History of News Agencies

First book ever published in Brazil about news agencies, featuring chapters authored by nine scholars, including Oliver Boyd-Barrett, PhD, a world reference in this subject

Primeiro livro publicado no Brasil sobre agências de notícias, com artigos de nove pesquisadores acadêmicos, inclusive de Oliver Boyd-Barrett, referência mundial no assunto

Recife: Editora UFPE, 2014 (e-book)

organizadores: Maria Cleidejane Esperidião; José Afonso da Silva Jr.; Pedro Aguiar

This thesis maps all 110 news agencies that currently belong to sovereign states of the Global South by analyzing their operational structures, placement of correspondents, services, technologies, languages, news topics, relations with the State, and cooperation with and dependency on other news agencies. Instead of being concerned with content, this research is concentrated on the economic dimension of news agency journalism, the institutional networks they form, and the role they play within the Communication-World, the world-system of International Communication. The perspective taken in this research moves away from the transnational news agencies headquartered in the North (Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Kyodo, DPA, EFE, ANSA) and focuses on news agencies based in the peripheries of the world (TASS, Xinhua, Tanjug, TTXVN, Antara, Notimex, Télam, MAP, Bernama, APS, NAN etc.), which practice journalism under precarious and adverse conditions, immersed in the Coloniality of the modern world-system. Firstly, the thesis reconstructs the longue durée history of the international news trade, underlining its intrinsic relationship with the modern-colonial project. Then, by using the theoretical framework of Boyd-Barrett, Mattelart, Wallerstein, and other authors from Political Economy (both International Political Economy and the Political Economy of Communication) and Geographies of Media and by taking a decolonial perspective, it seeks to prove that the key to understanding the current center-periphery media gap in the age of digital convergence is less in information production than it is in information circulation. Therefore, the concept of information-commodity is presented as essential to understanding the dependency of Southern news agencies towards transnational news agencies. In order to achieve this, the thesis establishes an anthology of news agency journalism in five regions of analysis: Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In each region, the strategies of the State to overcome the information dependency inherited from colonial-imperialist order set up by the transnational news agencies since the 19th century shall be emphasized. Finally, the thesis analyzes the data obtained in the survey for the whole Global South, leading to the conclusion that the State is the driving force behind the circulation of information in the global peripheries.

En el presente texto se busca dar respuesta a la cuestión siguiente: ¿existe la hegemonía de las agencias de noticias sobre el resto de los medios de comunicación?, para lo cual, se ahondará en el concepto de hegemonía, visto desde la perspectiva gramsciana, aunque también retomado desde la perspectiva cultural de Raymond Williams. Además, se hará un esbozo de un mapa que explique la relación que hay entre la hegemonía, el soft power de Joseph Nye y la teoría de los Gatekeepers, dentro de la relación de las agencias de noticias y los clientes a los que éstas les venden las noticias. Artículo publicado en noviembre de 2015, en la revista digital La Guadaña.

This article explores the changes in news agency mechanisms that accompanied the restructuring of Europe after World War I. During the interwar period, a new form of negotiation replaced the pre-World War I conception of English, French and German spheres of influence with a more cooperative vision of the collection and dissemination of news. I argue that the private and business-oriented nature of news agency cooperation enabled it to outlast better-known political attempts at multilateralism. Indeed, it often produced more concrete results by offering different incentives for cooperation to all involved from large global agencies, such as Reuters, down to the small agencies of new Central and Eastern European nation-states. Overall, the agencies' cooperation until the outbreak of World War II suggests alternative periodizations of the interwar period than the division into a fairly internationalist 1920s followed by the increasing bilateralism of the 1930s.

Este artigo reconstitui a história e a geopolítica dos acordos de cartel entre as agências de notícias europeias do século XIX, tomando-os como gênese do atual sistema internacional de informação e seus desequilíbrios. Por meio da leitura dialógica entre autores que abordaram anteriormente o tema (Smith, Boyd-Barrett, Thussu, Wolff e outros), faz-se uma análise do processo de constituição das redes operacionais das agências como uma das infraestruturas de circulação do capital, particularmente em sua fase imperialista. Versão revista e ampliada de trabalho apresentado no XXXVII Congresso Brasileiro de Ciências da Comunicação, da INTERCOM, no grup ode pesquisas Geografias da Comunicação, realizado em 2014 em Foz do Iguaçu (PR).

