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.

Keywords

coverage on Latin America foreign reporting gatekeepers news agencies news selection

Introduction

This article aims at reassessing the press reliance on newswires to set their international news agenda in the era of digital media. Early studies have already demonstrated the relevance of news agencies to foreign reporting (Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, 1998; MacGregor, 2013). However, the traditional role of these agencies has been questioned in several nations by the emergence of the Internet and new media companies (Jääskeläinen and Yanatma, 2019: 3). In this globally transforming media system, the wire services are facing several challenges. With the technological revolution, the regular audience can acquire information not only through long-established traditional media outlets but also independently worldwide. Journalists are no longer highly reliant on the wire services as a source of news.

In the particular case of the German press, Lange (2002) performed a broad exploratory gatekeeper-study about the correspondents and news agencies’ impact on their stories’ proposals. The chances of publishing a given topic increase enormously if the agencies have already mentioned it. Moreover, a content analysis of the crises in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Nicaragua in 1991 showed that between 26.6% and 77.5% of the information’ sources (depending on the publications) derived from the agencies (Roemeling-Kruthaup, 1991). Apart from Latin America, Pütz (1993: 126–127) analysed the image of Italy in the German press and concluded that the agencies were an essential source for all newspapers. In the case of Korea’s depiction, most of the articles stemmed from news agencies (Oh, 2002: 138–139). In his sizable empirical work on North Africa and the Middle East from 1955 to 1994, Hafez (2002b: 85) identified a variation from 22.2% Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) to 52.1% Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).¹ From a more general perspective, Hafez (2005: 56) noted a wires agencies’ usage between 50% and 80% within a broad range of the literature on foreign reporting.

The agencies have an even stronger impact on the broadcasters. Due to cost reductions, only a few channels can afford a reasonably dense network of correspondents. The majority rely on ‘parachute’² journalism or agency material (Kamps, 1998, 2008), a problem which is still persistent. In the context of the coverage about Latin America by the German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, Renneberg (2011) stated that the correspondents have almost no opportunity to select their own stories due to time pressure and the agencies’ impact. However, quantifying the usage of wires agencies by the broadcasters is less straightforward than the press. While the quality newspapers indicate the abbreviations of the agencies’ names (Stirnberg, 1998), the sources of video-reports in German television are hardly identified (Quandt et al., 2014).

The German national press and Latin America as the object of analysis

The German quality press provides relevant material³ for a study of the agencies’ effect on the agenda of the international news. Not only is the German media market one of the strongest in Europe (Vyslozil and Surm, 2019), with steady development of mass-circulation newspapers (Hallin and Mancini, 2004), but Germany also has the greatest proportion of citizens who declared they ‘read international news very carefully’ (Pew Research Center, 2018).

In addition, Latin America has the smallest network of correspondents within the German media system (Junghanns and Hanitzsch, 2006: 421), making the region an interesting target to analyse the sources of global reporting. Although considerable geopolitical transformations have occurred in Latin America over the last years, contemporary studies on press or television still deem the region as a ‘consistent area of invisibility’ (Tiele, 2010: 261; Wilke et al., 2012). Since studies based solely on Latin America are scarce (Göbel et al., 2009: 43), this work also contributes to filling this gap in the literature while addressing the current discussions of newswire’s dependency.

On account of time pressure, reduction in newspaper circulation and advertisement revenue, the intense competition from global news agencies, and new digital media outlets, foreign-reporting has been facing a severe crisis (Archetti, 2012; Papathanassopoulos and Giannouli, 2015). With the daily press getting smaller and enduring severe economic constraints (Wilke, 2010), it is crucial to select a media landscape still capable of original self-production of foreign news in order to measure the agencies’ impact. The prestigious newspapers provide this scenario.⁴ In the particular case of Latin America, the focus on the national quality press becomes crucial. Being an ‘area of invisibility’, with significantly less coverage than the USA or Western Europe, it is paramount to concentrate on the press with a more robust focus on international news and capable of maintaining correspondents abroad.

