COVENANT UNIVERSITY
NIGERIA
TUTORIAL KIT
OMEGA SEMESTER
PROGRAMME: MASS
COMMUNICATION
COURSE: MAC 341
DISCLAIMER
The contents of this document are intended for practice and leaning purposes at the
undergraduate level. The materials are from different sources including the internet
and the contributors do not in any way claim authorship or ownership of them. The
materials are also not to be used for any commercial purpose.
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MAC341: NEWS AGENCY JOURNALISM
Contributor: DR PETER A. S.
1. What is news agency?
2. Highlight and discuss the coverage issues surrounding three largest news agencies
in the world.
3. Discuss the variety of relationships that the world agencies have established with
other agencies and with individual news media.
4. What is news agency journalism?
5. What is foreign correspondence?
6. Who is a foreign correspondent?
7. What are the qualities of a good foreign correspondent?
8. What is politics of foreign correspondence?
9. What are the challenges facing foreign correspondents?
10. How can the challenges facing foreign correspondents how can they be addressed?
11. Discuss the controversies surrounding syndication in the international news
business; global gatekeeping/international news coverage
12. Describe the role of news agencies in foreign correspondence
13. Identify an international correspondent and highlight the qualities of a good
correspondent in such individual
14. Explain the operations of the satellite technology and its impact on news agency
journalism
15. Do a comparative analysis of the global media and the covering of the global village
16. Justify with reasons why some nations get better international coverage than
others
17. How does news from abroad sells at home?
18. Highlight and discuss key issues, timelines/stages, challenges, and prospects of
the world
Summit on information society (WSIS)
19. Define an elite press/elite press corps state the characteristics of the elite press
and identify a journalist who qualifies as an elite press corps.
20. Discuss the effects of the news media on foreign policy
ANSWERS
1. QUESTION ONE:
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NEWS AGENCY
News agency, also called press agency, press association, wire service, or news service,
organization that gathers, writes, and distributes news from around a nation or the world
to newspapers, periodicals, radio and television broadcasters, government agencies, and
other users. It does not generally publish news itself but supplies news to its subscribers,
who, by sharing costs, obtain services they could not otherwise afford. All the mass media
depend upon the agencies for the bulk of the news, even including those few that have
extensive news-gathering resources of their own.
The news agency has a variety of forms. In some large cities, newspapers and radio and
television stations have joined forces to obtain routine coverage of news about the police,
courts, government offices, and the like. National agencies have extended the area of such
coverage by gathering and distributing stock-market quotations, sports results, and
election reports. A few agencies have extended their service to include worldwide news. The
service has grown to include news interpretation, special columns, news photographs,
audiotape recordings for radio broadcast, and often videotape or motion-picture film for
television news reports. Many agencies are cooperatives, and the trend has been in that
direction since World War II. Under this form of organization, individual members provide
news from their own circulation areas to an agency pool for general use. In major news
centres the national and worldwide agencies have their own reporters to cover important
events, and they maintain offices to facilitate distribution of their service.
2. QUESTION THREE: Most of them purchase the news services of national or local
agencies to supplement news gathered by their own staff representatives at key points.
Reuters, like the Agence France-Presse, supplies a worldwide news file to be
distributed by some national agencies along with their domestic news reports. The
American services more often contract to deliver their service directly to individual
users abroad.
News agencies in communist countries had close ties to their national governments.
Each major communist country had its own national news service, and each news
service was officially controlled, usually by the minister of information. TASS, the
Soviet news agency, was the principal source of world news for the Soviet Union and
its allies; it also made Soviet Communist Party policy known. Communist states
outside the Soviet sphere, e.g., China and Yugoslavia, had their own state news
services, which were controlled in similar fashion. China’s Hsinhua, or New China
News Agency, was the largest remaining news agency in a communist country by the
late 20th century.
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3. QUESTION TWO:
THE BIG THREE
The Associated Press in the United States,
Reuters in Great Britain,
Agence France-Presse in France. Only these and a few others have the financial
resources to station experienced reporters in all areas of the world where news
develops regularly (in order to ensure access to well-organized transmission facilities)
or to send them wherever news develops unexpectedly. These agencies are also
equipped to distribute the service almost instantaneously
4. QUESTION FIVE
WHAT IS FOREIGN OR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE?
Foreign or international correspondence entails the processes involved in the coverage,
gathering and dissemination of international news and information around the globe.
