The Press: Debate on Reuters

Britain’s great press association—Reuters, with 2,000 correspondents and an annual budget of approximately £6,000,000—long the most reliable news service outside the U.S., last week acquired a new group of owners and the change stirred debate in the House of Commons.

The debate concerned the sale of 50% of Reuters shares to the Newspaper Proprietors’ Assn., i.e., the big London publishers. Since 1925 all Reuters stock has been held by a cooperative of provincial papers calling themselves the Press Association; before that 60% was owned by Sir Roderick Jones, who sold out to them (after London publishers had refused his offer) in the belief that the national news agency should not be controlled by one man.

Alarmed M.P.s, still feeling that way, smelled a “sinister” monopoly by a handful of Britain’s big publishers—Lord Rothermere (who inherited his father’s title last year—Daily Mail, Daily Mirror), Major John Jacob Astor (the Times’), Lord Kemsley (Daily Sketch), Lord Camrose (Daily Telegraph & Morning Post) and Lord Beaverbrook (Daily Express)—who already owned 25% of Reuters stock through their provincial papers. The M.P.s warned that such control might destroy Reuters’ go-year reputation for trustworthy reporting. They also feared for the good name of BBC, Reuters’ biggest customer, feared still more for the prestige of British news abroad, which Reuters had done much to build.

Until two years ago Reuters got substantial revenue from the worldwide sale of news. War has cut off its market in Europe and China and has forced it to meet subsidized competition of Axis news agencies (DNB, Stefani, Domei) elsewhere, particularly in South America. War vastly increased the cost of coverage for Reuters as it has done for all press associations.

What Reuters faced, if it did not get the backing of the London publishers, was bluntly suggested by Minister of Information Brendan Bracken, himself chairman of London’s Financial News: Reuters could either be nationalized (as some had urged) or else the Government could form its own news agency. (Alarmed cries: “Nobody suggested that!”) Minister Bracken emphatically wanted neither. But he knew that Reuters “has lost ground.”

Said he:

“If anybody supposes that in the past ten or twelve years Reuters’ position as a world news agency has been equal to that of, say, the Associated Press of America, he is greatly mistaken. … It is really absurd to talk as if Reuters in the past was governed by the twelve apostles but that now bandits have come in to take it over.” At debate’s end M.P.s insisted only that the Government closely scrutinize the Reuters deal.