Media Day 2004 News Agencies

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Correspondent Articles
Glocal News
News Agencies
Introduction
About News Agencies
Agency Material
Agenda Setting
The Use of Agency Material
Alternatives
Conclusions
News Flow
News Images
News Voices
Top Story
Material & Data

AP, Reuters, AFP: The Mothers of all Global News ?

- The Impact of News Agencies

"As news providers on the Internet increase in quantity, the original sources
of consequential international news stories remain few. Global information
conglomerates Associated Press and Reuters dominate Internet news in
various ways. Through still poorly understood layers of mediation, the news
product and news perspectives of major wire services are reproduced
directly and indirectly in the web content of cyber-news providers, often
despite claims of editorial independence."

- Chris Paterson, London School of Economics and Political Science, April

2003

Following the correspondents section, this part of our study takes a look at a second, by far more
commonly used source of news material: the news agencies. The research goal was to find out
about the impact the three major news agencies have on global news provision. The section is
divided into six parts:

- The first part gives a brief introduction to the role of the news agencies in the global news flow
and points out theoretic problems of information gathering.

- In the second part I take a close look at the agency material and analyse who gets to speak in it.

- Thereafter I analyse to which degree the news agencies are able to set the global news agenda. By
comparing the top stories of the news agencies on March 18, 2004 with the top stories of all our
media on that day I try to evaluate if the media in the different countries keep up the news agenda
that has been set by the agencies and furthermore find out about regional differences in this matter.

- The fourth part gives an in-depth analysis of the way news agency material is used in the media.
Therefore I compare the original news agency messages with the published articles which name one
or more of the news agencies as a source. As a start, there is a sample demonstrating the
transformation news agency material goes through when used in an article. Thereafter I point out
the differences in which the material gets used in different media and countries.

- This is followed by a few exemplary cases of alternative global news provision without the use of
the major news agencies.

- In the final part I draw conclusions from the results gained in this part of our study.

Peter Brnner

The Role of News Agencies in Global News

Although there are a huge number of national and multi-national news agencies, today only three
can claim global importance. They are:
Reuters. Founded in London in 1851, the British agency derives most of its income from its
financial services. This focus is clearly visible in the news material of the company. Reuters staff
consists of 2,400 employees, working in 197 bureaux in 92 different countries. Revenues for the
year 2003 were 5,7 billion dollars. www.reuters.com
Associated Press (AP) The American AP was founded in 1848. Though it has also a strong
financial service, AP is mainly a media cooperative. Its staff consists of 3,700 people working in
242 bureaux. In addition to its 1,700 newspaper and 7,000 broadcasting clients in the USA, AP
serves another 8,500 international media clients in 121 countries. www.ap.org
Agence France Press (AFP) Founded in 1835, AFP originally mainly served the French
government. Today it is improving its English-language services and has changed its focus on
media clients. At present, AFP has got 2,000 employees in 110 bureaux in 165 countries.
www.afp.com

- Two more once global players have lost much of their international relevance:
The American United Press International (UPI) went bankrupt and got bought up by an Arab media
group. The demise of the Soviet Empire downgraded the importance of the Russian Tass agency to
that of a national agency like the ones in Germany, Spain or Japan.

All three major news agencies are huge commercial companies coming from western countries.
Since news agencies are very often the primary source for worldwide information, the global news
selection as well as the reporting itself is strongly influenced by the dominance of these companies.
The problem gets intensified since only big newspapers can afford to have a network of own
correspondents in a large number of countries. Being big companies themselves, their perspective
will not differ much from that of the agencies. To read more about the use of correspondents, click
here to access our correspondents section.

Smaller newspapers, on the other hand, have to rely on information from other sources often being
just AP, Reuters or AFP - when it comes to foreign news. In consequence, the limited perception of
only a few agency journalists significantly shapes the world news.

The World Wide Web and the re-Democratization of International News

Many people claim that democracy lies in the nature of the internet. Due to the fact that anyone can
publish anything on the web it might seem obvious that a wide range of new information sources
emerges. In consequence, the international news flow would become more diverse and less centred
around the major agencies.

However, quite the opposite seems to be true. Chris Paterson of the Department of Media Studies at
the University of San Francisco states that the internet must not be seen as a democratizing force or
a tool capable of alleviating information poverty. According to him, "analysis of the structures of
news provision among the leading Internet news services in Europe and North America demonstrate
quite the opposite."

