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Reuters
News Service Editor Stirs Controversy
With Angry E-Mail About Unborn and President Bush;
Reuters “Pipe Bomb” Story Also Questioned
WASHINGTON (Sept. 5, 2004) – When a news editor for a major wire service
read a National Right to Life press release about partial-birth abortion, he
was outraged, and he decided it was time to express himself.
The release, issued by NRLC on August 26,
commented on a federal court ruling that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
cannot be enforced because it conflicts with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on
partial-birth abortion.
Among the hundreds of journalists who received the release by e-mail was
Todd Eastham, North American news editor for Reuters Limited, a major
national and international news service. On the morning of August 27,
Eastham hit his e-mail “reply” button and sent his thoughts back to National
Right to Life. In total, these were his words:
What’s your plan for parenting & educating all
the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world? Who will pay
for policing our streets & maintaining the prisons needed to contain them
when you, their parents & the system fail them? Oh, sorry. All that money
has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit. Give me a frigging break,
will you?
The e-mail was sent from Eastham’s Reuters e-mail account, (todd.eastham@reuters.com).
NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, who wrote the press release and
who directs the department that received Eastham’s reply, said that
Eastham’s angry message came “out of the blue.”
“As far as we can tell, we had never before received any communication from
Mr. Eastham – he was on an e-mail list for press releases only because he
was listed by the Reuters Washington bureau as a news editor,” Johnson said.
“After receiving his provocative e-mail, we did a little research and found
that Mr. Eastham was listed as Reuters’ North American news editor. We also
found that he both edited political stories and had reported under his own
byline on many different subjects, including political stories and stories
about the Catholic Church.”
Regarding the substance of Eastham’s comments, Johnson commented, “It
appeared that Mr. Eastham felt very strongly that abortion is necessary to
prevent the birth of children who will otherwise snatch some bread from his
mouth. I have four children, three of them adopted. Two of the four already
pay taxes, and so far none of the four seems headed for prison.”
(A collection of other comments on Eastham’s e-mail appears
here.)
Later on August 27, Eastham’s e-mail was reported on the popular website
nationalreview.com by Romesh Ponnuru. Soon it was being reproduced, and
commented on, by many other publications and websites, including a large
number of the so-called “blogs.” “Blogs” are websites, usually maintained by
private individuals (“bloggers”), that feature frequent journal-like
commentaries on current events.
On August 30, Howard Kurtz, who covers the news media for the Washington
Post, reproduced Eastham’s e-mail in his widely read
“Media Notes” column.
Kurtz quoted Johnson as saying it was “sad” to see “such blatant hostility”
toward the Bush administration and unborn children. He quoted
Reuters spokesman Stephen Naru as saying it was “unfortunate” that an editor
“chose to offer his personal opinion.”
Kurtz also reported, “But Eastham, saying he doesn't usually edit stories
involving abortion, responds that he read the release ‘as a personal
political solicitation and was not responding in my capacity as an editor. I
didn’t intend this as a professional communication.’”
Johnson commented to NRL News, “Since Eastham sent the e-mail from his
official Reuters e-mail account, I wonder how we are supposed to distinguish
between a news editor in his ‘professional communication’ mode and the same
editor in his ‘unprofessional communication’ mode.”
Johnson dismissed as “ludicrous on its face” Eastham’s claim that the press
release – which was headed, ‘Statement by National Right to Life
on the future of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act’ – was “a personal
political solicitation.”
Eastham’s e-mail was reported in many venues as well, including The Weekly
Standard, christianitytoday.com, Family News in Focus, and LifeNews.com. On
August 30, Cybercast News Service ran a story which was picked up by the
popular website www.drudgereport.com. On August 31, Fox News Network
Washington bureau chief Brit Hume reported on Eastham’s e-mail in his daily
“Political Grapevine” feature.
