News Agencies and Wire Services We Trust

A news agency sells its reporting to other newsrooms. When a local paper, a TV station or a news app runs a story from a country where it has no reporter, the text, photos and video often come from Reuters, AP or AFP. Many readers see wire reporting every day without noticing it: the credit sits in a small line at the top or bottom of the story, such as "(Reuters)" or "Associated Press".

Because the same copy is sold to clients on the left and the right, in dozens of countries, agencies have a business reason to keep it plain: facts first, quotes attributed by name, few adjectives and no opinion. A paper can add its own commentary on top, but the wire version is built to be usable by everyone. Our guide explains what a wire service is in more detail.

Reuters: the top-rated outlet we track

Paul Julius Reuter opened his London office in 1851, and the agency has been part of Thomson Reuters since 2008. Its conduct is set by the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles, which commit it to integrity, independence and freedom from bias. Reuters is the only outlet in Aplomb that Media Bias/Fact Check rates Very High for factual reporting, and all three raters place it at or near the center. Its signed financial commentary, Reuters Breakingviews, is labeled separately from news. Best for: international and business news in the plainest wording available. Is Reuters reliable?

AP: the American cooperative

The Associated Press was founded in New York in 1846 by newspapers that wanted to share the cost of gathering news. It is still a not-for-profit cooperative owned by its member news organizations. AP sets the rules many American newsrooms write by: the AP Stylebook, first published in 1953, is the standard guide to wording in US journalism. AP also tallies votes and declares the winners of US elections, a service other outlets rely on. Raters see a slight left lean (Lean Left for AllSides, Left-Center for Media Bias/Fact Check, Middle for Ad Fontes Media); the debate is usually about style choices, not facts. Best for: US news, elections and breaking events. AP News bias

AFP: the view from Paris

Agence France-Presse was created in 1944 and has had a unique status since a 1957 French law: it has no shareholders, and its statute says it must never come under the control of a political, economic or ideological group. An independent Higher Council watches over that rule. The French state pays AFP for public-interest missions and buys subscriptions, which is the main question raised about its independence. AFP is strong in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and runs one of the world's largest fact-checking services, AFP Fact Check. Only Media Bias/Fact Check has rated it (Left-Center, High factual reporting). Best for: world news from outside the English-speaking world. Is AFP biased?

The Canadian Press: Canada's national agency

The Canadian Press was founded in 1917 so that Canadian newspapers could share their news, and it still supplies newspapers, broadcasters and websites across the country, in English and in French. It is a private company owned by three Canadian publishers, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and La Presse; it says stories involving them are reviewed by a senior editor and declare the link. It has a long-standing partnership with AP. Only Media Bias/Fact Check has rated it: Least Biased (-1.1), with High factual reporting. Best for: Canadian national news and politics. Is The Canadian Press biased?

Bloomberg: the business wire

Bloomberg News started in 1990 to serve the users of the Bloomberg Terminal, the financial data service that is still the company's main business. According to Bloomberg, its news operation has more than 2,700 journalists. AllSides and Ad Fontes Media place it close to the center, while Media Bias/Fact Check rates it Left-Center with Mostly Factual reporting. One episode is worth knowing: while Michael Bloomberg, who owns about 88% of the company, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 and 2020, Bloomberg News said it would not investigate him or his Democratic rivals. Best for: markets, companies and the economy. Is Bloomberg biased?

Wire reports follow a fixed pattern. Knowing it helps you separate what is known from what is claimed.

• The dateline at the start ("KYIV, Ukraine (AP) -") tells you where the reporting was done. A story datelined in a capital but about a remote region often relies on officials or phone interviews.
• Attribution is constant: "said", "according to", "told reporters". A fact without a named source is one the agency has confirmed itself; everything else is somebody's claim.
• Anonymous sources are used sparingly, and AP asks its reporters to explain in the story why a source was granted anonymity. Watch for phrases such as "a person familiar with the matter".
• Updates are normal. A breaking story is rewritten many times as facts come in, and early numbers (casualties, vote counts) often change. Check the time stamp.
• Corrections are added to the story itself, and the agency sends them to every client that ran the original.

The business model does part of the work. An agency that sold slanted copy would lose clients on one side, and an agency that made frequent errors would see them repeated in hundreds of papers, with its name attached. Speed is the trade-off: agencies compete to be first, and the first version of a story is the one most likely to be incomplete.

Neutral wording also has limits. An agency still decides which stories to cover, where to send reporters and which experts to quote, and those choices reflect its home country and its clients. Reading two agencies on the same story, for example AP and AFP, is a quick way to see how the angle changes when the newsroom is in New York or in Paris.

When a story is everywhere and the headlines disagree, the wire version is a good baseline. Compare it with the coverage you saw first:

1. Find the same story from Reuters or AP.
2. Note which facts appear in both, and which appear only in the other outlet.
3. Look at the verbs and adjectives. "Slammed", "admitted" or "claimed" in one version and "said" in the wire version tell you where the framing comes from.
4. Check what the wire leaves out. If a detail is missing from every agency, ask where the other outlet got it.

Our guide on how to spot media bias covers this method in more depth.

AllSides and Ad Fontes Media have not rated AFP or The Canadian Press, so their positions rest on Media Bias/Fact Check alone. Media Bias/Fact Check rates Bloomberg Mostly Factual, the lowest of the five, which puts it last on the reliability ranking despite a center lean. And a neutral style does not mean neutral choices: what an agency decides to cover still affects the news you see.