Inclusiveness

It Is good to see that Thomson Reuters is to launch a review of the decision to sign a covenant under which the independent, international company pledges to honour the British Armed forces for their role in defending "our country”.

I would think that none of us who took to The Baron to protest against this aberrant initiative, announced to staff ex post facto, wish to add to the obvious discomfiture of the two company executives involved.

However, the assertion in their new statement that the covenant was signed to show that Reuters "is an inclusive employer" is at best laughable. Just who did they think were being included? Certainly it would not have been the thousands of Reuter staffers around the world in all parts of the company who are not British, and many of whom are citizens of countries with no particular reason, in some cases quite the reverse, to "honour" Britain's armed forces (in whose ranks I once served).

It will of course be embarrassing for Reuters to cancel its signature. But this step has, in my view, to be taken, even though the damage has already been done and any authoritarian regime or extremist group seeking to undermine Reuters reputation as an independent and impartial news organisation beholden to no "country", will certainly seize upon the covenant episode as grist to its mill. Such regimes may also find this affair very useful in targeting individual Reuter journalists or other media workers linked with Reuters.

It is a side issue, of course, but some competitor news organisations long uncomfortable at being labelled "national" news agencies must also be not unamused at seeing Reuters apparently linking itself to an arm of the British state. ■