| Type | Not-for-profit cooperative |
|---|---|
| Founded | May 1846[1] |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Tom Curley, President and CEO |
| Industry | News media |
| Products | Wire service |
| Revenue | US$631 million (2010)[2] |
| Operating income | US$14.7 million (2010)[2] |
| Net income | US$8.8 million (2010)[2] |
| Employees | 3,700 |
| Website | www.ap.org |
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative.
As of 2005[update], the news collected by the AP is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,001 television and radio broadcasters. The photograph library of the AP consists of over 10 million images. The Associated Press operates 243 news bureaux, and it serves at least 120 countries, with an international staff located all over the world.
Associated Press also operates The Associated Press Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. The AP Radio also offers news and public affairs features, feeds of news sound bites, and long form coverage of major events.
As part of their cooperative agreement with The Associated Press, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. For example, on page two of every edition of The Washington Post, the newspaper's masthead includes the statement, "The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to use for re-publication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and all local news of spontaneous origin published herein."
The AP employs the "inverted pyramid formula" for writing that enables the news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication area without losing the story's essential meaning and news information.
Cutbacks at longtime U.S. rival United Press International, most significantly in 1993, left the AP as the primary nationally oriented news service based in the United States, although United Press International still produces and distributes news stories daily. Other English-language news services, such as Reuters and the English-language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States. More recently launched internet news services, such as All Headline News (AHN) are becoming competitive to the traditional wire services like the AP.
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Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative formed in the spring of 1846 by five daily newspapers in New York City to share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican-American War by boat, horse express, and telegraph. The venture was organized by Moses Yale Beach (1800–68), second publisher of the New York Sun, and agreed to by the Herald, Courier and Enquirer, Journal of Commerce, and the Express. Some historians believe that the Tribune joined at this time; documents show it was a member in 1849. The New York Times became a member in 1851. Initially known as the New York Associated Press (NYAP), the organization faced competition from the Western Associated Press (1862), which criticized it for monopolistic practices in gathering news and setting prices. An investigation completed in 1892 by Victor Lawson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Daily News, revealed that several principals of the NYAP had entered into a secret agreement with United Press, a rival organization, to share NYAP news and the profits of reselling it. The revelations led to the demise of the NYAP and in December 1892, the Western Associated Press was incorporated in Illinois as the Associated Press. An Illinois Supreme Court decision (Inter Ocean Publishing Co. v. Associated Press) in 1900—that the AP was a public utility and operating in restraint of trade—resulted in AP's move from Chicago to New York City, where corporation laws were more favorable to cooperatives.
Melville Stone, who had founded the Chicago Daily News in 1875, served as AP General Manager from 1893 to 1921. He embraced the standards of accuracy, impartiality, and integrity for which AP is still known. The cooperative grew rapidly under the leadership of Kent Cooper (served 1925-48), who built up bureau staff in South America, Europe, and (after World War II), the Middle East. He introduced the “telegraph typewriter” or teletypewriter into newsrooms in 1914. In 1935, AP launched the Wirephoto network, which allowed transmission of news photographs over leased private telephone lines on the day they were taken. This gave AP a major advantage over other news media outlets. While the first network was only between New York, Chicago and San Francisco, eventually AP had its network across the whole United States. [3] In 1945, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Associated Press v. United States that AP had been violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by prohibiting member newspapers from selling or providing news to nonmember organizations as well as making it very difficult for nonmember newspapers to join the AP. In 1982, satellites began transmitting news photography. AP entered the broadcast field in 1941 when it began distributing news to radio stations; it created its own radio network in 1974. In 1994, it established APTV, a global video newsgathering agency. APTV merged with WorldWide Television News in 1998 to form APTN, which provides video to international broadcasters and websites. In 2009, AP had more than 240 bureaus globally. Its mission —“to gather with economy and efficiency an accurate and impartial report of the news”—has not changed since its founding, but digital technology has made the distribution of the AP news report an interactive endeavor between AP and its 1,400 U.S. newspaper members as well as broadcasters, international subscribers, and online customers. AP headquarters are at 450 W. 33rd Street in Manhattan.
The Associated Press began diversifying its news gathering capabilities, and by 2007 AP was generating only about 30% of its revenue from United States newspapers. 37% came from the global broadcast customers, 15% from online ventures, and 18% came from international newspapers and from photography.[4]
The AP is known for its polls on numerous college sports in the United States. The AP polls ranking the top 25 NCAA Division I (Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision) college football and NCAA Division I men's and women's college basketball teams are the most well known. The AP composes the polls by collecting and compiling the top-25 votes of numerous designated sports journalists. The AP poll of college football was particularly notable for many years because it helped determine the ranking of teams at the end of the regular season for the collegiate Bowl Championship Series until the AP, citing conflict of interest, asked for the poll to be removed from the bowl series. Beginning in the 2005 season, the Harris Interactive College Football Poll took the AP's place in the bowl series formula. Despite the invention of the BCS, the AP has maintained its status and is viewed as an equal to the BCS (USC's AP title in 2003). The AP poll is the longest serving national poll in college football, having begun in 1936.
