Islam and Information Need, Feasibility and Limitations of An Independent Islamic News Agency

Abstract

I. INDEPENDENT NEWS AGENCIES
Four major international news agencies-Associated Press, Reuters, United
Press and Agence France Presse-gather and distribute much if not most of
the international news (be it “hard,” breaking news or “soft” news features)
published and broadcast in the world?
They transmit in English and French as well as a number of commercially
significant and logistically easy regional languages. (A.P. transmits a daily
service in English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish and offers an
Arabic features service by mail. Reuters and AFP offer a daily news file in
Arabic.) Most of this news is now transmitted point-to-point either by landline,
microwave link, satellite or some combination of these methods which have
largely replaced radio wireless transmission over the past ten years. The new
technology is much more effective; much less subject to failure and climatic
interference but much more expensive. Point-to-point telex is also sometimes
used as a fall back position where radio wireless transmission is still in use.
The Associated Press, as an example, has 8,500 subscribers in 150 countries
outside of the United States for its World Service. But the extent that
Big Four news dominates international news is much greater than the number
of subscribers would indicate, since many national news agencies subscribe
to one or more of the Big Four services and then edit and re-transmit the
material as part of their own news service to hundreds or even thousands of
local news outlets; e. g. Tass-which subscribes to the Associated Press
service-has approximately 6,000 subscribers in the Soviet Union.
As the number of full-time foreign correspondents for newspapers continues
to decline due to increasing costs and as mass media has proliferated
throughout the Third World over the past few decades, the Big Four and other
news agencies have expanded in size ...