OLD Media Moves

How Reuters has been covering the TikTok deal story

Echo Wang

Reuters deals reporter Echo Wang gave a behind-the-scenes look at how the M&A team has been covering the story of TikTok’s sale of its U.S. operations.

Here is an excerpt:

Q: What were some of the big wins covering the story?

A: Lately, we were the first to report that President Trump would give ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of TikTok. An executive order the president later issued confirmed our scoop. We started covering TikTok’s potential regulatory challenges with operating in the U.S. before the story was widely discussed. We were the first to report the U.S. opened a national security inquiry into TikTok, which was the beginning of the saga. We exclusively reported on TikTok’s owner shifting power out of China, and its exit out of Hong Kong. In the negotiations involving the White House, we exclusively reported that TikTok’s owner agreed to divest the U.S. operation of TikTok completely to save a deal with the White House. This is only possible because we have a great team of colleagues working together from NY, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Beijing and Hong Kong.

Q: What was the hardest part of the reporting?

A: Getting sources to talk to us. I think that’s essentially the case for all deals reporting, as we are chasing confidential information. But reporting on TikTok is particularly challenging, as it touches on business and politics amid the escalating tension between the world’s two largest economies.

Q: Why are these stories important to tell our customers?

A: These stories are at the intersection of business, politics, the United States and China – they are a tale of our time. They can be a window to understand how the current political tension is impacting the market.

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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