The AP began its Manager of the Year Award in 1959, for a manager in each league of Major League Baseball.[8] From 1984 to 2000, the award was given to one manager in all of MLB.[9] The winners were chosen by a national panel of AP baseball writers and radio men. The award was discontinued in 2001.[8]
Every year on March 31, the AP releases the names of the winners of its AP College Basketball Player of the Year and AP College Basketball Coach of the Year awards.
In 1994, London-based Associated Press Television (APTV) was founded to provide agency news material to television broadcasters. Other existing providers of such material at the time were Reuters Television and Worldwide Television News (WTN).
In 1998, AP purchased WTN, and APTV left the Associated Press building in the Central London and merged with WTN to create Associated Press Television News (APTN) in the WTN building, now the APTN building in Camden Town.
In November 2010 the Associated Press was sued by iCopyright. iCopyright's lawsuit asserts breach of contract and unfair competition in that the Associated Press launched a copyright-tracking registry, built upon information and business intelligence that the AP misappropriated from iCopyright.[10]
Washington, D.C. bureau reporter Christopher Newton, an Associated Press reporter since 1994, was fired by AP in September 2002 after he was accused of fabricating sources since 2000, including at least 40 people and organizations. Prior to his firing, Newton had been focused on writing about federal law-enforcement while based at the Justice Department. Some of the nonexistent agencies quoted in his stories included "Education Alliance," the "Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago," "Voice for the Disabled" and "People for Civil Rights."[11]
In June 2008, the AP sent numerous DMCA take down demands and threatened legal action against several blogs. The AP contended that the internet blogs were violating AP's copyright by linking to AP material and using headlines and short summaries in those links. Many bloggers and experts noted that the use of the AP news fell squarely under commonly accepted internet practices and within fair use standards.[12] Others noted and demonstrated that AP routinely takes similar excerpts from other sources, often without attribution or licenses. AP responded that it was defining standards regarding citations of AP news.[13]
In August 2005, Ken Knight, a Louisiana photographer sued[14] the Associated Press claiming that the AP had willfully and negligently violated Knight's copyright by distributing a photograph of celebrity Britney Spears to various media outlets including, but not limited to: truTV (formerly CourtTV), America Online and Fox News. According to court documents the AP did not have a license to publish, display or relicense the photographs. The case was settled by the parties in November 2006.
In a case filed February, 2005, McClatchey v. The Associated Press, a Pennsylvania photographer sued the Associated Press claiming that the AP had cropped a picture to remove the plaintiff's embedded title and copyright notice and later distributed it to news organizations without the plaintiff's permission or credit. According to court documents the parties settled the lawsuit.[15]
In April 2011, Patricia Ann Lopez, a New Mexico courtroom sketch artist, sued the Associated Press claiming that the AP had violated her copyrights by reselling her images without a license and had deceptively, fraudulently and wrongfully passed off the artist's work as its own.[16] According to court documents the AP did not have a license to resell or relicense the images.
In March 2009, the Associated Press counter-sued artist Shepard Fairey over his famous image of Barack Obama, saying the uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo violated copyright laws and signaled a threat to journalism. Fairey had sued the Associated Press the previous month over his artwork, titled "Obama Hope" and "Obama Progress," arguing that he did not violate copyright law because he dramatically changed the image. The artwork, based on an April 2006 picture taken for the AP by Mannie Garcia, was a popular image during the presidential campaign and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. According to the AP lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Fairey knowingly "misappropriated The AP's rights in that image." The suit, which also names Fairey's companies, asks the court to award AP profits made off the image and damages. "While (Fairey and the companies) have attempted to cloak their actions in the guise of politics and art, there is no doubt that they are profiting handsomely from their misappropriation," the lawsuit says. Fairey said he looked forward to "upholding the free expression rights at stake here" and disproving the AP's accusations.
In January 2008, the Associated Press sued competitor All Headline News (AHN) claiming that AHN allegedly infringed on its copyrights and a contentious 'quasi-property' right to facts.[17][18] The AP complaint asserted that AHN reporters had copied facts from AP news reports without permission and without paying a syndication fee. After AHN moved to dismiss all but the copyright claims set forth by AP, a majority of the lawsuit was dismissed.[19] According to court documents, the case has been dismissed and both parties have settled the lawsuit.[20]
In June 2010 the Associated Press was accused[21] of having unfair and hypocritical policies after it was demonstrated that AP reporters had copied Hot News, original reporting and facts from the "Search Engine Land" website without permission, attribution or credit.[22]
The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors.[23]
The AP's multi-topic structure has lent itself well to web portals, such as Yahoo! and MSN, all of which have news sites that constantly need to be updated. Often, such portals will rely on AP and other news services as their first source for news coverage of breaking news items. Yahoo!'s "Top News" page gives the AP top visibility out of any news outlet. This has been of major impact to the AP's public image and role, as it gives new credence to the AP's continual mission of having staff for covering every area of news fully and promptly. The AP is also the news service used on the Nintendo Wii's News Channel.[24] In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, but the articles are not permanently archived.[25] On December 24, 2009, Google stopped displaying or hosting Associated Press news content on the Google News website.[26]
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