Underdeveloped network of correspondents

It is not only the orientation on wire services but also the limited presence of correspondents that can have an impact on foreign reporting. Unfortunately, current data on news coverage about Latin America is practically absent. According to Junghanns and Hanitzsch (2006: 421), only 5.7% of the German correspondents’ network are based in Latin America, behind Africa and Asia. The majority of German correspondents are in Europe and the Middle East. To acquire more current estimates, we contacted the German embassies. The representation in Buenos Aires is the only one keeping a register of the correspondents (print and broadcast) working in South America since 2009. The number of German journalists varied from 17 in 2009 to 23 in 2014, the year of the world cup (Auswärtiges Amt, 2016). In general, the correspondents are based mainly in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, though being responsible for several countries. To give a dimension of the deficient network, Brussels alone has 118 German speakers correspondents (Auswärtiges Amt, 2019).

Motivated by the considerations above, this article addresses the following research questions:

RQ1: What are the most common sources of foreign reporting about Latin America in the German quality press?

RQ2: How strong is the reliance of the German press on wire-copy for its foreign-reporting?

RQ3: Is there any variation over the analysed fifteen years?

RQ4: Which agency is the most influential among the analysed newspapers?

RQ5: Is this possible orientation on newswires stronger in the level of verbatim-copy or agenda-setting process?

Theoretical background

The changing role of news wholesalerss

News agencies are essential players in the globalisation process. They have contributed extensively to the development of communication’s infrastructure and global interconnectedness (Bielsa, 2008; Boyd-Barret and Rantanen, 2004). Boyd-Barret (1980) and (1981, with Plamer) provide the groundworks on the topic, with the most extensive description of the ‘Big Four’ news services (AFP, AP, Reuters and UPI). While the first three are still global players (Artz, 2017b), UPI fell into crisis and lost its relevance during the process of market concentration and deregulation (Bielsa, 2008). Further historical studies have demonstrated how these wire services rapidly evolved into global operating corporations (Fenby, 1986; Read, 1999; Schwarzlose, 1989). Oliver Boyd-Barret (2012) provides, additionally, a comprehensible overview of the news agencies’ research tradition within several disciplines and paradigms.

With the advent of the Internet and satellite television, the market in which these news agencies operate has been rapidly reshaped. The reduction of the newspaper industry and the expanding use of digital news have been widely discussed (Boyd-Barrett, 2010; Jääskeläinen and Yanatma, 2019; Rantanen et al., 2019). On the one hand, the role of news agencies is deemed as more powerful than ever since the smaller media outlets are obliged to cut costs and shrink their correspondents’ network. On the other hand, their traditional role as exclusive information providers has been simultaneously questioned by the emergence of new media organisations, which escalate the competitiveness (Bielsa, 2008). For instance, the rise of ‘channels of continuous information’ focused on a global audience such as CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera caused a radical transformation in the quantity and structure of news (ibid.). These changes have long been perceived by Boyd-Barrett (2002), who noticed that the boundaries between ‘retail’ (general public media organisations) and ‘wholesale’ media markets (news agencies) are blurred. Besides, the agencies are also targeting the general public directly through their websites.

In the particular case of Germany, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) has the most comprehensive basic services and the broader market (Hans-Bredow-Institute, 2017; Wilke, 2007: 352). It provides the widest variety of journalistic representation’s forms compared to the big three and also covers ‘the widest range of topics’ (ibid.) within the country. Inaugurated in 1949, the dpa exhibits, nowadays, all the criteria of an international news agency: it operates in the domestic and global markets, interchanges news with the national based service, boasts a global network of correspondents, supplies international media clients with news service, and operates in German and other several foreign languages (Surm, 2019). In a cooperative structure of ownership, dpa has 182 shareholders who are, at the same time, its customers (Hans-Bredow-Institute, 2017). In recent years though, several companies – including those belonging to dpa’s shareholders – have questioned the agency position as indispensable (Hans-Bredow-Institute, 2017; Schulten-Jaspers, 2013; taz, 2010; Wilke, 2010). Just to give an example, in 2010, the WAZ-Group (Westdeutschen Allgemeinen Zeitung) terminated its contract with the dpa (ibid.). However, we did not identify any unsubscription period of the dpa (or other agency) by the national press analysed in this work.

News agencies’ impact on global news

The most controversial discussion related to the global news coverage is the influence of the Western agencies on the international news flow (MacGregor, 2013; Sreberny-Mohammadi et al., 1980; Welbers et al., 2018). Wu (2003) demonstrated that trade volume and the presence of news services are dominant predictors of news coverage. That conclusion applies certainly to Latin America. Table 1 shows the presence of the principal agencies’ foreign bureaus on the continent. The three most reported nations (Cazzamatta, 2018) also have the most significant network of global agencies. A correlation analysis without the three statistical outliers (Brazil, Argentina and Mexico) still shows a significant coefficient (n = 17 countries, r = 0.650 and p ⩽ 0.005), confirming the positive correlation between the press attention and the number of news agencies’ bureaus.