In international correspondence, newsgathering and dissemination goes beyond the
particular correspondents house style handed down to him/her. The issue of
international relations and diplomacy must be given due consideration for successful
operations. In international correspondence, language, culture and other indigenous
factors play significant roles in what eventually comes out as world news through
such processes.
Correspondence literally means the exchange of information; news etc. international
correspondence therefore, involves the exchange of news, information etc. amongst
nations and nationals of different countries and facilitated by international
correspondents who represent their various media organizations in those nations.
5. QUESTION SIX
WHO IS A CORRESPONDENT?
A correspondent is a seasoned, professional reporter who covers a particular beat
for his organization. A correspondent is a beat reporter and is very
knowledgeable in his/her area of coverage. He could also be referred to as a
specialist reporter or an expert in his area of coverage or beat. He/she is
contrasted with the generalist or roving reporter. A correspondent is usually in
charge of his/her organization’s news bureau or office in major cities or towns
where his organization operates. He also is called a bureau chief; Head, London
bureau etc. A correspondent may be stationed in a bureau because he knows so much
about the place and he can also be sent out to different stations based on the subject
of interest, because he is very knowledgeable in such area. For example, CNN’s Berlin
correspondent is in Berlin because he/she understands Berlin (culture,
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language etc.) very well, while the CNN’s war correspondent can be sent to Berlin in an
outbreak of war in that area.
6. QUESTION SEVEN
WHO IS A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT?
Foreign or international correspondent from our description of a correspondent above
is therefore, a seasoned, professional, specialist reporter who covers the foreign or
international scene as his/her beat. E.g. Jeff Coinage who was the CNN’s
correspondent in West Africa and Christine Amanpour, CNN’s Chief War
Correspondent
7. QUESTION EIGHT
QUALITIES OF A GOOD FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
languages especially the language of the country he is covering.
diplomacy.
is always there whenever the news breaks.
should respect such way of life.
-oriented personality and journalist.
8. QUESTION NINE AND TEN
EXAMPLE OF CHALLENGES FACING FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS
Foreign correspondents reporting on Burma face a unique set of challenges due to the
various restrictions and limitations imposed on them by the country's military
government. Developing credible sources and verifying information are complicated by
a number of factors, including journalists' limited access to the country and its people;
infrequent communication from reclusive government officials; deliberate
misinformation between government and anti-government
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entities; restrictions on mobility inside the country; and other generally inhospitable
working conditions. Over the past 20 years, a number of extraordinary events have
helped shape the country's international image, beginning with the massive street
demonstrations in 1988, in which more than 3,000 protesting civilians were killed by
the military. The 1990s and 2000s were characterized by a nullified democratic
election, the rise of a democracy icon (Aung San Suu Kyi), ethnic insurgencies, drug
problems and a withering economy. When the nation's leadership raised fuel prices in
2007, a dissatisfied public led by Buddhist monks (who have long held deep influence
inside the country) took to the streets in protest. And although the protests again were
shut down by the military (including through forceful dispersions), the Saffron
Revolution, as it came to be known, represented a landmark moment in Burma's
global exposure. In particular, news organizations comprised of Burmese exiles
emerged as instrumental in delivering news from Burma. Advancements in technology
allowed the events to reach the global public faster and more vividly than ever before.
Because the exile media had established such substantial infrastructure inside the
country, both technologically and in terms of manpower, they became a vital link
between the mainstream global press and the world public.
9. QUESTION 13
Christine Amanpour
10. QUESTION 14
SATELLITES AND GLOBAL MASS MEDIA
The impact of satellites on international communication is so glaring and no less
profound. With the advent of satellites, signals could be distributed not only internally
(between two countries) as has been the case, but all over the globe). The satellite
revolution began in 1957 with the successful launch of Soviet Union’s ‘Sputnik’.
According to Baran (2002:473):
Sputnik had no real function other than to prove (especially to the United
States) that the Soviets could indeed produce the World’s first artificial
satellite. But it fulfilled this function admirably – shaking the confidence of
the Western nations and leading the United States to redouble its efforts to
conquer space.
With the launch of sputnik, US launched AT & T’s Telstor 1 in orbit in 1962. That same year, the US
Congress established the Communication Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) to coordinate ownership and
operation of US’s communications satellite system. It was very clear from the beginning that satellites
greatest potential was in their ability to globalise telecommunications and mass communications. In
fact, satellite technology made foreign correspondence an interesting field in international
communication