Skip to main content

Comment

Moral marketing - based on Trust Principles

Monday 28 February 2022

STEVE SOMERVILLE, former bureau chief, manager and director of the Reuter Foundation

Thomson Reuters is unusual, maybe unique, among international corporations in proclaiming a set of moral principles as the basis of its business practice.

 

The corporate website for Reuters News says:

 

Reuters News Agency

The world’s largest multimedia news provider

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

The website goes on to explain the ethical and commercial importance of the Principles and how they were forged in the heat of the Second World War to protect Reuters news from bias and distortion.

 

It says: “The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles were adopted in 1941 and include the preservation of integrity, reliability of news, development of the news business, and related principles.

Today, the Trust Principles are fundamental to our entire business.”

 

How significant are they in fact today?

 

The answer must be that they are more and more significant, for two main reasons.

 

  • First, we live in a technological age of ever more sophisticated falsification of facts, for political and financial gain. The stakes are high. ‘Fake news’ is bad for the public and, in the case of Thomson Reuters and other reputed information suppliers, bad for business.
  • Secondly, right now, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are reverting to a dangerous world of brutal power politics not seen in Europe since before the Cold War. Information will be increasingly weaponised.

Amid these threats to the ‘freedom of information’, Thomson Reuters is in a special situation. Many companies have mission statements. Many support environmental, humanitarian or social responsibility causes. But few if any have a legal structure tasked with safeguarding the moral integrity of their business, in this case through a Founders Share Company with special powers.

 

Against this background, the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles clearly still have a place in the modern news world. They deserve to be better understood.

 

To this end, the Reuter Society and The Baron website have invited the chairman of the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, Kim Williams, to speak online to our members and guests, and answer questions: a unique opportunity to find out more about the Principles.

 

Under the title Media and Ethics - some of the challenges in the 21st Century, he will speak live from Australia on Friday 4 March from 1100 to 12 noon London time.

    

RSVP baronsbriefing@gmail.com to receive the Zoom access code. ■