Associated Press

The Associated Press was formed in May 1846 by five daily newspapers in New York City to
share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican–American War.
The history of American journalism began in 1690, when Benjamin Harris published the first
edition of "Public Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestic" in Boston.
The venture was organized by Moses Yale Beach (1800–68), second publisher of The Sun,
joined by the New York Herald, the New York Courier and Enquirer, The Journal of Commerce,
and the New York Evening Express.
Speedier transmission of information was not the only innovation of the service, which
eventually became known as the Associated Press. Unlike most American news outlets at the
time, the AP took a firmly nonpartisan stance, providing reports to Democratic- and Republican-
aligned publications alike.
Historical Background
Journalism history matters because it's the history of America. If you go back to colonial times
before we were a country, it was newspapers who led the rallying cry, 'No taxation without
representation. ‘And when we founded our nation, it was free expression, free speech, freedom
of the press. Associated Press (AP), cooperative 24-hour news agency (wire service), the oldest
and largest of those in the United States and long the largest and one of the preeminent news
agencies in the world. Headquarters are in New York, N.Y.

The nation's first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, began
publication on September 21, 1784. Many independent newspapers ran before that on a weekly
or monthly basis. America's first independent newspaper, the New England Courant, was
published by Benjamin Franklin's older brother in 1721.

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting.
Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in
all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business.
Its beginnings can be traced to 1846, when four New York City daily newspapers joined a
cooperative venture to provide news of the Mexican-American War. In 1848 six papers pooled
their efforts to finance a telegraphic relay of foreign news brought by ships to Boston, the first
U.S. port of call for westbound transatlantic ships. By 1856 the cooperative had taken the name
New York Associated Press. It sold its service to various regional newspaper groups, and
pressure from the regional customers forced changes in its control.

Midwestern newspaper publishers formed the Western Associated Press in 1862, and in 1892
it broke from the New York Associated Press and was incorporated separately in Illinois as the
Associated Press. In 1900 the regional organizations merged, and the modern AP was
incorporated.
In 1967 the AP partnered with the U.S. financial information and publishing firm Dow Jones &
Co., Inc., to launch the AP–Dow Jones Economic Report, which transmitted business, economic,
and financial news across the globe. As computers began to replace typewriters for many tasks—
including writing, editing, and archiving—the AP launched a series of new
technological initiatives, including DataStream (1972), a high-speed news-transmission service;
Laser Photo (1976), which enabled transmission of the first laser-scanned photographs; the
“electronic darkroom” (1979), which electronically cropped, formatted, and transmitted photos;
and Laser Photo II (1982), the first satellite color-photograph network. For many years the AP
had leased more than 400,000 miles (644,000 km) of telephone wire to carry its transmissions,
but its use of radio teleprinters—begun in 1952—began mitigating the need for leased wires, a
trend that increasing employment of satellite transmissions carried on as subscribers installed
appropriate antennas.

In the early 1980s the AP’s staff was made up of some 2,500 reporters and correspondents, in
bureaus in more than 100 U.S. and 50 other cities around the world, who collected and relayed to
member papers news from about 100 countries. Staff efforts were augmented by those of more
than 100,000 reporters of member papers. The agency had more than 6,500 newspaper clients in
the early 1980s. Pruitt (born c. 1957) is an American attorney and businessman, currently serving
as the President and CEO of the Associated Press.

The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, first published in 1977, became the
standard style guide for newswriting in the United States. The AP continued to diversify,
launching a series of new ventures including Associated Press Television (1994; later renamed
Associated Press Television News), a London-based global video news service; AP All News
Radio (1994), a 24-hour radio news network; and the WIRE (1996), an online news service
providing continuously updated audio, photos, text, and video.

In the early 21st century the AP began focusing on various reader initiatives including an online
blog; a multimedia news service targeting younger subscribers and members; citizen journalism;
and the Mobile News Network for mobile phone users. The AP employs some 4,100
administrative, communications, and editorial workers worldwide.
The AP is a non-profit cooperative owned by the newspapers, radio and Television
stations who share its news stories. Most articles are written by staff members belonging to the
Newspaper Guild Union, a part of the AFL-CIO. Many news organizations that are not members
pay a fee to use the stories.

Headquartered in North London, AP Television News was founded in 1994 as Associated Press

Television or APTV. They moved to their present headquarters in 1999 when APTV bought out
competitor Worldwide Television News (WTN) and hired Roberto FE Soto as their first NYC
Bureau Chief.

But the AP's “dry dispatches” remain as vital as ever, 175 years after its founding. More than
half the world's population has access to news from the AP every day. In an era of shrinking
journalism budgets and shuttered newsrooms, the organization still operates 248 bureaus in 99
countries.

