Inter Press Service

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Inter Press Service (abbreviated: IPS) is a global news agency. Its main focus is the production of independent news and analysis about events and processes affecting economic, social and political development.

The agency has established a niche in the international mediascape, not only by providing professional reporting on the so-called global South, civil society, and globalization, but also by covering topics in a more in-depth way than is common in the mainstream news.

1 History
2 Approach
3 Legal status
4 Organizational structure
5 Services
6 IPS's role in the mediascape
7 References
8 See also
9 External Links

[edit] History

Inter Press Service was set up in 1964 as a non-profit international cooperative of journalists. Its founders were the Italian journalist Roberto Savio and the Argentinean political scientist Pablo Piacentini. Initially, the primary objective of IPS was to fill the information gap between Europe and Latin America after the political turbulence following the Cuban revolution of 1959 (Giffard in Salwen and Garrison, 1991).

Later, the network expanded to include all continents, and extended its editorial focus. In 1994, IPS changed its legal status to that of a ‘public-benefit organization for development cooperation’.

[edit] Approach

IPS’s stated aims are to give prominence to the voices of marginalized and vulnerable people and groups, report from the perspectives of developing countries, and to reflect the views of civil society. The mainstreaming of gender in reporting and the assessment of the impacts of globalization are a priority.

In order to reach this aim, IPS does not lay claim to providing “spot news”, but instead to producing well-researched features and reports that give background information, and covering processes rather than events.

IPS may be unique in its concentration on developing countries and the strong relationships with civil society. For this reason, IPS has even been termed the probably “largest and most credible of all ‘alternatives’ in the world of news agencies” (Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, 1998: 174/5), being the “first and only independent and professional news agency which provides on a daily basis information with a Third World focus and point of view” (Boyd-Barrett and Thussu, 1992: 94; cf. Giffard, 1998: 191; Fenby, 1986).

Despite all the laudable aims, it is, however, important to see that IPS has never possessed the resources to be a major player in the international media landscape. Because of its focus on longer background pieces instead of concise news, it has at most a marginal status as news provider for mainstream media in developed countries. Its presence is more relevant on the Internet and in developing countries' media.

[edit] Legal status

IPS is registered as an international not-for-profit association. It has 'general' NGO consultative status with ECOSOC at the United Nations, and the OECD status of ”ODA eligible international organization".

[edit] Organizational structure

The IPS headquarters are situated in Rome, Italy. Five editorial desks coordinate the network of journalists around the world: Montevideo (regional bureau for Latin America), London-Berlin (Europe and the Mediterranean), New Delhi (Asia and the Pacific), New York (North America and the Caribbean) and Johannesburg (Africa). Most of IPS's journalists and editors are native to the country or region in which they are working.

IPS receives funding from various sources: through its subscribers and media clients, as beneficiary of multilateral and national development cooperation programmes, and as recipient of project financing from foundations. It is not, as most other agencies, financed by a country or a group of newspapers. Hence, the agency’s budget is comparatively small. Still it manages to be “roughly the sixth largest international news-gathering organization” (Rauch, 2003: 89).

[edit] Services

Traditional and new media as well as civil society and UN organizations are among IPS's client base. For individuals, the daily news service is available online in English and Spanish, and in the translations to 10 additional languages (Arabic, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Swahili, and Swedish).

IPS publishes the TerraViva newsletters on specific occasions such as UN conferences or the World Social Forum. Apart from its news services, IPS provides training for journalists and is involved in project partnerships with civil society organizations and movements.

[edit] IPS's role in the mediascape

The actual role of IPS in the international mediascape is only marginal (cf. Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, 1998: 175). This is due to a number of problems, such as:

IPS's limited financial resources;
its inability to cover all countries with an appropriate number of correspondents (in many countries, IPS only employs stringers);
because of the two aforementioned limitations, IPS can only provide a scattered coverage about regions and issues, and is often unable to produce timely news and follow-ups;
IPS's focus on background news "is not particularly attractive to market-driven commercial media” (Giffard, 1998: 200).

However, it seems that IPS has played a significant part in shaping the modern media and their news. Some of its structural innovations have been adopted by other international media organizations, most notably regarding the employment of local journalists for the coverage of developing countries. Furthermore, IPS claims to have led the way to a particular style of news (by demonstrating that in-depth analysis is as much part of the news as immediate coverage of the "facts”) and to raising awareness about less "newsworthy" topics, such as poverty or the environment.

Even if IPS's direct outreach is rather limited, it plays an important role in providing background news to journalists, decision-makers from governments and UN institutions, and civil society organizations.

In recent cases, IPS exercised direct influence on the mainstream media agenda:

When a federal building in Oklahoma was attacked in 1995, the U.S. media blamed Arab terrorists. IPS was the first news outlet to maintain that white U.S. Americans from the ultraright had in fact committed the bombings. The assertion was finally confirmed and accepted by the mainstream media.
IPS was the first to announce that the existence of asbestos worsened the contamination related to the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the clearance works of Ground Zero. It led the way in consistently informing about the resulting health risks as well as the fact that most clearance workers were undocumented immigrants, who were not entitled to health compensation and got paid inadequately.
The controversy surrounding the publication of a cartoon depicting the Muhammad in a Danish newspaper hit the international mainstream news in February 2006. IPS had already reported on Islamic organizations' protests against the cartoon in November 2005.
In Iraq, IPS has been present in places where no other independent journalists remained: on the streets of Baghdad, but also in Arbil, Ramadi, Fallujah, Baquba and Khaldiya.

It is questionable how much IPS manages to reach people who do not share its general aims and viewpoints. Also, increasingly becoming an actor within civil society but at the same time writing about it, IPS may have slightly shifted from reporting towards lobbying. The agency itself claims that an editorial perspective “does not mean bias or compromising the quest for truth” (IPS Style Manual: 8).

[edit] References

Boyd-Barrett, Oliver and Rantanen, Terhi; eds. (1998) The Globalization of News. London: Sage Publications
Boyd-Barrett, Oliver and Thussu, Daya Kishan (1992) Contra-flow in global news. International and regional news exchange mechanisms. London: John Libbey
Fenby, Jonathan (1986) The International News Agencies. New York: Schocken Books
Giffard, C. Anthony (1998) Alternative News Agencies. In: Boyd-Barrett, O. and Rantanen, T.; eds. (1998) The Globalization of News. London: Sage Publications
IPS (no date) Style Manual. Rome: IPS [unpublished]
Rauch, Jennifer (2003) Rooted in Nations, Blossoming in Globalization? A Cultural Perspective on the Content of a “Northern” Mainstream and a “Southern” Alternative News Agency. Journal of Communication Inquiry, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 87 – 103. London: Sage Publications
Salwen, Michael and Garrison, Bruce (1991) Latin American Journalism. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass