Pinder: "leaving TV on a high"
Rodney Pinder, editor of Reuters television news, is leaving after 30 years at the news agency he joined as a print journalist.
Pinder will not be replaced – instead his responsibilities for the TV news operation based at Gray’s Inn Road, London, will be divided between the editor of corporate and media, Wolfgang Waehner-Schmidt, and Stephen Wende, the TV news editor for Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Reuters has laid off about 2,250 workers across the company over the past year after suffering considerable losses on its financial information service. Most of the job cuts have been at management level and the news operation has been spared major job cuts.
Pinder, who joined Reuters in 1973 from Associated Press, insists his decision to leave was a personal one.
"You reach a point when the stories have to be bigger and bigger to get the juices flowing," he said. "When it is difficult to be excited by the job, it’s time to think about moving on."
The 58-year-old is the latest in a line of senior news executives in the broadcasting industry to have stood down in recent months. Last month Richard Tait retired after 15 years at ITN.
Pinder was promoted to editor of Reuters television news in 1998, with responsibility for global newsgathering and production.
Prior to that he worked as a correspondent in London, Israel and Northern Ireland, before being posted to South Africa in 1977, where he visited Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. He was posted to Rhodesia in 1977 to cover the war between the white minority Government and the black majority.
He returned in the early Eighties to cover the frontline states around South Africa and was the first reporter to uncover evidence of mass killing of civilians in southern Zimbabwe by government forces quashing a rebellion.
He also covered the Iran-Iraq war and headed the team covering the Gulf War in 1991.
"With the possibility of another war in Iraq I thought to myself that I can’t go through all that again," he said.
Pinder added that he would "try to find something interesting" to do and would like to be involved in working for the protection of journalists in the face of growing danger, both politically and as a result of modern warfare.
"I think I am leaving TV on a high and I’m looking forward to starting something new," he said.
By Julie Tomlin
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