Num esforço historiográfico e de questionamento à interpretação predominante, o artigo tenta reconstruir uma história da fase inicial da Agência Nacional (AN), a primeira agência de notícias no âmbito estatal brasileiro, a partir tanto de bibliografia publicada quanto de pesquisa em fontes primárias como documentos, depoimentos (registrados no Projeto Memória EBN e mantidos sob custódia do Arquivo Nacional) e consultas à imprensa da época, reproduzida na Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional. Põe-se o foco sobre a estrutura operacional da AN, seu papel na política pública de comunicação do Estado Novo e seu aproveitamento na imprensa da época. Aqui se contesta a versão que oblitera o papel da AN em distribuir conteúdo jornalístico e reduz sua função à de “propaganda” durante a Era Vargas. Propõe-se, afinal, que o discurso propagandístico, embora houvesse, estava diluído em meio ao material informativo.

Agências de notícias tiveram papel de destaque no processo de desenvolvimento dos sistemas nacionais e internacionais de comunicação, particularmente na periferia do capitalismo, por serem primordialmente responsáveis pela circulação na economia da informação. Nos países da África, sul da Ásia e Caribe, elas constituíram alicerces prioritários na construção da estrutura institucional do Estado, pensadas para promover o desenvolvimento. Os diferentes modelos forneceram determinantes para políticas públicas nestes países, tais como a opção por agências estatais ou privadas, independentes ou associadas a multinacionais, de importação ou exportação de informação. Considerando esses paradigmas e seus híbridos, o artigo examina os distintos modelos de constituição e operação de agências de notícias adotados nos países emergentes do século XXI, nominalmente os do chamado grupo BRICS (Brasil, Rússia, Índia, China e África do Sul), no que têm de particular em relação ao Estado, ao modelo de propriedade e de negócio, e seus papéis dentro das respectivas estratégias de desenvolvimento nacional.

O artigo esboça uma narrativa da trajetória das agências de notícias submetidas ao Governo Federal brasileiro, começando com a Agência Nacional criada sob Getúlio Vargas em 1937, transformada em EBN em 1979 por João Figueiredo e extinta em 1988 por José Sarney. Após dois anos de hiato, surge a Agência Brasil, pelas  mãos de Fernando Collor, e incorporada pela EBC em 2007, no governo Lula. Como a história das agências de notícias públicas e estatais brasileiras carece de referências bibliográficas e institucionais consolidadas, o trabalho recupera fontes primárias e secundárias, como documentação oficial dispersa, legislação, livros e relatos de antigos gestores e referências na imprensa geral e especializada, além de algumas poucas produções  acadêmicas. Propõe-se aqui um primeiro esforço de resgate da história dessas agências, considerando conjuntamente suas dimensões institucional, tecnológica, econômica e profissional.

Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau was a news agency that was the central source for news in Germany during the war. Because of censorship mechanisms, newspapers tended to reprint Wolff’s news verbatim. The quality of Wolff’s news inspired many complaints, but the government’s use of this news source made it indispensable.

O jornalismo de agências de notícias guarda particularidades e idiossincrasias até hoje pouco reconhecidas e, no contexto brasileiro, virtualmente ignoradas. Frente a este cenário, o trabalho contribui com proposições para uma pesquisa histórica sobre o jornalismo de agências, ambos nacional e internacional, particularmente contrastando os diferentes modelos adotados nas distintas realidades: EUA e Europa Ocidental, de um lado; o Leste Europeu e os países em desenvolvimento, de outro. Acredita-se, aqui, que conhecer a história do jornalismo de agências revela-se como capítulo importante para a história do jornalismo em todas as suas dimensões.