Table 1.

Bureaus’ presence of global agencies in Latin America (adapted from Cazzamatta, 2020).

	dpa	AFP	Reuters	AP	Total
Brazil	1	3	4	3	11
Argentina	1	1	5	1	8
Mexico	1	1	2	1	5
Chile	1	1	1	1	4
Colombia	1	1	1	1	4
Venezuela	1	1	1	1	4
Costa Rica	0	1	1	1	3
Cuba	1	1	0	1	3
Peru	1	1	1	0	3
Uruguay	1	1	0	1	3
Bolivia	0	1	0	1	2
Ecuador	0	1	0	1	2
El Salvador	0	1	0	1	2
Guatemala	0	1	0	1	2
Panama	0	0	1	1	2
Paraguay	0	1	0	1	2
Dom. Republic	0	1	0	0	1
Haiti	0	0	0	1	1
Nicaragua	0	0	0	1	1
Honduras	0	0	0	0	0

AFP (2017); AP (2017); DPA (2017); Reuters (2017).

News agencies have an essential role as gatekeeper and intermedia agenda-setter. Consequently, topics that are disregarded by the newswires are rarely taken into consideration by the traditional media (Lorenz, 2017). Despite modifications and a certain national angle, the global media clients do not substantially modify the original content of news and reproduce the same sources, topics and frames presented by the agencies (Artz, 2017b). Further analyses subsequently indicated they not only have an impact on the issues’ salience but also on the issues’ attribution (Golan and Wanta, 2003; Lorenz, 2017). For instance, Artz (2017a) demonstrated how AP gives preference for sources opposing the socialist-inclined Bolivarian government in Venezuela and prioritises the business interests of the US, Spain, Canada, Brazil and Colombia. In addition, since wire services must satisfy all editors around the world, they make more effort to be perceived as objective. The outcome is ‘a bland and homogenous, but ideologically distinctive, view of the world’ (Paterson, 2007: 60–61).

Despite the aforementioned changes in the media environment, the agencies are still considered a ‘central hub’ in the global news (Boumans et al., 2018). Due to the crisis of the traditional media, that is, the decreasing advertising revenue and circulation (Artz, 2017b), even those who can still afford international bureaus and correspondents have undergone significant reductions (Boyd-Barrett, 2010). Current research indicates a declining media client’s dependence on news agencies due to increasing competition (Rantanen et al., 2019). On the other hand, Paterson (2007, 2011) argues that the dependency is shifting towards e-journalism for stories’ proposals and sources due to such economic constraints. However, these global news websites themselves rely massively on AP or Reuters (Davies, 2009). Indeed, the reliance on news agencies can be even stronger in the case of international television (Paterson, 2011) and online news landscapes (Boumans et al., 2018; Johnston and Forde, 2011; Paterson, 2001, 2007; Welbers et al., 2018). Hence, Paterson (2001: 80) describes the ‘e-journalism’ as ‘unoriginal’ and ‘minimally relevant’.

It is worthy of note that global news agencies are media organisations on their own. Hence, their research may not be entirely independent and unbiased (Johnston and Forde, 2011). As Davies (2009) puts it, reporters of news agencies are also coerced into ‘churnalism’ due to economic and time constraints. Thus, the stories and reports provided by the agencies are also public relations’ products of governments and institutions flowing into the ‘unprotected’ international media (Davies, 2009; Hafez, 2002b: 94–100; Johnston and Forde, 2011)

Methodology and research design

To reassess the role of international news agencies in the era of the Internet, we investigate in a first step the articles’ authorship, its production’s location and the perspective of news (foreign news abroad, home news abroad or foreign news at home). Within the category authorship, there were five possibilities:

Foreign Correspondents (in the reported or the neighbouring countries).

International news agencies (direct mentions of wire services)

Newsrooms in Germany (articles without the correspondents’ signature or agencies’ indication).

Travelling Journalist (members of staff that are in the region temporarily)

External experts (invited specialists).

