this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Since they generally report in a shorter format, they tend to not provide much context.
On the one hand, one could say this tends towards less bias, but on the other, context is absolutely critical to assessing a situation.
I think they have their place in the news cycle, and they are a useful source. I think that if they report an event you can be confident it has occurred, BUT they are very, very good at putting spin in only a few words, e.g. "murdered" vs "killed". They also leave out extremely important context when it doesn't fit their narrative/bias/click farming.
I am extremely critical of Reuters. But if they are one source amongst many they are useful. Particularly if you look at local news sources or other Reuters news snippets for context around the event.
They deliberately choose "killed" over "murdered" not because of spin, but becauss "killed" is value neutral, and "murder" requires malice of forethought.
Sometimes yes, sometimes it is correct to use murder.
But I was just using it as well known an example of how even a short sentence can have implicit bias while appearing to be simply factual. Not referring to anything specific.
Sometimes using killed is the most factual, sometimes it isn't. Saying someone died is often factual as well. It's really dependent on context what word to choose and they can create a very different narrative.
It also can simply be passive versus active voice in sentence structure.
There was an interesting case where Reuters headline was about police in South Africa killed protesting miners. They had a headline video that showed the police opening fire and an officer getting them to stop shooting. And a second "uncut" video on their RSS feed that wasn't published in any headline that showed the miners were actually a giant mob carrying machetes, sticks, clubs and a few had guns which were fired into the air. The mob started charging the police line and when they opened fire the mob scattered. There was no mention of the police officer that had been beaten to death in the same area the night before by the protesters.
Both were completely factual reports, but they lacked context, and were subsequently widely used to demonise the police.
(Now, don't get me wrong, cops are usually at fault, and the wider situation of why did those miners need to protest etc is a different topic. But in that specific instance there was a lot of context missing to the individual actions)