Reuters blogger criticizes Reuters story on Occupy Wall Street

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon is critical of his employer’s story that attempts to make the claim that billionaire investor George Soros is funding the Occupy Wall Street protest.

Salmon writes, “The article is particularly problematic from my perspective because I’m incredibly proud of Reuters’s long tradition of impartial journalism. I’m on the opinion side, not bound by such things, and if you think I’m biased you’re right. (I should mention here explicitly that this post, just like everything else on this blog, is my personal opinion. It may or may not be shared by others within the organization. But it should emphatically not be taken as representing the views of Thomson Reuters.)

“Reuters news stories like the one about OWS are held to a very high standard of integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. And there’s lots in this article which tilts hard to the right.”

He concludes, “Reuters cannot — must not — get a reputation as a right-wing media outlet. We have to report the news as impartially as we can. In this case, there was no story, and nothing to report. Inventing a tenuous and intellectually-dishonest link between Soros and OWS might get us traffic from Matt Drudge — but that’s traffic which, frankly, we don’t particularly value or care for. Much more importantly, it serves to undermine the heart of what Reuters stands for. And we can never afford to do that.”

Read more here.