Link to article: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/4/559.abstract?keytype=ref&ijkey=KCr0p2sRaf0z0Cm
From August 2013, a new, controversial ancillary copyright law (Leistungsschutzrecht) permitted German publishers to charge online news aggregator, such as Google for displaying article snippets. Implementation remains contested, but this is not the first time that new technology has prompted Germans to seek intellectual property rights in news. In August 1927, a German delegation successfully pushed through its compromise resolution on the legal protection of news during a Conference of Press Experts at the League of Nations. The resolution foresaw protection for news before publication, but allowed national governments to regulate news after publication. This left space for Germany to promulgate a national law on news that Germans hoped would become a model for others. This article uses the Conference of Press Experts to argue that German approaches to media, technology and law developed from the intersection between national and international concerns. In contrast to other scholars’ focus on the press as a national phenomenon, the article shows that the international spotlight enabled a temporary cooperation between two groups often at odds during the Weimar Republic: the press and government officials. Officials saw law as a form of soft power to raise Germany’s international profile, while the semi-official news agency, Wolff, aimed to counter domestic competition and stop radio listeners eavesdropping on its news. Yet, bureaucrats and the media only cooperated effectively on the international stage. In domestic discussions after the conference, consensus swiftly disintegrated. This interplay between national and international imperatives remains key for media policy today as well as in interwar German history.

This is the thesis I presented in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) to obtain my Bachelor Degree in Communications. I defended the paper on September 27, 2017.
In the thesis I study the hegemony of the news agencies in the Mexican journalism, specially in the International sections of four different newspapers in Mexico City: Excélsior, El Unviersal, Milenio and La Jornada.
I also made a chapter dedicated to the history of News Agencies around the world and in Mexico.

This paper inquiries the origin of the model of media conglomerate news agencies, inducted in Brazil after the prototype of Agência Meridional, part of the Diários Associados group, owned by Assis Chateaubriand, on its own shaped after Telegraphen-Union of the Alfred Hugenberg's trust, in 1920s Germany. Through a comparative perspective with what is described in scholar literature about North American conglomerate news agencies and their services of news syndication for other newspapers, we identify the legacy of such model in current Brazilian news agencies - Agência Estado, Agência O Globo, and Folhapress – and propose an economical taxonomy for the different kinds of conglomerate agencies, particularly the intraconglomerate, which operate within a concentrating and converging framework, begetting a circularity system which enhances dependency and regional assymetries in the domestic flow of news.

Im Zuge der internationalen Auseinandersetzungen um die sogenannte Neue Weltinformations- und kommunikationsordnung (NWIKO) in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren wurde der Begriff der kulturellen Souveränität meist als die Ausübung staatlicher Hoheitsrechte über Kultur und Medien verstanden. Der Aufsatz setzt an diesem zeitgenössischen Verständnis von kultureller Souveränität an und untersucht die deutsch-deutsche Vorgeschichte zu den im Rahmen der NWIKO-Debatten verhandelten Souveränitäten. Diesen Debatten vorausgegangen war nämlich die Reintegration beider deutscher Staaten in die internationale Nachrichtenordnung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.

Der Beitrag analysiert am Beispiel des Wettlaufs zwischen den west- und ostdeutschen Nachrichtenagenturen Deutsche Presseagentur (dpa) und Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN) die mediendiplomatische Konkurrenz zwischen Bundesrepublik und DDR in den Jahrzehnten des westdeutschen Alleinvertretungsanspruchs bis in die frühen 1970er Jahre. Er fragt weniger nach den je konkreten inhaltlichen “Füllungen” der debattierten “Kultur” in Form von Nachrichteninhalten und medialen Repräsentationen, sondern nach der aus Souveränitätsansprüchen resultierenden institutionellen Architektur deutsch-deutscher Mediendiplomatie. Es wird gezeigt, dass das Ringen um kulturelle Souveränität und die legitime mediale Repräsentation von “Deutschland” in der Welt sich nicht nur aus konkurrierenden zwischenstaatlichen Ansprüchen speiste, sondern auch aus dem geschickten Manövrieren Dritter, von individuellen medienpolitischen Unternehmern bis hin zu Staaten des globalen Südens, die sich durch die Eröffnung eines Korrespondentenbüros europäischer Medien einen Reputationsgewinn und verstärkte internationale Öffentlichkeit erhofften. Anders als es das etablierte Narrativ einer von staatlicher Einflussnahme unabhängigen Nachrichtenagentur nahe legt, agierten dpa und staatliche Akteure weitgehend in einem symbiotischen Miteinander. Allein die staatlicherseits als notwendig erachtete mediale Flankierung des bundesdeutschen Souveränitätsanspruchs eröffnete der dpa die weltweite Ausdehnung ihres Korrespondentennetzes.

