Breaking big news by reporting secret Taliban talks first

Reuters broke the news on Jan 29 that Taliban commanders had met secretly with the United Nations Special Representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide - the first such high level talks. Reuters broke the story at an international meeting on Afghanistan in London. Competitors such as the Financial Times and the Guardian scrambled to match the Reuters story, taking several hours to do so. It was the biggest and most unexpected development from the London conference that brought together Afghan President Karzai, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton and foreign ministers and officials from 60 nations and at which Karzai invited the Taliban to a peace council. The view among Afganistan experts was that the conference marked ‘a big shift in mood’ and Reuters was the first, by many hours, to detect it.