Present-Day Journalism
Although the core of journalism has always been the news, the latter word has acquired so many
secondary meanings that the term “hard news” gained currency to distinguish items of definite
news value from others of marginal significance. This was largely a consequence of the advent
of radio and television reporting, which brought news bulletins to the public with a speed that the
press could not hope to match. To hold their audience, newspapers provided increasing quantities
of interpretive material—articles on the background of the news, personality sketches, and
columns of timely comment by writers skilled in presenting opinion in readable form. By the
mid-1960s most newspapers, particularly evening and Sunday editions, were relying heavily on
magazine techniques, except for their content of “hard news,” where the traditional rule of
objectivity still applied. Newsmagazines in much of their reporting were blending news with
editorial comment.

Journalism in book form has a short but vivid history. The proliferation of paperback books
during the decades after World War II gave impetus to the journalistic book, exemplified by
works reporting and analyzing election campaigns, political scandals, and world affairs in
general, and the “new journalism” of such authors as Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and Norman
Mailer.

The 20th century saw a renewal of the strictures and limitations imposed upon the press by
governments. In countries with communist governments, the press was owned by the state, and
journalists and editors were government employees. Under such a system, the prime function of
the press to report the news was combined with the duty to uphold and support the
national ideology and the declared goals of the state. This led to a situation in which the positive
achievements of communist states were stressed by the media, while their failings were
underreported or ignored. This rigorous censorship pervaded journalism in communist countries.

In noncommunist developing countries, the press enjoyed varying degrees of freedom, ranging

from the discreet and occasional use of self-censorship on matters embarrassing to the home
government to a strict and omnipresent censorship akin to that of communist countries. The press
enjoyed the maximum amount of freedom in most English-speaking countries and in the
countries of western Europe.

Whereas traditional journalism originated during a time when information was scarce and thus
highly in demand, 21st-century journalism faced an information-saturated market in which news
had been, to some degree, devalued by its overabundance. Advances such as satellite and digital
technology and the Internet made information more plentiful and accessible and thereby stiffened
journalistic competition. To meet increasing consumer demand for up-to-the-minute and highly
detailed reporting, media outlets developed alternative channels of dissemination, such as online
distribution, electronic mailings, and direct interaction with the public via forums, blogs, user-
generated content, and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

In the second decade of the 21st century, social media platforms in particular facilitated the
spread of politically oriented “fake news,” a kind of disinformation produced by for-profit Web
sites posing as legitimate news organizations and designed to attract (and mislead) certain
readers by exploiting entrenched partisan biases. During the campaign for the U.S. presidential
election of 2016 and after his election as president in that year, Donald J. Trump regularly used
the term “fake news” to disparage news reports, including by established and reputable media
organizations, that contained negative information about him.

Award Received
The AP has earned 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography, since the award was
established in 1917. In May 2020, Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan, and Channi Anand of the AP were
honored with the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The choice caused
controversy, because it was taken by some as questioning "India's legitimacy over Kashmir" as it
had used the word "independence" in regard to revocation of Article 370.

Israeli Airstrike on the AP Office Building

During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the Israeli army destroyed the al-Jalaa Highrise, a
building housing the AP's Gaza offices and Al Jazeera offices. Israel stated that the building
housed Hamas military intelligence and had given advanced warning of the strike, and no
civilians were harmed. AP CEO Gary Pruitt released a statement on May 16, stating that he "had
no indication Hamas was in the building" and called on the Israeli government to provide the
evidence. He said that "the world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of
what happened today."
On 17 May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had not seen any evidence that Hamas
operated from the building housing the AP and Al Jazeera, but it is the job of others to handle
intelligence matters. Israel reportedly shared intelligence with American officials and U.S
President Biden showing Hamas offices inside the building. Journalist Matti Friedman also
supported the Israeli government's claim.
Reporters Without Borders asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the bombing as
a possible war crime.
On June 8, Israeli Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan met with AP CEO Gary Pruitt and vice
president for foreign news, Ian Phillips, to discuss the operation. In coordination with the IDF,
Erdan said the site was used by Hamas intelligence officials to develop and carry
out SIGINT and electronic warfare operations, targeting both IDF and civilian systems in Israel,
including devices to disrupt the Iron Dome. Erdan also said the Israeli government does not
believe the AP was aware of the Hamas presence because it was a secret unit. He said the Israeli
government was willing to help rebuild the AP's offices and ensure they will be able to bring
equipment into Gaza.
Functions & Objectives of AP
We abhor inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions. We will not knowingly introduce rumor
or false information into material intended for publication or broadcast; nor will we distort visual
content. Quotations must be accurate and precise. We preserve the appropriate professional
distance from those we cover.

The secret to getting those news placements is in understanding this news values list: impact,
timeliness, prominence, proximity, the bizarre, conflict, currency and human interest. The
newsworthiness of a story is determined by these eight guiding principles.