Angewendet auf die Außenseite des Verhältnisses von Staat und Medien, erlaubt das Konzept der kulturellen Souveränität, die Lesart einer zunehmend kritischen Distanz von Journalismus und Staat in der bundesrepublikanischen Gesellschaft zu hinterfragen. Dieses Verhältnis scheint im Rahmen auswärtiger Mediendiplomatie länger und stärker von einer geteilten bundesrepublikanischen Staatsräson geprägt gewesen zu sein als dies in der inländischen Konstellation der Fall war. Deutlich wird in der Analyse der auswärtigen Mediendiplomatie von Nachrichtenagenturen weiterhin, wie sehr die souveräne Repräsentation in der Praxis durch organisatorische Hierarchien und politisch-geographische Kontexte gekennzeichnet war. Nähe und Distanz von Medienvertretern und auswärtiger Diplomatie konnte nach Standorten variieren, die Mehrebenenstruktur des Nachrichtenflusses, vom Korrespondenten vor Ort bis zur heimischen Nachrichtenredaktion, Entscheidungsspielräume einengen, aber auch erweitern.

This documentary tells the life story of Argentinian journalist Jorge Ricardo Masetti, one of the first reporters
to interview Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestra guerrilla, yet in 1958, who later became a
revolutionary himself. With them, he founded the Prensa Latina news agency, aimed at reporting to the whole
continent and countries in the Third World through a post-colonial perspective, against the bias of the major
global agencies. He also took part in the resistance to the invasion at the Bay of Pigs, in 1961, and later left Cuba
to fight for the independence of Algeria, in 1963, and set a guerrilla of his own in the jungle of Salta, Argentina,
where he went missing the following year. The film contains testimonies by fellow journalists, former guerrilla
fighters, friends and others who shared work and life with Masetti, and it puts forth a reflexion on the role of
counter-hegemonic information and struggle in international communication.

Este trabalho, em forma de ensaio, chama atenção para a rica, longa e complexa tradição do jornalismo de agências de notícias no Brasil, desde o século XIX até hoje, e discute alguns motivos para seu apagamento na historiografia da imprensa brasileira, na cultura profissional atual e no ensino de Jornalismo no país. Em seguida, delineia alguns marcos importantes da trajetória das agências de notícias nacionais e estrangeiras atuantes aqui ao longo de quase 150 anos. Finalmente, esboça um programa de pesquisas para resgatar esse legado e (re)conduzir a prática jornalística em agências de notícias ao lugar que merece na pesquisa e no ensino da profissão.

Il s'agit ici d'étudier comment Jacques Kayser s’est imposé, à partir de la fin des années 1940,  comme un chercheur pionnier des conditions dans lesquelles est produite et circule l’information sur l’étranger et des enjeux politiques qui en découlent

Quarry owner Saunders (1823-95) applied industrial methods to the supply of news as a commodity, experimenting with centralised and networked solutions to the problem of news distribution. He entered the newspaper industry in Plymouth, launching the Western Morning News in 1860, and in 1863 he and his brother-in-law Edward Spender set up one of the first UK news agencies, the Central Press, in London, supplying news and other editorial matter to provincial papers. He founded or purchased other papers around the country, and shared content between them – to some resistance, mainly from journalists. Saunders’s career highlights the dependence of many provincial papers on central sources of news and content, and challenges simple ideas of local, national and provincial. It also shows the contrast between the romantic myths about local journalism peddled by journalists, and the industrial reality of the processes by which those myths were disseminated.

O capítulo resume a tese de doutorado defendida em 2018 na UERJ sobre as agências de notícias de América Latina e Caribe, África, Ásia e Oceania, examinadas sob a análise dos sistemas-mundo e por uma história de longa duração, ao mesmo tempo assumindo uma perspectiva descolonial.