In most cases, online journalism is not another genuine news source but a different version of
already used information. Furthermore favours the structure of the internet the spread of
information which in itself is as centralized as ever. The conclusion of an analysis done by the BBC
was that with the internet "fewer major news providers are informing more people and doing so
from fewer sources." (BBC, 1999)

Peter Brnner
The News Agency Material

News agency material is often the only source of information available. Furthermore, the material is
often taken over by the media outlets without almost any alternations. A sample in a later part of
this section demonstrates this quite clearly.

So Who Gets to Speak?

Due to the above it seems obvious to ask who actually gets to speak in the messages. Therefore I
calculated the ratio between the number of cases either a person of the US-led coalition or the Iraqi
people is cited directly or given as a source. These are the results of three Reuters and three AFP
messages on the Baghdad car bomb:

Tough far from being equal, the difference in the proportion of mentioned sources is considerably
lower than expected. In the Reuters messages, 13 Iraqi sources oppose 22 of the US-led coalition,
while in the AFP messages 11 Iraqi and 28 coalition sources are mentioned.

Nevertheless, the actual gap between these two information sources is much higher than the
numbers suggests.

In contrast to the information provided by Iraqi sources, not all information by US sources is
marked as such. Information not naming a source is usually given out by the US-led coalition. For
instance, the number of casualties of the car bomb attack was 27 according to Reuters and 29
according to AFP at 7PM. It seemed to be a definite figure, no source was mentioned and all media
published the figure. At around 12 PM, a second figure appeared in the agencies messages: While
the US now estimated 27 casualties, the Iraqi interior ministry claimed that only 6 people were
killed. The US eventually lowered their figure down to 17, the Iraqi assumed 7 casualties. This may
proof that all information which is not explicitly marked as being Iraqi actually comes from US-
sources - sometimes marked as such, sometimes not.

Furthermore, the figure I calculated might be misleading because the content of what people
actually get to say in the articles has also be taken into account. While people of the US-led
coalition are used for getting the facts, establishing connections and drawing conclusions, the Iraqi
people get used to build up more emotion by providing sentences like "I"saw many, many people
killed. There were children dead." or "Oh God, help me please." This explains the relatively high
number of Iraqi sources in the Reuters articles, in which the writing was generally more based on
emotion than in the ones from AFP.

Peter Brnner
Setting the Global Agenda?

Even though the big news agencies provide a huge amount of information AFP for instance
produces each day 400,000 - 600,000 words in text, 700 photos and 50 news graphics - they still
cover just a fragment of all global happenings. Due to the limited amount of genuine news sources,
chances are high that if an event does not get picked up by news agencies, it will never become
subject to reporting.

Communication science is still uncertain about the influence the media have on public opinion, but
one thing is for sure: The media, and even more so the news agencies, set the public agenda. The
press "may not be successful in telling its readers what to think, but it is stunningly successful in
telling its readers what to think about." (Bernhard Cohen, 1963) Even in the age of the internet, the
problem with international news is that "you can find what you want to know on it, but you miss the
seeding of stories on subjects about which you may not know anything." (Hoge, 1997)

In this part of the news agencies section I analyse the agenda-setting function of the agencies by
comparing the top stories on March 18 of the 135 media we have chosen with the top stories of the
Reuters and AFP news agencies of the same day. I have then calculated an average percentage of
concurring stories for each country. The results are shown in the graphic below. To download a
complete table of the results click here.

The results show pretty clear that the concurrence between the news agencies and the medias top
stories is by far highest in the western countries. This circumstance proves that the news selection
of the agencies accords to a western perspective resulting the origin of the agencies. Due to this way
of news selection the impact of the big news agencies is highest in the western countries, with the
USA being at the peak with an average concurrence of about 59 percent. The high percentage in
Spain is a result of the terror attacks in Madrid, due to which a large number of the national top
stories were on a topic of international relevance. With that exception, the selection of international
news material is closest to that of US-American interests.

The impact of the agencies decreases with the geographic as well as cultural distance from the
western countries. The smallest use of the agencies occurs in Africa with an average concurrence
between 0 and 10 percent. Egypt and South Africa show the highest percentage in Africa both being
about 20 percent.

Even though being western countries, the percentages of Australia and New Zealand are
significantly below the ones in the USA and Europe. On the other hand, the percentages are
surprisingly high in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, being almost on the same level as Europe and
North America. The news flow section shows quite similar results for these two parts of the world.
To access the results for Oceania, click here, for Latin America here.

