Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

News agencies are among the oldest electronic media, having survived as a genus at least since 1835, the year that the French agency Havas was established. Havas was the first of the world's agencies to engage in significant international activity. It was followed by Associated Press (AP) in the USA in 1846, Wolff in Germany in 1849, Tuwora in Austria in 1850, and Reuters in the UK in 1851. Very soon there was a national news agency in almost every European country. Outside Europe the pace of development was slower, but no less comprehensive. Generalist and specialist news agencies operating at international/global, regional, national, and sub-national levels have constituted a networked system of news gathering and news distribution for well over one hundred years (→  News Agencies ; International News Reporting ). Rantanen and Boyd-Barrett (2004) identified at least four major phases in the development of the major news agencies: (1) global domination of international news flow by a European-based formal news cartel dominated by Reuters (UK), Havas (France), and Wolff (Germany), 1870–1917; (2) dissolution of the cartel, 1918–1934, and the rise of the US agencies AP and United Press International (UPI); (3) market domination by the “Big Four” (AP, Agence France-Presse [AFP], Reuters, and UPI) in the 1980s–1990s, and (4) dissolution of the “Big Four” domination from the 1980s ... log in or subscribe to read full text