From Academic Kids

Contents

1 AP competitors 2 History of AP, Brass Check 3 Retracted Stories 4 Explanation of AP fees 4.1 Accusations of Bias 4.2 keep bias section

AP competitors

AP is competing in an increasingly saturated market.

Agence France Press?

Xinhua?

New York Times (+ International Herald Tribune)?

Except for Reuters, AP has no real English-language competition; the other services you name dominate in other languages. I know of no American papers that subscribe solely to the NYTimes and/or Washington Post News services without also subscribing to AP. AP is cheaper and far broader as far as breaking news goes.

History of AP, Brass Check

To a Minister of Truth: I suggest Brass Check is a good book for the state of the AP at the turn of the century - there's more to it than Teletypes, after all. And if AP again has a monopoly on wire-servicing (in the animal-husbandry sense) the US public [just how is the UPI comment to be interpreted?], how that has played out in the past ought to be of interest. Especially since the AP is the sole collator of "election" "results" tomorrow.[1] (http://www.exit-poll.net/faq.html)[2] (http://english.people.com.cn/200411/02/eng20041102_162442.html) And if you protest Brass Check is not about the AP, I'll point out the older Library of Congress catalogue entries list "Associated Press" as one of its categories. Kwantus 00:52, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC) (PS: count y'self lucky I merely mentioned the book, and didn't start rewriting the article.)

There are many, many books about the history of U.S. journalism that contain information about AP which might be of interest to this article, but "Brass Check" isn't one of them. It is wildly out of date (especially if you think it has relevance to the current situation; when it was written, AP was a struggling underdog). But of course you are welcome to start rewriting the article - that's the way Wikipedia works! - DavidWBrooks 01:39, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

So put some of THOSE books in, fer cryin out loud. (wait. what? How can what is for years an indebted monopoly spreading completely inverted or entirely fabricated news with impunity qualify as "struggling underdog"?) Incidentally, check history (unless WP has discarded it for lack of space) -- I am not welcome, even when what I write is well-supported. As a for instance: Nurse Nayirah. (I do not contest that this is because of a certain immoderateness in my writing: after the outrage I've watched go on just the past four years - thanks in part to a US press that, in what counts, lies and covers up as baldly as Sinclair described 85 years ago - I cannot be moderate. If there were moderates taking my place I'd be happy; but so many waste themselves on absolute bread-and-circus garbage like American Idle.) I limit login now to when I express something that's only my opinion. Kwantus 23:13, 2004 Nov 2 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to mention: someone thinks Brass Check interesting enough that the U of Illinois Press reprinted it about two years ago (ISBN 0252071107) Kwantus 02:51, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

AP's television service is now known as APTN

Retracted Stories

If we're going to list every retracted story that AP, or any other wire service, has run over the years, we're going to have to double the size of wikipedia! So I removed the long, rambling account of one such case, since it lacked context. Discussion about the merits, or lack thereof, of the wire service are certainly valuable additions to the article, but not in the form of a rant. - DavidWBrooks 16:57, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Explanation of AP fees

This was originally posted on the Reference Desk with the title "Is news public domain?"

It seems from the public domain article that facts are in the public domain, but reporting of them may not be. A news agency might do a lot of work to collect some news and expect just compensation. So how is it that news stories can be "picked up" by competing agencies, e.g., the Associated Press picking up a story in a local newspaper? Isn't that local news story under copyright? Is there a fee involved or some sort of professional agreement? Thanks. Mjklin 15:10, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

As you can see from the article on the AP, it's owned by its contributing newspapers. A local newspaper allows its stories to be used by the AP because it has the opportunity to use AP wire stories itself. So, the answer is that the news story is certainly under copyright, and the only fees/professional arrangements involved are the money and agreements necessary to maintain the AP. :-) Jwrosenzweig 15:16, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ok, but the AP seems to be a special arrangement. Does "picking up" happen in any other situation, say, between Newsweek and Good Housekeeping? What about if Newsweek picked up a story from a British paper?

In cases other than AP - and in some cases involving AP - there is simply a price schedule for using articles established in advance. You can publish AP articles on your own personal website if you pay the fees. Or, a bunch of newspapers will be owned by the same company which will share articles among its different papers. American papers in particular are often part of large chains, where two newspapers in cities on the opposite sides of the country may have identical news stories on the same day for all or nearly all their non-local news.

