Fired editor and the Trust Principles: 'I wasn't trained'

The warning rebuked New York-based editor Matthew Keys for mocking a Google executive from a fake Twitter account. 

“While it doesn’t say it in the written warning, Reuters issued the final warning while admitting that I hadn’t received the proper training on how Reuters operates as a news organization, what is expected of their journalists, and so on,” Keys told the Columbia Journalism Review. 

“A good example is the Trust Principles, which Reuters claims I violated. I had no idea what the Trust Principles were until I was sent to training in early November – two weeks after the final warning. I don’t understand how the company can expect its journalists to abide by a set of principles without telling its journalists what those principles are. That’s like trying to play a board game without having first read the rules.”

The Trust Principles were drafted by Reuters in 1941 and accepted as a code of rules for doing business when the Thomson group acquired the organisation in 2008.

Keys, 26, hired by Reuters as deputy to social media editor Anthony De Rosa in January 2012, was indicted in California last month by the US Justice Department which accused him of sharing a previous employer’s network information with the hacking collective known as Anonymous. The alleged offences occurred in December 2010, before he joined Reuters. On Tuesday Keys pleaded not guilty.

Reuters initially suspended him with pay but on Monday fired him after he continued to post messages on Twitter during his suspension. His tweets included inaccurate information about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects and reports based on Boston police scanner traffic after the city’s police department had asked the media to stop using that information.

Keys told the CJR nothing was wrong with his Boston coverage. “Like the networks and wires, I had anonymous sources within law enforcement. Unlike the networks and the wires, my sources were solid. Not once did I have to retract anything my sources told me. Reuters is faulting me for not adhering to a request published by other news organizations. As far as I’m aware, there was no request by law enforcement on social media and no request by law enforcement by way of a press release or media statement asking for people on Twitter to not tweet emergency scanner traffic...

“A manager with Reuters told me on Friday the company would have been perfectly happy if I had stopped tweeting when the suspension was handed down. That would have been the more conservative approach, but I don’t think it would have made a difference. The company was looking for a reason to dispose of me.”

The Columbia Journalism Review said Keys’ remarks, published on Tuesday, were in response to questions it posed by e-mail. ■