I. INDEPENDENT NEWS AGENCIESFour major international news agencies-Associated Press, Reuters, UnitedPress and Agence France Presse-gather and distribute much if not most ofthe international news (be it “hard,” breaking news or “soft” news features)published and broadcast in the world?They transmit in English and French as well as a number of commerciallysignificant and logistically easy regional languages. (A.P. transmits a dailyservice in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish and offers anArabic features service by mail. Reuters and AFP offer a daily news file inArabic.) Most of this news is now transmitted point-to-point either by landline,microwave link, satellite or some combination of these methods which havelargely replaced radio wireless transmission over the past ten years. The newtechnology is much more effective; much less subject to failure and climaticinterference but much more expensive. Point-to-point telex is also sometimesused as a fall back position where radio wireless transmission is still in use.The Associated Press, as an example, has 8,500 subscribers in 150 countriesoutside of the United States for its World Service. But the extent thatBig Four news dominates international news is much greater than the numberof subscribers would indicate, since many national news agencies subscribeto one or more of the Big Four services and then edit and re-transmit thematerial as part of their own news service to hundreds or even thousands oflocal news outlets; e. g. Tass-which subscribes to the Associated Pressservice-has approximately 6,000 subscribers in the Soviet Union.As the number of full-time foreign correspondents for newspapers continuesto decline due to increasing costs and as mass media has proliferatedthroughout the Third World over the past few decades, the Big Four and othernews agencies have expanded in size ...
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Sep 1, 1993
A.W Palmer 