Bloomberg Between Iraq and a Hard Place

By: Allan Wolper Reuters journalists walk the streets and roads of Iraqi cities and towns, dodging bullets and ducking away from explosions, risking their lives to get their stories and pictures. When they complain that Bloomberg reporters in London, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Dubai are attaching their bylines to Iraq stories by Reuters journalists, it is not an idle rant.

"Our correspondents are risking their lives," said Andrew Marshall, Reuters' Baghdad bureau chief, in a telephone interview from his front-line office. "But Bloomberg writers are not in Iraq. They're putting their names on our work without any further checking whatsoever."

Reuters, a British stalwart of foreign wars for more than a century, has 40 correspondents in Iraq. Bloomberg had its own correspondents on the ground in Iraq during the early stages of the war, but pulled them out after President Bush declared victory 16 months ago. Now, Bloomberg is primarily covering Iraq from its cubicles, using Reuters, an occasional stringer, and other news organizations as its foot soldiers.

With the largest news force in Iraq, Reuters is the first organization to go public with its grievance. They also have plenty of evidence to support it. Reuters editors performed a Lexis-Nexis search in April and May and found at least 20 of their Iraq stories rewritten with Bloomberg bylines on them.

The Bloomberg cribbers continued their heavy lifting throughout the summer. On July 1, for example, Bloomberg.com posted a story that two Iraqi officials were killed when their convoy was bombed. The 208-word dispatch, sprinkled with five separate credits to Reuters, was written by Bloomberg reporter Heather Langan in London.

Langan said she was not qualified to discuss the piece, and suggested I speak to Paul Sillitoe, managing editor/general news for Bloomberg. Sillitoe was aghast that anyone would question Bloomberg's byline policy. "We have complete transparency in this," he said. "We give Reuters absolute credit. We are not masquerading as something we are not."

That is a matter of opinion. Bloomberg's Web site includes this pledge: "We are committed to covering the news where it's breaking, as it's breaking."

Before the byline dispute, there was the dateline debacle. Until May 2003, Bloomberg had used on-the-scene datelines in its stories even when their reporters were nowhere near the action. The news service then discontinued the practice. "It could be misleading," Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Bloomberg, told Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post.

These days, when you see a Bloomberg story on Iraq, it means that someone else is reporting it. Winkler, however, believes that news organizations like Reuters should thank Bloomberg for promoting the trench-warfare journalism they are performing in Iraq. "We could steal stuff, but we don't," Winkler told me. "We always acknowledge the source. There is no chance of having a Jack Kelley here ...." He emphasized that he had never received a written protest about the byline issue from Reuters or any other news organization.

After I asked Geert Linnebank, editor in chief of Reuters, why that was the case, he telephoned Winkler. When they finally talked, they simply restated their positions.

It's unlikely there will be any legal activity. Linnebank's lawyers have told him they won't be able to win a lawsuit against Bloomberg. What Reuters really wants is to embarrass Bloomberg.

Of course, when it comes to Bloomberg vs. Reuters, it's always a little (or a lot) about money. Reuters has been fretting about the inroads that Bloomberg, with only 14 years in the news business, has been making on its once-dominant domain.

"We spend millions of pounds each year to put our people on the ground in Iraq and other countries in the area,"Linnebank said in an interview from his London office. "We've had a number of exclusives that they've published under their bylines. I question the ethics of that."

But this controversy is as much about blood as it is about bylines and money. "In the past 15 months we've had two journalists killed in Iraq, and several others wounded,"said Paul Holmes, Reuters' political and general news editor. "Our correspondents see what Bloomberg is doing, and they resent it." It's understandable why they feel that way. While Reuters' journalists are filing their dispatches under fire, Bloomberg reporters sit at their computers, waiting to rip them off.