Sometimes news material reaches Reuters in strange ways. On Friday an amateur web watcher contacted a Reuters bureau in Europe and offered the company access to the Bin Laden video which was expected but had not yet appeared in public. Fast work by television and text staff in Europe and the Gulf established that the video was authentic and it was quickly distributed to customers.
The material remained exclusive to Reuters for some hours and won wide, well-credited play. The Islamist websites that used to publish such videos were all being blocked and even Al Jazeera, traditionally the first to run Al Qaeda videos, used Reuters material. CNN, which has recently dropped Reuters as a supplier, was left in the cold by the exclusive and scrambled for hours to access the tape from elsewhere. CNN were so uncompetitive on the story it merited a story in the New York Times.
The strong editorial performance on this story was emphasised the same evening by Reuters text staff in Washington, who secured a translated transcript of Bin Laden's speech from an intelligence source, ahead of rivals. That allowed Reuters to build a strong story, complete with President George W. Bush's reaction to the tape, while competitors were still trying to pin down what Bin Laden said.
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