Days after Reuters' global managing editor lamented "terrible quality problems,'' the wire service caused confusion by issuing a story that turns out to be more than six months old.
A report by the British-based agency on its website, dated yesterday, said "Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least 16 people in simultaneous attacks on two Israeli buses on Tuesday, breaking a long lull in such violence and threatening to disrupt an Israeli plan to pull out of Gaza."
But those attacks actually took place in September.
The story, which was removed by the end of the day, was featured at one point on Google's auto-generated news page. A link still appears on Google's news search page.
The story's mysterious publishing yesterday might have been the result of a mix-up over a similar story -- simultaneous suicide attacks in Iraq. The link for the story of Palestinian attacks, in fact, ended with "IRAQ-SUICIDE.xml"
As WorldNetDaily reported, editor David Schlesinger wrote an e-mail intended for 10 senior managers, but read by thousands of Reuters employees in the company's daily briefing
"Our content platform is burning," Schlesinger wrote. "Our news is perceived as not having enough insight; our data is perceived as having terrible quality problems. Both news and data are not nearly the differentiating factors in Reuters' offering that they should be, that they could be, that they need to be."
The memo continued to say the group had a "web of inefficient and duplicative technology."
After its initial distribution April 6, Schlesinger sent out a follow-up, stating, "Due to a misunderstanding, a note I wrote intended to stimulate discussion among a small group of colleagues was published for a short while on Daily Briefing."
The London-based news agency which also has offices in New York's Times Square came under fire shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. when it instituted a policy on labeling violent extremists.
Stephen Jukes, Reuters' global head of news, decreed that the wire service's 2,500 reporters shouldn't use the word "terrorist" unless in a direct quote.
"We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist," Jukes wrote in an internal memo. "To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack."
Attempting to explain his values-neutral approach, Jukes added: "We're trying to treat everyone on a level playing field, however tragic it's been and however awful and cataclysmic for the American people and people around the world."
Schlesinger echoed those comments, telling the New York Times, "Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone."
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