Cut your losses, Thomson Reuters

Thanks to The Baron for shining light on the dangerous action of Thomson Reuters in signing on to the UK Armed Forces Covenant both through its news reporting and now its excellent editorial. I am sure that journalists and many others inside the company feel supported and empowered by the outpouring of dismay and support in the many comments that have run.

As a reporter in Bosnia, I was once able to explain to a military interrogator while a Reuters cameraman and I were being detained under armed guard that we could not tell him how an opposing side's forces were deployed because as Reuters journalists we were required to be independent and strictly neutral. Remarkably, it worked. I do not believe it would work today if the opposing side were the British army (or any other western army for that matter, now that Reuters has been so closely associated with “the West”).

Thomson Reuters should cut its losses and reverse course, before the understandable furore grows even louder and the company is forced into backing down. At the same time, I do not impute anything other than decent motives to Mark Sandham and Lucinda Case. The inclusion argument is a valid one with regard to veterans in the workforce, wherever they may have served. Their apparent unawareness of the implications says more about how little Reuters News counts in the company's considerations and culture these days, and the toothlessness of the Trustees, than it does about their intentions. ■