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Non-aligned News Agencies Pool
Major world news agencies had enjoyed a period of relative obscurity in the public consciousness until three events in the mid-1970s beamed a sometimes hostile, spotlight in their general direction. The non-aligned nations, at the Fourth Non- Aligned Summit in Algiers, 1973, endorsed a recommendation for the establishment of a Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool, to help compensate for perceived shortcomings in the existing system of international news supply for developing countries. A similar concern helped inspire draft declarations discussed at the General Conference of UNESCO in 1976. Acting on the mandate of the 1976 UNESCO General Conference, UNESCO’S Director-General Amadou Mahtar M’Bow set up an International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems whose world brief included a consideration of international news and the role of the major world news agencies.
Common to each of these events, in so far as each pertained to the world news agencies, was a focus on the relationship between these agencies and the national news media of the developing countries. Moreover the sympathetic thrust of this focus was very much informed by a concern for the interests of the developing countries. These events, therefore, however laudatory or inevitable their choice of issue so far as the news agencies were concerned, had adopted a partial framework of analysis
But given that any analysis of international news supply must include the world news agencies, it is important that these agencies be seen not only in relation to the media of developing countries but also to those of the developed world. The major world agencies face imposing problems even in these more affluent markets. It is certainly in the interests of developed countries, and very probably of developing countries as well, to initiate a full review of such problems, and relate these to the global situation. While in the developing world there is a move towards establishing supplemental news services to the ‘Big Four’, western media analysts must begin to wonder whether the existing total global market is large enough to sustain even the ‘Big Four’ in their present form indefinitely, and what arrangement, if any, could possibly replace them.
The Agency Continuum
The ‘Big Four’ are the major western based news agencies: two American agencies, Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI), the British agency Reuters, and the French agency Agence Franc Presse (AFP). Difference between news agencies can be conceptualized as representing different points on a continuum, which itself is made up of several dimensions. The world agencies, for example, not only collect news from most countries and territories of the world, but also distribute news to most countries and territories.
This is why, despite their national affiliations, these agencies (with some important qualifications) can be described as ‘world’ agencies. These are the agencies with which this book is primarily concerned. ‘The Russian Tass is often considered to be the communist version of a ‘world’ agency. There are some other agencies with extensive international representation and distribution, such as PTI of India DPA of West Germany, Kyodo of Japan, Tanjug of Yugoslavia. ADN of East Germany, EFE of Spain. Yet they are commonly regarded as intermediate between the ‘world’ agencies and the average ‘national’ agency. The scale of their international operations is smaller; their activity is more highly concentrated in a few specific geographic areas. The foremost concern is the news requirement of their own domestic markets. They individually serve far fewer overseas clients on a contractual basis than any of the ‘Big Four’. These intermediate agencies also subscribe to the services of the world agencies, whereas the western-based world agencies do not subscribe to one another’s international services.
The 1970s saw the development of what can be called the international intermediate’ category, agencies without a specific national base or involving the cooperation of many different national agencies, and generally catering for the news requirements of specific regions of certain categories of country: these include the Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool: Cana, the Caribbean News exchange Pool established in 1979. Then at a further jump down the continuum is the ‘national’ agency, which typically does not have more than a handful of foreign correspondents, does not engage in foreign distribution (although it will often exchange its service with other agencies, including a partial exchange with a world agency) and functions solely for the benefit of its domestic market. In some countries the primary function of a national news agency is simply to distribute news from the ‘Big Four’ to local media or government departments. At the bottom of the hierarchy or continuum are a wide variety of generally smaller organizations which may specialize in certain kinds of news, such as economics, photo, sports, or news features, or in certain geographic reg. country, or in certain kinds of client. A few of these, like the syndicated services of some of the large US newspaper dailies, serve sizeable international markets.
