The Reuters news agency this week recognized the challenges of
covering Donald Trump’s presidency by comparing it to authoritarian
regimes like Egypt, Yemen and China.“It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists ‘among
the most dishonest human beings on earth’ or that his chief strategist
dubs the media ‘the opposition party’,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve
Adler wrote in a message to staff
on Tuesday. “It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with
questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.”He cited the organization’s work in “Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt,
Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia” as an example of how
to report on the Trump administration.Adler said that reporters could use experience learned in “nations in
which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal
prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our
journalists.”Among other advice, the news agency pointed out that reporters should
“[g]ive up on hand-outs and worry less about official access.”“They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has
been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have
are sources,” the memo said. “Get out into the country and learn more
about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and
how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.”The letter encouraged reporters to “never be intimidated” by the administration.
“Don’t vent publicly about what might be understandable day-to-day
frustration. In countless other countries, we keep our own counsel so we
can do our reporting without being suspected of personal animus. We
need to do that in the U.S., too,” the message to reporters said. “Don’t
take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity
for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places
around the world and to lead by example – and therefore to provide the
freshest, most useful, and most illuminating information and insight of
any news organization anywhere.”Take the kid gloves off.
Reuters orders reporters to cover Trump like an authoritarian regime: Expect ‘physical threats’