Unit of analysis

The empirical analysis incorporates firstly the two national newspapers, which comprise the most sizable correspondents’ network: the Süddeutsche Zeitung (liberal and politically broad) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (economically liberal and politically conservative). Furthermore, we selected the most relevant political magazine – Der Spiegel. In addition to these three traditional titles, the alternative tageszeitung (taz) was also considered due to its role in the agenda-building process of counter issues.

Overall, the corpus observes three relevant aspects: audience, opinion’s impact among journalists and political spectrum. The selected periodicals show the leading sales-volume and the broader audience among the quality press (AWA, 2014; IVW, 2014). Regarding the sales quantity, taz is a deviation, but it was still worthy of analysis to widen the political spectrum (Noelle-Neumann et al., 2002: 435; Pürer and Raabe, 2007: 15). Lastly, these newspapers are also considered as ‘leading media’, that is, they affect the coverage of other outlets (Brosius et al., 2009: 164).

Sample

Every article between January 2000 and December 2014 concerning the twenty Latin American nations was selected from the printed edition of the SZ, FAZ, Der Spiegel and taz. At first, we listed all contributions and classified them according to media-outlet, date of publication and size of the article to structure the unit of analysis (21,929 items). We did not examine contributions from the publication’s online websites since 70% of the most crucial online news items are commonly identical to their printed versions (Wurff, 2008: 70).

The search strategy comprises every reference to the word ‘Latin America’ or the name of its 20 states and respective capitals, not only in the headlines but also in the first paragraph. To guarantee that every country would have the same chance of being selected, we drew a sampling of 25% for each nation. Besides, the tiny articles (less than 150 words) were removed from the analysis, since they exhibit almost no news factors and their inclusion would have caused a considerable extension of the sample. Every n-4th printed contribution (25%) of a country amidst a media-outlet was selected and the final sampling incorporated 3,831 articles. We carried out a reliability test based on the coefficient of Holsti, and the outcome was a 94.3% correspondence.

Qualitative expert interviews

Through our content analysis, it is possible to evaluate only the direct use of news agencies but not their secondary gatekeeper effect. Thus, we included eight semi-structured qualitative expert interviews with German correspondents. First, we catalogued the authors working for the analysed publication during the content analysis. Afterwards, we cross-checked information with the list provided by the German embassies and the site Weltreporter.net. The final register had 17 contributors, and we received a positive answer from 47% of them (four full-time staffers from SZ, FAZ and Spiegel⁵ and four freelancers⁶). Among the denials or no-answers, there were five taz-freelancers and four full-time staffers (one from SZ and three from FAZ).

These interviews aim at clarifying the production’s process of foreign reporting about Latin America and contribute to the data interpretation. Due to the limited research budget, the correspondents were interviewed either by e-mail or Skype. To guarantee the results’ comparability, we developed an interview guide. Particularly relevant for this work are the following two questions: 1) How are the topics of coverage selected and what role do the news agencies play in the process; 2) How strongly do the editors in the newsrooms orient themselves on the wire services? The interviews took place in February and March of 2018 and the dialogues were evaluated according to the three-step method: paraphrase, generalisation and reduction (Mayring, 2010).

Findings

At first glance, the quality newspapers in Germany do not rely very much on verbatim agency-copy for their foreign reporting on Latin America. From the 3831 analysed articles, the correspondents wrote 45.80% of them (more than a half from neighbouring countries though), the newsroom 37.50%, whereas only 8.9% of the reports stemmed from the agencies⁷ (RQ1-2).

Authorship’s trends throughout the years

In this section, we focus on authorship’s attribution development over the years. Correspondents were responsible for almost half of the published contributions, and only a maximum of 21.4% of the articles derived directly from the agencies, depending on the reporting period (Table 2).

Table 2.

Sources of news reporting about Latin America in the German press over the 15 years (in per cent).

