Alessandra Galloni spells out newsgathering realities — as the News Media Coalition promotes its PSJ Framework.
Factual, first-hand, trustworthy newsgathering of original news content requires journalist access to places, events and information, alongside editorial training and good judgement. That was the central message of Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni in delivering the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in Sydney.
Reuters is a founding member of the News Media Coalition (NMC), which comprises major news publishers and national and international news agencies.
Speaking in the home city of NMC member the Australian Associated Press, Galloni said her journalists bring three things to a story:
“The training, judgement, and access to report what is actually happening.”
“Original reporting, on the ground, costs money”.
She said she had often been struck, in her conversations with technology companies, by “how little they understand about what original, first-hand, on the ground journalism is” and what it takes to produce it. She gave three examples: a photographer under fire in a hospital in Gaza; a correspondent in a refugee camp on the Chad-Sudan border, speaking to victims of a campaign of mass rape; a reporter working a well-informed but reluctant source on a corporate misdeed.
She described news agencies as “a font of factual, primary-source, first-hand reporting”. Later in the same lecture she said two Pulitzer-winning Reuters investigations had held power to account with “first-hand, primary-source, on the ground, painstaking original reporting”.
Her remarks aligned with the NMC’s Framework for Primary Source Journalism, which lists nine essential conditions for news reporting that informs citizens, combats misinformation, challenges those in power and strengthens the information ecosystem. More on PSJ and why it matters is here.
Taking the Framework to Brussels
The Framework will be promoted in Brussels at a two-day event with politicians, officials, senior media representatives and the next generation of journalists — today’s news and information consumers, and the reporters who need the conditions of the PSJ Framework in place to build their careers.
Day one, 13 October, is at the European Parliament. Day two, 14 October, is at the Residence Palace. The event explores “Primary Source Journalism: the pursuit of truth and upholding trust in democratic societies”.
The Framework’s nine conditions, and what each one means in practice:
1. Access to report and access to information. Access for journalists to witness, report and publish must have no strings attached — such as paying to create news.
2. Support for news. From classrooms to corridors of power, respect for quality news needs bolstering.
3. Independence of news. Newsgatherers cannot be excluded from news events because reports are seen as critical.
4. Positive newsgathering environments. Working environments must keep pace with content consumption, such as video journalism.
5. Engaging with the news media. Public interest in big news events thrives when organisers and newsrooms collaborate.
6. Reward for trustworthy newsgathering in the age of AI. Journalistic enterprise and copyright need rewarding in the content economy.
7. PR material is no substitute for independent news content. Quality contextual news journalism cannot be supplanted by official content.
8. Availability of news. Editorial coverage must not be limited by curbs imposed on how reports and imagery are used.
9. Safety of journalists. News journalists must be protected from harm in any physical or virtual environment.
NMC response
Andrew Moger, NMC Chief Executive, said: “Alessandra Galloni described the work in the same terms our members use. What stood out was that she put access alongside training and judgement. Training and judgement are ours to provide. Access is not. It depends on decisions taken by governments, public authorities and event organisers, and European law currently says very little about it.”
“That is the gap the Framework was written to address. It is useful to hear the case made from a newsroom rather than from a policy paper. We will be putting the same case to the European institutions in October.”
Read the full NMC report on the lecture: Primary source, on the ground: the Andrew Olle Lecture and the principles of professional newsgathering
The Framework for Primary Source Journalism: newsmediacoalition.org
What is Primary Source Journalism? NMC explainer
Full text of the lecture, published by Reuters on 23 July 2026: Alessandra Galloni delivers Andrew Olle Media Lecture in Sydney
