by Dr. Binoy Kampmark at Southfront
This week, Twitter was keen to share the news about its new arrangement with The Associated Press and Reuters “to expand our efforts to identify and elevate credible information” on its platform. The company reiterates its commitment that people using its service are able to “easily find reliable information” hoping to “expand the scale and increase the speed of our efforts to provide timely, authoritative text across the wide range of global topics and conversations” taking place on the platform each day.
The global head of user-generated content at Reuters, Hazel Baker, was businesslike in describing a partnership that would “leverage our deep global and local expertise to serve the public conversation with reliable information.” Tom Januszewski, Vice President of Global Business Development at AP, was “particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts.”
Such promises to “leverage” could well have been matched to any shadowy information department from the Cold War with the express purpose of ensuring what news was consumed when and by whom. Twitter will seek help from the two newswires “where facts are in dispute or when Twitter’s Curation team doesn’t have the specific expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting on Twitter.” Those using the platform “can expect more Trends with contextual descriptions and links to reporting from trusted sources more frequently.”
Bringing aboard these news giants is no guarantee that the text and information provided will be authoritative, credible or reliable. News wires are not immune to being disseminators of inaccurate information, or information that is slanted in favour of a power or interest. Often, they hide behind their reputations even as they ventriloquise different interests and planted narratives.
Take Reuters, which, by its claim, “shall supply unbiased and reliable news services to newspapers, news agencies, broadcasters, and other media subscribers and to businesses, governments, institutions, individuals, and others with whom Reuters has or may have contracts.” In 1941, the company created its Trust Principles in agreement with The News Paper Proprietors Associated Limited and The Press Association Limited. These imposed obligations on the organisation and its employees to “act at all times with integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.”
Noble in print, the practise did not always stack up. In 1969, a British government document available in the National Archives called “Funding of Reuters by HMG” (Her Majesty’s Government) also outlined an agreement with Reuters to do the sort of thing that has become popular at Twitter: curate the news.
The way that curating would take place was what mattered. “We are now in a position to conclude an agreement providing discreet Government support for Reuters services in the Middle East and Latin America”. The interests of HMG “should be well served by the new arrangement.” The negotiations with the news outlet were led by the anti-Soviet propaganda unit known as the Information Research Department. “The new relationship established with Reuters in the Middle East and Latin America,” John Peck, former head of the IRD notes in the documents, “can lead to valuable goodwill and cooperation with the Agency on a global scale.” Reuters “could and would provide” what the government needed.
The scheme also brought in that other paragon of objective journalism, the BBC, which paid an “enhanced subscription” to Reuters, which was then going through a financially lean time. That money was duly recouped from the Treasury’s purse. Knowledge of this arrangement, approved by the BBC’s head of external services Sir Charles Curran, was kept to a select few.
With these revelations, Reuters was keen to regard this…
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