	00	01	02	03	04	05	06	07	08	09	10	11	12	13	14
Correspondents	50.4	56.2	52.0	44.0	46.2	40.9	43.6	48.6	53.5	48.1	43.1	46.9	43.1	45.8	43.3
Newsroom	28.6	28.8	37.2	40.8	41.8	46.1	42.9	38.5	34.0	37.8	41.8	39.9	46.8	41.6	41.2
Wire services	21.4	12.0	11.8	11.6	8.8	10.0	6.9	6.0	5.4	6.4	8.8	5.6	3.2	7.1	7.7
Travelling journalists	7.2	4.8	3.0	6.8	4.4	5.7	5.4	4.1	5.4	6.4	6.5	5.6	6.5	5.0	8.6
Experts	0.7	1.8	1.2	0.4	2.8	0.9	3.9	4.6	3.7	4.7	2.9	3.8	2.3	2.9	2.1

The data even display a reduction in the usage of agencies of 13.7 pp between the first and the last year. Over the entire interval, we note that stories produced by foreign correspondents and the newsrooms predominate over the wire-copy (RQ1). However, the most striking trend is the perceptible decline of direct use of news agencies (RQ3). A peak in 2010 is observed mainly due to three unforeseen events: a) the earthquake in Haiti and the outbreak of cholera, b) another earthquake in Chile and also c) the mining incident in the same country, in which thirty-three men were trapped underground. Since the analysed publications do not keep correspondents in Chile or Haiti, we can presume that these unpredicted occurrences had to be covered initially by the agencies.

In contrast to some regional dailies in Germany, such as the WAZ, the national publications considered in this study did not unsubscribe the dpa or the big three agencies. However, it is still important to consider a few alterations in the agencies’ landscape in the last years. In 2009, the ddp merged with the German service of the US-American AP, forming the DAPD in 2010, the second-largest German news agency⁸ (Goldhammer and Jana Lipovski, 2011; Hans-Bredow-Institute, 2017; Schulten-Jaspers, 2013). Two years later, the DAPD had filed for insolvency and closed in 2013. Since then, the AP World service started a long-term cooperation agreement with the marketing-leading dpa (ibid.). According to Wilke (2010), this was one of the most critical market reconfigurations in the last forty years. Although this market metamorphosis could have impacted the direct use of news agencies, we noticed that the identified decrease had started much earlier (Figure 1) and affected all the services, not only the dpa. Presumably, professionals who have a clear interest in Latin America attempt to track direct sources from the region, and use the agencies as an incentive for their own stories or even to fact-check their self-produced articles.

Figure 1.

Decrease of wire-copy over the 15 years in per cent.

Variation of sources among newspapers

Additional to the general decline of direct use of news agencies, the results of the content analysis demonstrate different proportions of news-agencies use and self-information gathering among the publications. The SZ exhibits a predominant use of the news-agencies-reporting and, accordingly, the smallest number of articles from correspondents among the newspapers. Indeed, the SZ reveals 20.20% of agency-copy, against FAZ’s 6.60% or 4.60% for taz. Since FAZ boasts an extensive correspondents’ network, the contributions predominantly signed by correspondents (61.10%) are not a surprise. The alternative taz has freelancers who regularly signed its articles (45.90%), while SZ has 36.30% of text signed by correspondents (Table 3).

Table 3.

Stories’ sources in foreign reporting about Latin America.

2000–2014	SZ	FAZ	taz	Der Spiegel	Total
News agencies	207	91	54	0	352
	20.2%	6.6%	4.6%	0.0%
Foreign correspondents	373	846	543	51	1813
	36.3%	61.1%	45.9%	21.9%
Central newsrooms	438	404	475	168	1485
	42.6%	29.2%	40.1%	72.1%
Travelling journalists	77	58	65	16	216
	7.5%	4.2%	5.5%	6.9%
External experts	15	14	65	2	96
	1.5%	1.0%	5.5%	0.9%
Total	1027	1384	1184	233	3828

Source: adapted from Cazzamatta (2020).

While the use of news agencies in the FAZ and taz remained more or less stable over the years, we observed a substantial reduction in the case of the SZ from 20.8% to 1.4% in the first and last considered years. Changes in the SZ correspondents’ network were also observed. The former SZ’s correspondent, Eva Karnofsky, remained in Buenos Aires until 2003, while her successor, Peter Burghardt, assumed the post only in 2006. Meanwhile, in 2005, Sebastian Schoepp, foreign affairs editor with a focus on Latin America, commenced working in the central office.

