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Reuters’ Ways to Get Responses from Chinese Government

  • 作家相片: Carol YUAN
    Carol YUAN
  • 2019年2月22日
  • 讀畢需時 2 分鐘

Anne Marie Roantree, Bureau Chief at Reuters HK, mentioned about how Reuters fights with Chinese government at a briefing session held in Reuters’ office.


The reasons why Reuters needs to fight with Chinese government can be summarized into “no surprises journalism” and “free from bias” according to the words of Roantree.


“Reuters has a kind of policy called ‘no surprises journalism’,” Roantree said. “It means any body, any company, any country, government, any one mentioned in any of Reuters’ stories should be contacted before the news come out.” They need to know what Reuters are going to say and have the chance for fair comments.


If a source is hyper sensitive, especially like a policy in China, news agencies need to get responses from government. “We want to get responses from Chinese government, we have to send facts,” Roantree said. “It’s a very long process, very formalize.”


“For a kind of sensitive news that we are seeking comments on, we give Chinese government 24 hours to respond,” Roantree said. Although other countries which are very responsive usually would respond in two or three hours.


According to Roantree, even though they have such unique rule for Chinese government, the government still rarely respond to Reuters. However, sometimes government responds and provides more information. Therefore, Roantree said they will give government as much time as they can, to wait for possible crucial response.


“When we put in a request for comment, we tell them (the government)  exactly what the story is going to say,” Roantree added. If the government doesn’t give response, Reuters will write in the news that government didn’t respond.


Another problem that Reuters needs to deal with is about free from bias.


“In the world, lots of governments try to persuade journalists take their side and report what they want them to report,” said Roantree. So Reuters has a very strict trust principle for its journalists to ensure that they are free from bias.


Chinese government can block Reuters website and their news sources, but they cannot have any influence on what they write about. “They try, all the time. But they can’t,” Roantree said.


In order to avoid interference from the Chinese government, and to protect the safety of information and journalists, Reuters’ journalists are told never to use WeChat in mainland China. “Because government can see all of our messages,” Roantree explained.


Reuters journalists have special messaging system, like silence circle, signal, and its internal system as well. “The only way that Chinese government could know what we are reporting now is through email, so we can’t send anything through email,” added by Roantree.

 
 
 

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