The results in this section make clear that there is a definite influence of the major agencies on the
global news agenda. Being low but still evident in the geographically and culturally even most
distant countries, the impact of news agencies is by far biggest in the USA and Europe. It should
make people think about the way news are selected when an average of about 50 percent of the top
stories in the US- and European media are in accordance with the top stories of Reuters and AFP.

Peter Brnner
Copying and Pasting the Global News

In addition to the high number of media taking their information from the news agencies, the impact
of the agencies becomes even more evident when taking a closer look on the way their news
material is used by the media.

Though there are significant differences in the different medias use of agency material, one fact
becomes apparent very quickly: There is only limited material in addition to that of the agencies,
which in consequence gets used without much alternation. One can claim that in a high number of
cases the story is written by the news agency correspondent instead of the newspaper journalist,
who often does nothing more than pass on the story he receives.

For this part, I compared the original Reuters and AFP massages of the top story on March 18, a car
bomb destroying a hotel in Baghdad, with the 34 published articles giving either Reuters or AFP as
their source.

In the sample below, an article from the Australian Herald Sun is compared with the two AFP-
messages serving as sources, and demonstrates the (sometimes non-existing) transformation which
information goes through when taken into an article.

AFP message 07AM:

Car bomb attack devastates Baghdad neighborhood, kills at least 29 (18/03/2004)

BAGHDAD (AFP) Insurgents killed at least 29 people (I) and wounded

dozens more when a powerful car bomb (II) devastated three buildings near
(VI) a central Baghdad hotel thought to be the target, the US Army said.

The attack (V) at 8:10 pm (1710 GMT) was the latest strike by what were
suspected to be "terrorist organizations" which the US-led coalition
believes are trying to foment a civil war among Iraq's ethnic groups. (VII)
(...)
In Washington, the White House said the attack would not deter the
coalition's plans to rebuild Iraq even as the country remained mired in
violence ahead of Saturday's anniversary of the US-led war (IV) that ousted
Saddam Hussein.
(...)
Firemen battled the raging flames and young men pulled bodies from the
rubble in the crowded neighborhood near a hospital and the Jabal Lubnan
(Mount Lebanon) hotel, a spot with no heavy security, where Britains,
Jordanians and Egyptian stayed. (III)
(...)
AFP

Article in the Herald Sun (Australia) 07PM:

Frantic search after hotel blast

19mar04

AT least 29 people were killed (I) and scores wounded when a powerful car
bomb (II) destroyed a hotel housing foreigners (III)in Baghdad, just days
ahead of the anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.(IV)
The attack (V) also devastated three nearby buildings (VI) in the latest
strike by groups the US-led coalition believes are trying to foment a civil
war among Iraq's ethnic groups. (VII)

It comes just ahead of tomorrow's anniversary of the invasion US President

George W. Bush promised would cut global terrorism.

One US military official said the car was packed with 450kg of Russian-
made PE-4 explosives. (1)

Flames engulfed buildings and smoke billowed into the sky as a red glow lit
piles of rubble. (2)

Relatives screamed and cleared debris by hand, searching for loved ones.
(3)

There was no heavy security outside the hotel, where Britons, Jordanians
and Egyptians were staying. (4)

The blast, which left a gaping crater, showed insurgents were "still capable
of spreading terror in the country," US Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt
said. (5)

Top bombing suspects include the Ansar al-Islam, a group affiliated with al-
Qaida, as well as Jordanian national Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who is
believed to be Osama bin Laden's chief operative in Iraq. (6)

US officials have linked al-Zarqawi to the March 2 attacks in Karbala and

Baghdad that killed more than 170 people. (7)

They also believe he was involved in the attack last August on the United
Nations compound that killed 22, including the top UN official in Iraq.(8)

Coalition officials have released a memo attributed to al-Zarqawi in

February as proof Islamic extremists want to ignite a civil war among Iraq's
divided ethnic and religious communities. (9)

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world community, and

especially those working in Iraq, must remain "steadfast and determined" in
the face of the attacks. (10)

"I hope we can count on the co-operation of everybody to work together to

bring a modicum of stability to Iraq so that people can go about their lives,"
he said. (11)

In the US, Vice-President Dick Cheney blamed "thugs and assassins" who
were "desperately trying to shake our will" for the Baghdad attack. (12)

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the attack would not affect
plans for Iraq. (13)
 "We will meet this test with strength and resolve," he said. (14)

"A free and peaceful Iraq will be a blow to the terrorists." (15)