Most prominent newswires within analysed publications

In a further step, we observe the relative percentage of the most significant news agencies’ usage (Table 4). Der Spiegel did not employ any newswire, as expected, considering that magazines focus more on background stories than on breaking news. Among the articles from the news agencies, 88.7% comprise breaking news. Besides, within the newspapers, the German dpa plays a more significant role (RQ4). Amidst the international news agencies, the ‘Agence France Presse’ proves to be of greater importance for SZ and taz, while FAZ utilises less frequently the service. ‘Reuters’ and ‘Associated Press’ have priority in the SZ, while the economic-oriented ‘Bloomberg’ is accordingly more relevant for FAZ. Furthermore, taz also relies on the ‘Evangelischer Pressedienst’ (EPD, 16.30%), specialised in the coverage of culture, media and social affairs and thus aligned with its editorial line.

Table 4.

The most used news-agencies.

2000–2014	SZ	FAZ	taz	Total
AFP	57	20	19	96
	44.20%	25.60%	44.20%
AP	32	5	4	41
	24.80%	6.40%	9.30%
Dpa	65	35	17	117
	50.40%	44.90%	39.50%
Reuters	35	10	3	48
	27.10%	12.80%	7.00%
Bloomberg	0	14	0	14
	0.00%	17.90%	0.00%
EPD	15	3	7	25
	11.60%	3.80%	16.30%
Others (DAPD, etc)	3	4	4	11
	2.30%	5.10%	9.30%

Source: adapted from Cazzamatta (2020).

Considering the publications altogether, the order of importance of the news agencies (RQ4) follows – the German dpa (33.2%), the French AFP (27.3%), the British Reuters (13.6%), the American AP (11.6%), the German Evangelical Press Service (7.1%) and the American and economic-oriented Bloomberg (4%). The result is not quite a surprise considering that dpa was, and still is, the market-leading agency in Germany. In 2010, the market share by turnover was 52% for the dpa and 18% for the DAPD. AFP and Reuters had both 4% (Goldhammer and Jana Lipovski, 2011).

Invisible agenda-setting effect

Even though we did not find a high amount of direct use of news agencies in the foreign reporting about Latin America, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the agencies’ influence on the news selection process. Measuring this secondary gatekeeper effect, or the phenomenon of insufficient attribution to news agencies as sources is not straightforward by the previous content analysis. In this section, we attempt to seize these issues with complementary methods.

Looking at the reporting location, 45.73% of the articles were produced by the newsrooms in Europe (mostly in Germany), whereas 54.27% were covered in Latin America. The latter is composed of texts written either locally – that is, within the reported nations (28.45%) – or from neighbouring countries (25.82%). When focusing solely on the articles produced in the European newsrooms, we find the following distribution for the news perspectives: ‘Foreign News Abroad’ (59.5%), ‘Home News Abroad’ (13.6%) and ‘Foreign News at Home’ (26.9%). Except for the Latin American events occurring in Germany (‘Foreign News at Home’), which can be covered locally, it is plausible to assume that the other occurrences emanated from global news agencies or other Latin American sources available on the internet. Thus, almost 60% of Foreign News Abroad attributed to the German editorial offices can be deemed as an indicator of no- or insufficient attribution to the news agencies as sources. During the process of news selection, the newsroom possibly rewrote, reinterpreted, and recycled the stories, without the reader noticing its origins.

As described in the methodological section, the interviews with the correspondents provide a useful tool to address the question of the indirect impact of the global agencies on their work. Indeed, each of the eight respondents agreed that the international news agencies still play a vital role – despite the low agency-copy – in orienting the newsrooms and setting the thematic agenda of the international news (RQ5). Regarding the relatively small number of agency-reporting, the professionals emphasise the agencies’ background impact:

‘Yes, the agencies play a significant role in the perception of topics of the editorial offices. However, that does not mean that their report will be copied and published. I can imagine that the number of articles from news agencies is small because they are used precisely to confirm that a topic is essential, but the newspapers do not necessarily print them.’ (Vogel, 2018)

According to our interviewees, the wire services ‘confirm that a suggested topic is important’ (Vogel, 2018), ‘are limited to the distribution of pure news’ (Oehrlein, 2018), ‘orient the editorial offices at home and tell them what is important’ (Malcher, 2018) or ‘draw the attention to data and topics’ (Burghardt, 2018). Crucial for the analysis is the distinction between the perspectives of the correspondents and their central newsrooms. The SZ’s contributor declared, for instance, that ‘(. . .) for me, as a correspondent, they [news agencies] are not very important (Burghardt, 2018).

