问答题
Reuters: the Business of News
One of the world's biggest suppliers of news and financial information, Reuters Group PLC, has a worldwide network of 2000 journalists and provides news stories, photographs and videos to newspapers, televisions and Internet sites. Although it is better known as a press agency, Reuters in fact makes most of its profits through promoting financial information such as currency rates and stock prices to bankers and investors all over the world.
The history of Reuters goes hand in hand with improvements in communication technology. Reuters was established by Paul Julius Reuter-originally a bookseller in Germany. He set up a service using carrier pigeons to fly stock prices between Aachen in Germany, where the German telegraph line ended, and Brussels in Belgium, where the Belgian telegraph line began. In 1851, London had an important place in the global telegraphic network, because of which Reuter moved into an office near the London stock exchange from where he supplied investors in London and Paris with stock prices over the new Dover-Calais telegraph line. He expanded the service to include news items and had offices throughout Europe by the late 1850s.
As overland and undersea cables were laid, the business of Reuters expanded to the Far East in 1872 and South America in 1874. Its reputation also grew with a number of scoops. For example, Reuters was the first in Europe to announce President Lincoln's death in 1865. Reuter retired in 1872 and the company changed its name to Reuters Ltd. In 1923, Reuters began to use teleprinters to distribute news to London newspapers and to supply news to Europe.
After the growing pressure from the British government for Reuters to serve British interests, the company was restructured in 1941 in order to maintain its independence as agency. (69)
At the same time, in the face of competition from American agencies after World War Two, Reuters expanded its financial information services. In 1964, Reuters introduced Stockmaster, which transmitted stock information from around the world onto computer screens. In 1973, the launch of the Reuters monitor created an electronic marketplace for foreign currency by displaying currency rates in real time. Reuters expanded this to include news and other financial information. This was followed by the Reuters monitor dealing service in 1981, which allowed foreign currency traders to trade directly from their own computers.
In the 1990s, Reuters continued to develop information systems, including multimedia and online services. It bought a number of companies, including a television company which was called Reuters Television, which provides news, sports, business and entertainment via satellite to broadcasters in more than 90 countries. (70)
Today's Reuters is still based on its Trust Principles, which state that news and information from the company must be independent and free from bias. Reuters'journalists have to provide accurate and clear descriptions of events so that individuals, organizations and governments can make their own decisions based on facts. Answer the following questions according to the passage.
1.How does Reuters get most of its money?