Iraq and the war on terrorism took centre stage in the US presidential
election battle between Republican incumbent Mr Bush and the Democratic
candidate John Kerry. (16)

In a security and foreign policy speech in Washington, Mr Kerry said: "We

are still bogged down in Iraq and the Administration stubbornly holds to
failed policies that drive potential allies away." (17)

Mr Bush was to use the March 20 anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and
his experience after the September 11, 2001 attacks to reinforce his self-
styled image as a "war president".(18) AFP

AFP message 01PM:

Death toll in Iraq continues to climb as more soldiers and civilians die (18/03/2004)

BAGHDAD (AFP) The death toll in Iraq continued to climb as a series of

separate mortar attacks and a shooting added to the casualty count from a
massive car bomb which ripped through Baghdad.

One US soldier was killed and seven others wounded in a mortar attack
Wednesday northwest of Baghdad, a senior military coalition official said,
after a spokesman earlier said two troops had died.

The blast, which gouged a six-foot (two metre) wide, 10-foot deep crater,
shows that the insurgents are "still capable of spreading terror in the
country," US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told AFP. (5)

One US military official said the car bomb was packed with 450 kilograms
(1,000 pounds) of Russian-made PE-4 explosives. (1)

Flames engulfed buildings and smoke billowed into the sky as red light
bathed the heaps of rubble, (2) where relatives screamed and cleared debris
with their hands searching for loved ones. (3)

There was no heavy security outside the hotel, where Britains, Jordanians
and Egyptians stayed. (4)

Top bombing suspects include the Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate

group, as well as Jordanian national Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, believed to
be Osama bin Laden's chief operative in Iraq. (6)

US officials have linked Zarqawi to the March 2 attacks in Karbala and

Baghdad that killed more than 170 people. (7) and the August 2003 attack
on the United Nations compound that killed 22, including the top UN
official in Iraq. (8)
A wave of car and suicide bombings that have killed more than 400 people
since February.

Coalition officials unveiled a memo attributed to Zarqawi in February as

proof that Islamic extremists want to ignite a civil war among Iraq's divided
ethnic and religious communities. (9)

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the world community, and especially
those working in Iraq, must remain "steadfast and determined" in the face
of the "terrorist attacks." (10)

"I hope we can count on the cooperation of everybody to work together to

bring a modicum of stability to Iraq so that people can go about their lives,"
he told Japan's NHK television in an interview. (11)

Earlier in the day the US army kicked off a major operation, dubbed Iron
Promise, in a bid to round up insurgents ahead of the Saturday anniversary.

In the United States, Vice President Dick Cheney blamed "thugs and
assassins" that are "desperately trying to shake our will" for the Baghdad
attack. (12)

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the attack will not affect US
plans. (13)

"We will meet this test with strength and resolve," he said.(14) "A free and
peaceful Iraq will be a blow to the terrorists,"(15) he added.

McClellan however admitted that this "remains a time of testing in Iraq.

The he added stakes are high. The terrorists know the stakes are high."

Iraq and the war on terrorism took centre-stage in the US presidential

election battle between Republican incumbent George W. Bush and the
Democrats' John Kerry. (16)

Kerry said the president had left the US military too weak, while Cheney
said that Kerry had shown only "contempt" for US allies in Iraq such as
Britain, Poland and Italy.

In a security and foreign policy speech in Washington, Kerry said: "We are
still bogged down in Iraq and the administration stubbornly holds to failed
policies that drive potential allies away." (17)

Bush was to use the March 20 anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and his
experience after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to
reinforce his self-styled image as a "war president". (18)

Kerry has accused Bush of isolating the United States by failing to build
international support for the invasion of Iraq one year ago.

Cheney however said that Bush "has kept the nation's enemies in desperate
 flight. And under his leadership, our country has once again led the armies
of liberation, freeing 50 million souls (in Afghanistan and Iraq) from
tyranny and making our nation and the world more secure."

Polls indicated the US public has more confidence in Bush to handle the
war on terrorism.

AFP

This article from the Sydney Herald shows a very common way of building an article with the use
of news agency material: Despite one paragraph in the beginning which sets the happenings in a
timeline, the only genuine part of the whole article is the headline. After these five words, the
journalists creativity has already come to an end.

The two first paragraphs are also very representative for news agency based articles. The journalist
simply sums up the information which seems most relevant to him in order to give the reader a
basic overview of the happening. However, all the individual phrases used are already written in the
two news agency messages and are just copied together instead of being newly written.