On the same day, the Reuters e-mail was the subject of a critical commentary
by James Taranto in his “Best of the Web Today,” a popular feature on
www.opinionjournal.com, a website associated with the Wall Street Journal.
Two days later, on September 2, Taranto reported, “Our item Tuesday about
Reuters editor Todd Eastham’s angry e-mail to the National Right to Life
Committee prompted an e-mail from Reuters spokesman Steve Naru, who relayed
a statement from David Schlesinger, the ‘news’ service’s global managing
editor, which reads in part: ‘I personally was appalled by the incident and
I can assure you it has been handled robustly through our internal
disciplinary process.’ We wrote back to ask what ‘handled robustly through
our internal disciplinary process,’ means, and Naru replied that this
information is confidential. He did reveal, however, that Eastham ‘is not
employed in the same capacity. We are making appropriate adjustments to his
duties.’”
On September 3, Schlesinger also sent an e-mail to Johnson, in which he
said, “I was personally appalled by Mr. Eastham’s lapse; it has been handled
through our disciplinary process and he understands the seriousness of what
happened.”
Schlesinger did not explain the nature of the “disciplinary process,” but he
wrote, “Freedom from bias is integral to all that Reuters represents, and I
intend to keep it that way.”
Johnson said that Schlesinger’s statements were welcome, but added, “I have
to wonder about the culture of a newsroom in which such sentiments would be
so casually conveyed by an editor, whose job presumably includes reviewing
reporters’ stories for bias and distortions.”
Johnson also sharply questioned Reuters coverage of a pipe bomb that
exploded in a biotech laboratory near Boston on August 26. No one was hurt,
but the lab suffered an estimated $250,000 in damage.
A Reuters dispatch the next day
left the clear impression that the attack might have something to do
with opponents of embryonic stem cell research. But reporters for other news
outlets who actually checked the facts quickly ascertained that Amaranth has
nothing at all to do with embryo-based research. Indeed, the firm is engaged
in adult stem-cell research, a type of research that is constantly applauded
and promoted by virtually all people who oppose embryo-destructive research.
For example, The Scientist Daily News reported on August 31, “Police in
Watertown, Mass., said yesterday that they don't believe that the unknown
person
who blew up a pipe bomb in a biotech laboratory there last Thursday (August
26) was protesting stem cell research, as has been broadly suggested,
because the company uses only adult cells in its research -- not
controversial embryonic cells.”
That story and others said that authorities were focusing on a former
employee of another firm in the same building. who was out on bail while
awaiting trial for allegedly trying to burn down the same building in 2003.
On August 31, that individual was arrested for the bombing. On September 1,
Reuters sent out a new dispatch, which ran in many newspapers across the
nation, that actually compounded its original error.
The lead sentence for
the September 1 story
was, “Police Wednesday arrested a man in connection with last week’s pipe
bomb explosion at a Boston-area laboratory specializing in stem-cell
research,” without distinguishing between research that requires killing
human embryos and other types of stem cell research. Fully one-third of the
story was devoted to references to a “national debate” over “stem cell
research,” references to restrictions adopted by President Bush, and the
concluding observation, “Democratic candidate John Kerry has said he would
reverse Bush’s actions.”
NRLC’s Johnson commented, “Reuters never told its readers that the lab was
in fact engaged only in precisely the sort of ethical stem cell research
that is strongly supported by President Bush and other opponents of
embryo-destroying research, and it strongly implied just the opposite. The
reader could leave the story only with the strong impression that the crime
probably had something to do with opposition to embryonic stem cell research
– why else devote a third of the story to that subject? Yet, the contrary
facts were easily ascertainable and were reported by many other news
outlets.”
Johnson concluded, “The Reuters dispatches on the bombing were laden with
misinformation that was inserted without any evident effort to check the
facts, apparently on the basis of sheer assumption -- which is a textbook
symptom of journalistic bias.” To
return to "Media Myths" index, click here.
To read some of the comments which Todd Eastham's
e-mail engendered, click here.
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