investigation by the US military concluded that the soldiers acted in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own rules of engagement.

Reuters has been unsuccessfully trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act since the time of the attack.

More information can be found on the Collateral Murder website.

Warning: the following video contains highly disturbing imagery.

Vanityfair.com: Business Insider’s Henry Blodget vs Reuters’ Felix Salmon

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Via Vanity Fair (and others) we learn of a tweet fight between former technology analyst and CEO of the Business Insider site, Henry Blodget, and Reuters’ financial journalist and blogger Felix Salmon.

It all started when Salmon poked fun – via Twitter – at Blodget’s business model and the way Business Insider had illustrated a banking story with a picture of two women kissing.

This kicked off a long dispute between the two over media strategy; not a simple old vs new spat, but an untangling of ethical issues for online publishers.

Never to miss a traffic opportunity, Blodget has posted the entire conversation on Business Insider here, in the form of a slideshow.

Blodget, fond of tweet by tweet mini-essays, also responded with a posting on business models.

Salmon then responded here, in length, on the Reuters blog.

Blogger and journalist Mathew Ingram has a thoughtful post on the whole episode at this link. An extract:

So what are smart online media outlets doing? Two things: One is focusing on building businesses such as conferences and events, as well as subscription-based, proprietary content (something Business Insider is also experimenting with). The other – and this is what I think Salmon was driving at – is thinking about traffic and pageviews in a different way. Not all pageviews are the same, and as a result not all CPMs are the same. Does forcing readers to click through multiple pages to view a slideshow add any real value? No. This is the digital equivalent of newspapers throwing extra copies into a ravine (or dumping them at a taxi stand) to boost circulation.

And elswhere on Twitter: Gawker’s founder Nick Denton backs Blodget, while writer Andrew Keen calls for the Business Insider CEO to return to Wall Street.

Reuters Handbook of Journalism: Don’t scoop the wire

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Reuters has published new social media guidelines in its Handbook of Journalism. As well as reminding journalists to keep the personal separate from the professional, it advises:

Can I break news via Twitter?

As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don’t scoop the wire. NB this does not apply if you are retweeting; (re-publishing) someone else’s scoop.

Corrections

If a correction is required, a new tweet that begins “CORRECTION:…” should be published.

Full post at this link…

Video from Beet.tv: How Reuters used social media in Iran to source video

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Earlier this week Reuters’ global editor Greg Beitchman told an industry debate on the future of video that the agency wants to make more of its raw film footage available to clients.

Speaking to Beet.tv in the video below, Beitchman explains how Reuters used social media, particularly Twitter, to source raw video footage from Iran during its coverage of the post-election protests:

Online video: Reuters wants to offer more raw video to clients

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Reuters could open up more of its raw video assets to publishers and clients, Greg Beitchman, global editor, told a roundtable discussion on the future of video today:

Enabling that kind of interactivity is crucial to us (…) People are accustomed to other types of video. These days we are seeing mobile phone footage and viewers are much more flexible and you can see that filtering back into broadcast scenarios.

Speaking from Reuters own experience with handling user-generated content, Beitchman said helping Reuters’ customers manage UGC was a big part of the agency’s video business. In the post-election protests in Iran last year, Reuters’ Tehran bureau collected some video footage, but the agency was directed towards other relevant videos by users on Twitter. These clips were verified and used by the agency as part of its reporting, said Beitchman.

Adapting to viewers’ video habits – whether that’s the length of the clip or the platform its consumed on – will be crucial for both Reuters own video and to the content they supply to third-parties, he added. The agency needs to be with clients as they are establishing their business models around video to make sure its content fits their needs.

#followjourn: Jeremy Gaunt/European investment correspondent

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#followjourn: Jeremy Gaunt

Who? Reuters European investment correspondent

What? Gaunt is currently the European investment correspondent for Reuters, based in London. He was previously the bureau chief for Greece and Cyprus, based in Athens, and has also been senior correspondent for the European Union in Brussels.

Where? Read Gaunt’s blog on Reuters online here.

Contact? Follow @reutersJeremyG

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.