"Copy & Paste Journalism"

One might claim that the use of the original phrasings indicates journalistic accuracy, but after an
in-depth analysis of the way news agency material is used I cannot help getting the impression that
todays computer-based journalism implies temptations which a lot of journalists simply can not
resist. Before the computer age, news agency messages had to be newly typed in anyway.
Nowadays the opportunity of just copying the material further contributes to the laziness of some
journalists. The result might be called "Copy & Paste Journalism", a very common way of reporting
that is created with the mouse instead of the keyboard.

The third paragraph, in which the car bomb is brought into relation with the upcoming anniversary
of the invasion, is the only sentence originally written by the journalist. A funny detail is that the
anniversary is already mentioned in the paragraph above. Maybe the hard working journalist was so
busy copying the material together that he did not actually grasp its content.

However, after this climactic effort the newspaper journalists input on the article almost
completely diminishes. The remaining 18 paragraphs are all directly taken over from the 01PM
AFP message. Some paragraphs of the original message have been skipped, some changed in its
position.

Also, some expressions have been changed in order to make the article easier to read. Some
examples:

AFP: "as red light bathed the heaps of rubble"

Herald Sun: "as a red glow lit piles of rubble."

AFP: "The blast, which gouged a six-foot (two metre) wide, 10-foot deep
crater"
 Herald Sun: "The blast, which left a gaping crater"

AFP: "Coalition officials unveiled a memo"

Herald Sun: "Coalition officials have released a memo"

But even these small re-phrasings are very rare exceptions in the article.

As this part of our study shows, the existence of news agency material combined with the simple
advantages of word-processing software relieves the journalist of the need to formulate their own
sentences. A lot of newspaper journalists take this chance in fact.

Agency material in the Quality Press

Quality newspapers use news agency material in quite a different way. Papers like the French Le
Monde or the German Sddeutsche Zeitung do not simply copy the information provided by the
agencies, but use them the way they are supposed to: as a source of information which enables them
to write their own story. If they have none of their own correspondents on location, most bigger
stories get covered with the use of multiple agencies, sometimes up to four of them, and get
furthermore enhanced by information from other newspapers or press releases. The resulting quality
of the stories differs significantly from the ones which are just forwarding agency material. Even
more important, they actually are what a newspaper story is supposed to be: The product of one of
the staffs journalists, instead of a story that has already been written elsewhere.

The Sunny Side of Translations

The fact that non-English language media cannot simply copy the material due to the need of a
translation significantly increases alternations to the agency material. It may seem a little absurd,
but the need of a translation is reason enough to not just copy and paste the material, but to write
some original sentences, if not an original article. The results of the study have shown clearly that
the concurrence between agency material and published articles is by far the highest in media in
English language.

Articles published in non-English languages showed considerably higher differences to the original
agency material than articles published in English language, even when coming from
geographically or culturally distant parts of the world. While for instance the French, Swedish or
Finnish newspapers mainly took over only the facts provided by the news agencies, the English-
language Hindustan Times and Afghanistan Post for instance very closely re-printed the agency
messages.

The Accuracy in Using Agency Material

Considering the articles examined for this part of our study, it can be said that journalists are
generally very accurate in their use of agency material. In none of the articles, facts have been
changed or been put out of context.

Nevertheless, little alternations occur. Sources are sometimes not assigned right and at other places
different sources get re-printed as a single one. The reasons for doing so is in most cases not
sloppiness or the will to manipulate but, again, the attempt of making the article easier to read.
Below you find a sample taken from New Zealands One News.

One News: "We have 27 killed and 40 wounded. The bomb was 450 kgs of explosives packed with
artillery shells," said a US military spokesman.

"Our indications are that this attack follows the pattern of Ansar al_islam and Zarqawi," the
spokesman said.

In the original AFP message, the three individual sentences of the article above appear in three
different parts of the message. Though the sources are named as either the "US-military" or "a
spokesman", the original message does not suggest that it was one person who said all three
sentences.

As said, the alternations occur only in detail and in no way misrepresent the meaning of a part of an
article.

Peter Brnner
Establishing an Alternative News Flow

So are there any alternatives to the present news flow having the major news agencies as its primary
source? Trying to answer this question, I have picked out a few recent cases of attempts to challenge
the traditional ways of international news gathering.

