Reuters (via CNBC)
international center / wire service
Background
Reuters was founded in London in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter, a former bank clerk, who initially used the new Calais-Dover telegraph cable to transmit stock prices between London and Paris. The agency signed its first newspaper client in 1858 and expanded globally through the late 1800s, becoming one of the dominant international wire services alongside France's Havas and Germany's Wolff. It went public in 1984 and in April 2008 was acquired by Canada's Thomson Corporation, forming Thomson Reuters; the Thomson family's holding company, Woodbridge, retained controlling ownership (~71% as of 2026). To guard editorial independence, Reuters operates under the Reuters Trust Principles — a framework dating to a 1947 agreement with newspaper co-owners — which are maintained by the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, a separate oversight body. Reuters supplies wire content under license to thousands of outlets worldwide, including CNBC, which regularly republishes Reuters stories on its website and platforms. AllSides has consistently rated Reuters 'Center' through multiple blind surveys as recently as March–April 2026, and Ad Fontes Media places it in the high-reliability, near-center range of its bias chart. In November 2025, the Trump White House added Reuters to its 'Media Offenders' tracker, citing specific stories as biased or inaccurate; the Committee to Protect Journalists criticized the tracker as an attempt to undermine independent reporting rather than a genuine accountability tool.
Sources
- Who Owns Thomson Reuters Company? – Quantumrun
- Reuters – Wikipedia
- Thomson Reuters – Wikipedia
- Reuters Trust Principles – Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company
- Reuters Media Bias Rating – AllSides
- Reuters Bias and Reliability – Ad Fontes Media
- Reuters – The White House Media Offenders
- Trump administration's 'media bias' list raises alarm – CPJ
- Reuters Goes Direct To Consumer in Diversification Bid – A Media Operator
- Thomson Reuters 2025 Annual Results – SEC Filing
Profile compiled 2026-07-01; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.