By Krish Lukha and Adam Wan

On Friday 10^th March, the 1509 team had the chance to visit the Reuters’ office in Canary Wharf. Thompson Reuters is a global news organisation which finds the latest news and sells them to a variety of famous clients; this includes the BBC, Financial Times and The Guardian. The team of journalists saw how this prestigious organization ran behind the scenes.  

The first person to be introduced was the Global Head of Multimedia, Jane Barrett. She provided an overview of Reuters including how they were reporting in Ukraine. By providing the 1509 with a video of how dangerous the conditions were, she showed us the hardships that journalists in the field must face. In addition to this, our team of journalists were able to see how the development of a news story (in this case the problems that Silicon Bank faces) progressed via a teams meeting which included global high ranking executives.  

Next up was the Head of Marketing, Buddhika Amis. She provided a valuable insight into the marketing department as well as compiling together many of Reuters statistics. She told us that the reason for commercialising Reuters was to help fund the journalists around the world. She was also able to answer many questions (there were quite a few ). After only 1 particular story, trillions of dollars of transactions took place on the stock market as a result! 

Next, the global speed editor, Michael Urquhart, gave a presentation on his role at Reuters. Working in perhaps one of the most unique roles in the world, a role which he believes only Reuters and their competition have, he taught his experience with hands-on exercises. One example was when he showed us a real email which Reuters received, which released the resignation of Chris Heaton-Harris, the head of state for Northern Ireland. After the 1509 tried to create a news statement, which in reality would have been broadcast to major news providers, he then revealed that the email which sent this press release was not legitimate and explained how much the journalists at Reuters had to work in order to provide trusted and accurate news briefings to the majority of the top news providers in the world. It was a worthwhile experience meeting such a person. 

After this, the chief photographer, Suzanne Plunkett, went into detail about how important photography within journalism was and the ethical issues surrounding the topic. By bringing up famous photos taken by journalists, she explained through the mistakes of other photographers how to effectively photograph while acting in humanitarian interests. For example, Kevin Carter’s “The Vulture and the Little Girl” was incredibly controversial because it raised questions about whether a photo should be creating that level of emotions, and about whether he helped her or not. This unfortunately led to Carter’s suicide. Through another event, the Dale Farm evictions, she explained that the people being evicted were peacefully packing away, however activists were portrayed by some journalists to represent the whole community, portraying the entire event as more violent than it really was due to the staging of the scene. 

Mr Amis, the member of staff in charge of operations, noted: “The 1509 journalists were incredibly fortunate to be given so much time with senior members of the Reuters team with the opportunity to ask questions too. At the end of the day, the boys were invited to watch the global call of senior journalists and editors as they discussed the stories which were about to break. On Friday’s agenda was the collapse of the SVB Financial Group, and China’s brokering of a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.” 

Overall, the day was a worthwhile experience and provided some time to meet some very knowledgeable people as well as the time to learn about one of the professions in which the modern globalized world just simply couldn’t be without!