TVNewsWeb was brought into life by former BBC and freelance television news cameraman Pete
Henderson in the late 90s. Beginning as a website for industry news and gossip, Henderson tried to
establish connections between international news crews, agencies and broadcasters. By 1999,
TVNewsWeb had expanded to become an online broker for news video from around the world and
had the potential to establish an innovative third television news agency. Henderson tried to
combine the benefits of his insiders understanding of the global TV newsgathering business, his
extensive contacts and new internet based news technologies to pose a challenge to the established
news agencies. At its highpoint, TVNewsWeb received a great deal of publicity within the industry
and was considered as what it was intended to be: an alternative to existing news agencies.
However, the slow development of Internet video technology eventually made the company
dependent on costly satelite distribution. After just 18 months of operation as an alternative news
agency, TVNewsWeb collapsed in 2001.

A former Reuters correspondent, Paul Eadle, founded together with other partners OutThereNews in
1996. The idea was to use the internet as a platform for high quality international reporting direct
from independent journalists at the scene. At its height, the firm consisted of a network of 41
correspondents in 32 countries. In 2001, OutThereNews was bringing unique coverage from
Afghanistan to a global audience. Nevertheless, in the same year its investors pulled back their
money and Paul Eadle was forced to cease his operations and lay off his London staff.

The very recent for-profit service Globalvision News Network was created by non-profit
MediaChannel.org founders Danny Schechter and Rory OConnor to bring stories from journalists
working for a variety of local media all over the world directly to subscribers. Globalvision News
Network specializes in bringing US and European audiences stories on global issues from
indigenous journalists writing for local audiences. In doing so, they provide perspectives typically
absent from the major news agencies and networks. At the time being, Globalvision News Network
continues to seek subscribers. The existence of the company in the long term is highly uncertain.

As these examples suggest, alternatives to the news provision of the major news agencies are very
rare and mostly niche products. So far, none of the attempts to challenge the dominance of the
agencies has been successful in the long term even more so in broadcasting news, where AP and
Reuters keep a strict duopoly.

Peter Brnner
Access All Areas?
Conclusions

The problem with global news provision is evident: Even in the age of internet delivered
information, genuine news sources are very few. Furthermore, the services of the major news
agencies are highly regarded by media outlets all over the world while often other, more local news
providers are not considered trustworthy. Even in cases of indigenous information available from
the spot the media often rely on news agency material that does not have this direct insight.

As the cases in the preceding section have shown, any attempt to set up a news flow excluding the
major agencies has to overcome high obstacles. The problem exists for both parties involved: The
creation of a new institution that provides international news and challenges the agencies brings
economic problems which have not yet been overcome by any of the companies. The media, on the
other hand, are due to the costs of a correspondent network in most cases dependent on the news
agency material.

AP, Reuters and AFP have a high impact on global news in news selection as well as in coverage
of the events. As far as the results of this part of our study go, one can not claim that they are setting
the global agenda, but a certain correspondence between the agencies news selection and that of
the media can be traced almost all over the world. In western countries, the average correspondence
is about 50 percent, in the USA almost 60 percent.

Only a few quality newspapers reduce the influence of the agency journalist on the finished article
by combining information from multiple sources like different news agencies, other newspapers and
press releases. Most papers, on the other hand, tend to forward the message from a single news
agency to the recipient with only slight changes being done. Though already considerably limiting
the diversity of the reporting, the impact of the agencies does not stop here.

One Story to Rule Them All...

I got the strongest impression of the way global news work outside of all the quantitative and
qualitative research done for this study. While working for weeks with articles from all over the
world I more and more started to realize that with the exception of a few newspapers which have
their own correspondents and very few other newspapers, I am reading different versions of
basically the same story. Being marked as AFP or Reuters or not, coming from the USA, Egypt or
India did not make much difference. Everywhere I found the same figures, read the same statements
by the same persons that were already in the news agency material.

Doing the practical analysis was a first-hand verification of a very simple assumption: The amount
of original information on most events is very low. The fact that media all over the world report on
it does not change anything about this.

Peter Brnner
References

van Ginneken, Jaap. Understanding Global News: A Critical Introduction. London: SAGE
Publications, 2003.

Schneider, Wolf; Raue, Paul-Josef. Handbuch des Journalismus. Reinbek, Hamburg: Rowohlt
Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1998.

Cohen, Bernard. The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Paterson, Chris. Prospects for a Democratic Information Society: The News Agency Stranglehold
on Global Political Discourse.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EMTEL/Conference/papers/Paterson.pdf

Hoge, James F. Foreign News: Who Gives a Damn. Columbia Journalism Review,1997.
http://www.cjr.org/year/97/6/foreign.asp