Introduction News agencies often referred to as ‘wire services’ have always played a critical role in gathering and dissemination of news to newspapers, periodicals, radio and television broadcasters, government agencies, and other subscribers, who by sharing costs obtain services they could not otherwise afford. News agencies continuously track all important happenings and keep media organizations engaged in the business of transmission and exchange of news with latest global news agencies briefly. For the international news they play a major role. Somehow, we can say the role of news agencies cannot be decreases.
The concept of wire service was taken from courier pigeon service between two cities of Europe which updates although there have been sporadic interests in news agency studies and global information flows especially during the decade 1960-1970. Newspapers all over the world depend to a large extent on news agencies for general news coverage. Even big papers do not have their own countrywide news network. For international news their dependence is even greater.
The basic function of a news agency is to purvey news and provide news reports of current events to newspapers and others who subscribe to its service. The UNESCO definition of a news agency is ‘an undertaking of which the principal objective, whatever its legal form, is to gather news and news material of which the sole purpose is to express or present facts and to distribute this to a group of news enterprises and in exceptional circumstances to private individuals with a view to providing them with as complete and impartial a news service as possible against payment and under conditions compatible with business laws and usage.’ No modern state carts survive without an adequate set-up of information and its judicious dissemination. A news agency in a democratic society should provide complete, impartial, objective, accurate, countrywide and competitive news service free from slant, pressure of interference from any source or quarter. It has to guard against the danger of being dominated by any vested interests - economic, social, communal or political In India
Reuter
Reuter was established in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter in England. Reuter provided free trial service to the newspapers in 1858. Founded by Paul Julius Reuters in 1849 they used pigeons or fast runners for sending the news it also serve radio, television and other news outlets In India they have collaboration with PTI
AP – Associated Press of America
• Founded in 1848, Rockefeeler – New York • Initially it was called ‘Harbour News Association’ then reorganized as ‘New York Associated Press’ • Associated Press of America in 1892 • AP has news coverage arrangements with news agencies in Canada, UK, France, Russia and India • Exclusive exchange programmes with Reuters and French Havas news agency
AFP – Agency France Presse
• Oldest news agency – 1835 by Charles Louis Havas (father of global journalism) • Headquarter on Paris • Regional Centre – Washington, Hong Kong, Nicosia (Cyprus) and Montevideo (Uruguay) • Editorial quality, reliability, worldwide coverage
• AFP Worldwide – takes in 165 countries TASS
• Telegraph Agency of Soviet Union • Russian Name - Telegrafnoye agentstvo Sovetskovo Soyuza • Renamed - Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR- TASS) in January 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the proclamation of sovereignty by democratic Russia
United Press International
• Formed in 1907 by E.W. Scripps as the United Press (UP) • Headquarters – Washington, DC • Offices in Beirut, Hong Kong, London, Santiago, Seoul and Tokyo • UPI is owned by News World Communications, a global multi- media co.
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA [PTI]
Founded in 1949, PTI has the advantage of being owned by a cooperative of leading Indian newspapers independence; it symbolizes freedom from dependency on information monopoly credibility, but competes in turn with PTI’s own site. Having computerized operations in the 1980s, PTI established its web-site in 1999, responding to competition from other news sites. PTI’s site provides free access to major national, international, sports and commercial news, and its principal purpose is promotional. All services - text, pictures, graphics, and data - are available to media and non-media subscribers by e-mail. The web is an additional delivery vehicle that extends the range and reach of services. Diversification does not depend on but is facilitated by the web. Diversified services include PTI Features, PTI Mag (write-ups on political, social and other subjects), PTI Data India, PTI Economic News and PTI Science Service. PTI-Bhasha distributes PTI Mag for Hindi subscribers. The Hindi language market grew more important following the financial collapse of previous agencies that had served the ‘language press’ in competition with PTI, namely Samachar Bharati and Hindustan Samachar. PTI’s Hindi service generates less revenue than the English: Hindi newspapers are smaller, attract less advertising, and pay this synopsis sets out to investigate the extent to which the India newspapers rely on transnational, national regional news agencies news-update service News Scan together with financial news services such as Stock Scan. PTI TV produces televised news and corporate feature stories. The agency distributes services internationally to The U.S., U.K., Australia and U.A.E. Other new services include a domestic PR Wire Service and a news service for mobile phone users’ .Such diversification strategies often involve alliances. Vendors for worldwide circulation of press releases. PTI distributes international news in India from AP and AFP, as well as AP Photos and International Commercial Information. The agency’s owners, representing a wide variety of different newspapers, languages and political leanings, underpin PTI’s reputation. Recent diversification reflects the opening up of the Indian economy but is also driven by a sense of insecurity about the traditional client base as print newspapers cope with their own economic the daily newscast of PTI and UNI utilized about 10-30% of news item provided by foreign agencies for its domestic subscribers. 15% of PTI’s foreign stories/news was published in Indian newspapers as against 7.5% Indian news in foreign newspaper, which indicates that foreign news papers and agencies utilized PTI news more for keeping track of events in India than actually using it verbatim or giving credit for using such stories. UNI in India provides news received by Reuters to its domestic subscribers. However, no news published in foreign or Indian newspapers have been sourced or attributed to UNI. Foreign newspapers picked up a larger share of Indian news from Reuters than PTI. For news about India, news agencies like ‘IANS, Own Correspondents and Agencies’ were major sources of news, which was indicative of a trend among news agencies to repackage the news received primarily for two reasons. One to edit the news for giving it a stamp of their own writing styles and the other to position their own interpretation of the news as part of their respective editorial policy.