The role of wire services in the new millennium: An examination of the foreign-reporting about Latin America in the German press

Abstract

Given the substantial impact of the Internet and social media on the contemporary process of news selection, this article studies the current role of news agencies as agenda-setters in global news reporting. With a focus on the foreign-reporting of Latin America within the prestigious national press in Germany, we analysed the articles’ authorship from four sources: two market-leading German dailies – ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ and ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ – the weekly ‘Der Spiegel’ and, the alternative newspaper ‘tageszeitung’ (taz). The corpus comprises 3831 articles published between 2000 and 2014. In addition, eight (semi-structured) interviews with German correspondents in Latin America were conducted to comprehend their relationship with the editorial offices and the indirect use of wire services. We observe that not only is the agency-copy low (8.9%) when compared with other world regions, but direct agency use has also been declining. However, further indicators show that the thematic orientation remains powerful. Moreover, the interviewees confirm the agencies’ impact on their work.