Climate change

It would be interesting to know whether the Media Matters of America study takes into account what is being done by the Thomson Reuters Foundation [Reuters climate change coverage ‘worsened’ - study].

Readers of The Baron may be surprised to learn that TRF has a news staff of 25 full-time journalists around the world, supplemented by a stringer network of more than 100 freelancers. Their remit is to cover topics the foundation sees as getting too little coverage, starting with humanitarian matters. Some 45 per cent of the file in 2013 was on that topic; notably, number two is climate change, which accounted for 26 per cent.

Having learned this only a few weeks ago while attending a meeting on strategy at TRF, for whom I do some training courses, I asked the CEO, Monique Villa, whether TRF had stepped up climate change coverage due to Reuters trimming its file cover of the topic.

“Our coverage is not in any way a response to what Reuters is doing and we have started strong reporting of climate change issues four years ago, well before you could sense a trimming back of Reuters coverage,” she said in a written response to my question.

“What is clear if you look at both our coverage and Reuters coverage is that ours has grown in terms of numbers of stories – and I must say awards, both in Asia and Africa last year. Our coverage of the human impact of climate change is a natural response to a growing threat to lives, security and the world’s economy. And we will soon shed more light and increase our coverage on the issue of access to water, and especially its impact on women.

“Even if Reuters has lost some of its stars reporters on climate, it continues to do some excellent climate pieces, particularly by Alister Doyle.”

I also asked whether foundation stories get the visibility Reuters news does. Her reply:

“News produced by the Foundation reporters is published and made available free of charge through the Foundation website, trust.org. The same content is also made available on a dedicated section of the reuters.com website. In addition to that, Reuters put our news on their wires when newsworthy and different wires and websites belonging to different business units also use the foundation content as they see fit. You can read our corruption stories on the Risk website, and our climate stories on the Sustainability website. These are just two examples.” ■