In short, it all stays under copyright but the rights are presold or prelicensed because news breaks too quickly to ask for explicit permission. Selling news stories is a source of income for some newspapers.

There is no special reason why newsmagazines can't do this too, but magazines don't usually buy stories from wire services (sometimes, but not usually). The fees are proportionate to mean circulation, so Newsweek would have to pay a lot if it used wire articles, and people wouldn't read it much for last week's AP wire feeds. So this sort of thing doesn't much happen. Now, magazines do sometimes exchange stories, but then it's usually negociated specifically for that article and money changes hands. There are sometimes standard fee schedules for reprinting and translating stories, but that means publication in a different market or at a later date. Diderot 16:01, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Just yesterday, The Cincinnati Enquirer carried an AP story from Akron, Ohio about a big series on home-schooling the Akron Beacon Journal is doing this week. The AP routinely moves stories that tell everyone else what is being reported on. One reason is to let editors know there's something they might want to get reprint rights on.
  Now as for a story being picked up by the AP, one of the conditions of membership, is that the AP is entitled to exclusive rights to distribute breaking local news. So if a plane crashes in Seattle, the AP could pick up everything the Post-Intelligencer and the Times wrote and every AP subscriber would be free to use it. This does not apply to where a paper's bureaus elsewhere break a story, investigative reports, columns, reviews, and the like. (Thought syndication deals often exist for this material, just not through the AP.)
  Facts are in the public domain. And for an older Associated Press story you needn't worry so much about infringement because the story has gone stale. However, the AP and others have won court cases--I don't have the citations at hand--where radio and television stations who weren't subscribers simply rephrased AP stories and put them on the air; these precedents are from the 1920s and 1930s. The courts have reasoned that if everyone were allowed to piggyback on the AP's labor then nobody would go into the business of newsgathering and there would be no news since everyone decided to be a freerider rather than a subscriber. The Toledo Blade newspaper got a settlement from a tv station a couple years ago that was basically reading the morning paper on the air.
  Again, I don't have the citations, but a long time ago--in the 19th century, I believe--the courts ruled you couldn't copyright information such as stock quotes, commodities prices, prices quoted on merchandise, etc., notwithstanding the disclaimers you see today on Bloomberg and CNBC.
  As for the workings of the AP, it is a non-profit memership co-operative. Every general interest daily newspaper in America (there are around 1,500) is a member plus some college and weekly papers. Their fees are determined on circulation, so USA Today (circulation 2 million) pays a lot more than The Battle Creek Enquirer (circulation 9,000). (This is how rates for features such as comics and columns are determined, a small paper might only pay a couple dollars a week for them.) Broadcasters, internet sites, and others can subscribe to the AP, but the service is run primarily for the benefit of the newspapers. Back in the 1920's the AP resisted letting radio subscribe until it realized the cash cow it could be and now the income from broadcasters and the rest is icing on the cake. PedanticallySpeaking 17:08, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Accusations of Bias

I don't see a big reason to delete this section. Someone learning about the AP may be interested in others' perceived bias. A google search (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22associated+press%22+bias&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official) for '"associated press" bias' reveals 210,000 websites. That is not insignificant, albeit not all will directly address them being biased. The section in question (rewritten a bit by me since last inclusion):

The AP has critics who believe its news judgement is biased. Some claim that frequent coverage of hostility in Iraq, including hostage beheadings and perceived terrorism, panders to a western audience and the United States's point of view while ignoring civilian casualties caused by the so-called Coalition of the Willing. It is also claimed that the AP may often address the opinions of the Pentagon, White House, and CIA analysts more often than those of foreign governments. --Alterego 21:29, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

keep bias section

I perceive AP to be biased, which means that AP is not as neutral as it's made out to be. I'm sure others also think so. A bias section is thus necessary. Modify or expand the section about alleged bias, but don't delete it.

I trimmed the bias section. Complaining because a US-based organization, whose clients and components are largely American, interviews Americans more than non-Americans seems a bit silly. You might as well say that Agence France Press is "biased" toward francophones. - DavidWBrooks 14:40, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)