- Also called:
- press agency, press association, wire service, or news service
news agency
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What is a news agency?
A news agency gathers, writes, and distributes news to various subscribers, including newspapers, broadcasters, and government agencies. It doesn't typically publish news itself but offers it to subscribers, who share costs for services they might not afford individually.
These agencies take various forms, from local collaborations to national and worldwide services, and may offer diverse content, including stock-market data, sports results, and even entertainment features. Most depend on a few major agencies, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse, for the bulk of their news. These agencies maintain reporters worldwide to ensure access to well-organized transmission facilities and distribute news rapidly.
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How does a news agency work in journalism?
News agencies gather, write, and distribute news from around the world to various subscribers, including newspapers, broadcasters, and government agencies. They do not generally publish news themselves but instead supply news to their subscribers, who share the costs.
These agencies come in various forms, from local cooperatives to national and worldwide services, and they provide diverse services, including news interpretation, special columns, and even audio and video content.
Most news printed and broadcast throughout the world comes from a few major agencies, such as the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse, which have the resources to station reporters worldwide. A standards-based news organization adheres to professional and ethical standards to produce quality journalism.
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What kinds of news do news agencies provide?
News agencies gather, write, and distribute news from around the world to various subscribers, including newspapers, broadcasters, government agencies, and other users. They provide mass media with the bulk of their news.
News agencies offer diverse coverage, from local events to international affairs, and extend their services to include news interpretation, special columns, and visual content. They deliver international "spot news" and raise standards of objective news reporting. The major agencies employ experienced reporters worldwide to ensure access to news and facilitate rapid distribution.
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How do news agencies collect and verify information?
News agencies gather, write, and distribute news to various subscribers, including media outlets and government agencies. To ensure quality journalism, news agencies adhere to professional and ethical standards, like the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
To evaluate the credibility of information, news agencies check the reputation of unfamiliar news sources using search engines and credible sources. They strive to be fair, avoid bias, provide important context, and act with transparency, independence, and accountability. Responsible news organizations correct errors quickly and thoroughly to maintain credibility.
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What is the relationship between news agencies and other media outlets?
News agencies gather, write, and distribute news to various media outlets such as newspapers, radio and television broadcasters, and government agencies. These agencies do not typically publish news themselves; instead, they supply news to subscribers, who share costs to access services they might not otherwise afford.
Most mass media rely on news agencies for the majority of their news, even those with their own extensive news-gathering resources. The major global news agencies include the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse, which have the resources to station reporters worldwide and distribute news quickly.
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Why are news agencies important to global journalism and information sharing?
News agencies are vital to global journalism and information sharing because they gather, write, and distribute news from around the world to various subscribers, including media outlets and government agencies. By sharing costs, subscribers gain access to services they might not be able to afford individually.
These agencies offer extensive coverage, including stock-market data, sports results, and election reports. They also provide news interpretation, columns, photos, and audio/video content. The major agencies station reporters worldwide to ensure access to news and facilitate rapid distribution. This continuous supply of international news raises the standards of objective reporting.
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news agency, organization that gathers, writes, and distributes news from around a nation or the world to newspapers, periodicals, radio and television broadcasters, government agencies, and other users. It does not generally publish news itself but supplies news to its subscribers, who, by sharing costs, obtain services they could not otherwise afford. All the mass media depend upon the agencies for the bulk of the news, even including those few that have extensive news-gathering resources of their own.
The news agency has a variety of forms. In some large cities, newspapers and radio and television stations have joined forces to obtain routine coverage of news about the police, courts, government offices, and the like. National agencies have extended the area of such coverage by gathering and distributing stock-market quotations, sports results, and election reports. A few agencies have extended their service to include worldwide news. The service has grown to include news interpretation, special columns, news photographs, audiotape recordings for radio broadcast, and often videotape or motion-picture film for television news reports. Many agencies are cooperatives, and the trend has been in that direction since World War II. Under this form of organization, individual members provide news from their own circulation areas to an agency pool for general use. In major news centres the national and worldwide agencies have their own reporters to cover important events, and they maintain offices to facilitate distribution of their service.
In addition to general news agencies, several specialized services have developed. In the United States alone these number well over 100, including such major ones as Science Service, Religious News Service, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and News Election Service. Specialized services in other countries include the Swiss Katholische Internationale Presseagentur, which reports news of special interest to Roman Catholics, and the Star News Agency of Pakistan, which supplies news of Muslim interest in English and Urdu.
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The major press associations in the United States have expanded their service to include entertainment features, and some feature syndicates provide straight news coverage as a part of their service. The Newspaper Enterprise Association distributes both news and features in the United States.
Despite the plethora of news services, most news printed and broadcast throughout the world each day comes from only a few major agencies, the three largest of which are the Associated Press in the United States, Reuters in Great Britain, and Agence France-Presse in France. Only these and a few others have the financial resources to station experienced reporters in all areas of the world where news develops regularly (in order to ensure access to well-organized transmission facilities) or to send them wherever news develops unexpectedly. These agencies are also equipped to distribute the service almost instantaneously.
The world agencies have established a variety of relationships with other agencies and with individual news media. Most of them purchase the news services of national or local agencies to supplement news gathered by their own staff representatives at key points. Reuters, like the Agence France-Presse, supplies a worldwide news file to be distributed by some national agencies along with their domestic news reports. The American services more often contract to deliver their service directly to individual users abroad.
News agencies in communist countries had close ties to their national governments. Each major communist country had its own national news service, and each news service was officially controlled, usually by the minister of information. TASS, the Soviet news agency, was the principal source of world news for the Soviet Union and its allies; it also made Soviet Communist Party policy known. Communist states outside the Soviet sphere, e.g., China and Yugoslavia, had their own state news services, which were controlled in similar fashion. China’s Hsinhua, or New China News Agency, was the largest remaining news agency in a communist country by the late 20th century.
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Most other countries have one or more national news agencies. Some depend on a common service, such as the Arab News Agency, which provides news for several states in the Middle East. Others are national newspaper cooperatives, such as the Ritzaus Bureau of Denmark, founded in 1866. A few, like the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata of Italy, have expanded coverage abroad in a limited degree to supplement their domestic service but still depend on Reuters and Agence France-Presse for much of their foreign news. Germany since 1949 has built Deutsche-Presse Agentur into one of the more important news agencies in Europe, including extensive exchange with other national services. In Canada the Canadian Press is a cooperative news agency with headquarters in Toronto. The oldest and largest news agency operating exclusively in Britain is the Press Association, founded by provincial newspapers on a cooperative basis in 1868. It began active work on February 5, 1870, when the postal service took over the private telegraph companies that had previously supplied the provincial papers with news. It supplies news to all the London daily and Sunday newspapers, provincial papers, and trade journals and other periodicals.
The ability to transmit news rapidly greatly increased during the 20th century. Radioteleprinters that make possible fast automatic transmission of news messages linked all major areas. Picture transmission by radio and high-fidelity wires became well developed. From the major agencies, teletypesetter service, pioneered by the Associated Press in 1951, was available to newspapers wishing to have computerized typesetting done directly from news-service transmissions. By the 21st century, most news agencies had moved the bulk of their operations and transmission to computers.
For brief coverage of the major world news agencies, see Agence France-Presse; Associated Press; Kyōdō tsūshinsha; Press Trust of India; Reuters; TASS; United Press International. For treatment of newspaper feature syndicates, see newspaper syndicate.