Extract

Even people who do not regularly consume news know The Guardian, the Daily Mail or Fox News and have a pretty clear idea of the political orientation of these media outlets. When it comes to such names as Reuters, Agence France-Presse or Associated Press, however, even well-informed people often only have a very vague idea of what these institutions do and would have even more difficulties identifying their political perspective.

News agencies are the invisible infrastructure of journalism, maintaining global networks of correspondents that supply thousands of individual media organizations with news from around the world. Only huge organizations such as the BBC or the New York Times can afford to employ their own foreign reporters, so most media outlets rely on the service of the agencies. The reports of their unnamed correspondents are reprinted thousands of times all over the world, and while they all insist that their perspective on world affairs is objective and impartial their influence on the way the media represent the world is still underexposed, and little understood.

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