While the correspondents focus on local and international media available on the Internet, their editors appeal mostly to the news agencies and the German television. Although important German TV programs, such as the Tagesthemen or Heute Journal, do not report so often on Latin America, bringing the region’s political themes into the newspapers is undemanding when, for instance, Colombian or Chilean domestic politics are the main topic of the daily TV news (Malcher, 2018).

Although the agencies are facing critical challenges in the age of the Internet and digital market, they still have – according to the interviewees – a vital role as gatekeeper and intermedia agenda-setter. ‘What agencies do not bring, often does not exist for the editors’, says, for instance, the former SZ’s correspondent Eva Karnofsky (2018). However, the importance of the local correspondents should not be underestimated. Even if the agencies determine the international news agenda, their monopoly of fact-interpretation has diminished (Malcher, 2018).

In the case of FAZ, which comprises a substantial correspondents’ network, the focus relies on ‘highly enriched’ reports, that is, articles supplemented and refined with background information to provide an overview or an interpretation of a described process (Oehrlein, 2018). ‘The news agencies cannot afford that because they have to limit themselves to the distribution of ‘pure’ news. They are usually faster for that’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, there were a few situations in Germany within the last few years where Twitter was even quicker than the agencies (Hägler and Mühlauer, 2015). Despite this strong thematic orientation, the quality press also attaches great significance to some independent reportages. They do not necessarily set values on what they can read in the agencies (Keppeler, 2018). What happens is that they contact their correspondents and inquire about topics brought by the newswires. ‘The advantage is that they can have something different, which not everybody has, something exclusive, even though the news agencies are quite important in setting the agenda’. (ibid.). The Spiegel’s correspondent also confirms the tendency: ‘If the dpa or the other big agencies engage in some topics, then that often comes back to me via Hamburg’ (Glüsing, 2018). Generally, the correspondents are aware that it helps considerably if an agency reports on a topic:

“When I was still living in Central America, I offered the taz a story. Then I got the feedback that the agencies had nothing on it, and therefore, it did not seem to matter (. . .). Then I asked a friend of the dpa to make a short report and, afterwards, taz called me again and said, ‘now appeared something in the agencies, it seems to be important, let’s do something’”! (Keppeler, 2018)

According to a freelancer, he/she tries to produce independent contributions with an individual approach and based on their own research, since ‘we cannot trust any information; also, agencies can deceive themselves, they are ‘only’ journalist colleagues, and they work even under more time pressure’. However, ‘unfortunately, more and more editors have closed their fixed correspondents’ posts in Latin America due to budgetary austerity, and are satisfied with reports from freelance journalists or news agencies (Oehrlein, 2018). In conclusion, while the direct use of news agencies in the coverage about Latin America has been decreasing (RQ3), their impact as agenda-setter is still solid (RQ5).

Conclusion

Over the analysed period, correspondents or journalists in the central newsroom signed the majority of the articles (RQ1) and solely 8.9% of the contributions were identified as wire-copy (RQ2). Most important, we identified a relative reduction of the direct use of news agency along the fifteen years (Figure 1, RQ3). This outcome can be undoubtedly related to the changing role of the news services and their monopoly loss as utmost information providers since no news agencies’ unsubscription by the analysed publications has been identified. Moreover, among the agencies, the market-leading German dpa, unsurprisingly, plays the most crucial role (RQ4).

The correspondent Malcher (2018) observed that the influence of the news agencies used to be stronger. Nowadays other sources are available through the Internet and social media. ‘The newspaper editors, for instance, use Twitter, where colleagues in the central office can hear and come across much information, mainly when they are specialised regional editors and are following specifics things’ (ibid.). Hence, ‘the interpretation power of the newswire s has become slightly weaker’. Correspondents now have access to free online information from several countries through the Internet and satellite television. The SZ’s correspondent, Peter Burghardt (2018), declared to follow much more frequently the regional Latin American media, additionally to other international outlets than the wire services. The Internet has not only facilitated access to the media worldwide but also the research process. For instance, Keppeler (2018) commented that he has, in almost every country, either local journalists, people at universities or NGOs, with whom he talks regularly.

However, despite this reduction of verbatim copy, the news agencies still maintain their leading role as gatekeepers (RQ5). In the case of the analysed national newspapers, their impact is more focused on setting global agendas. All interviewees described the news services’ effect on their work and to what extent the agencies thematically orient their newsrooms. Although we are dealing with the prestigious quality press, the publications can afford only a tiny network of correspondents in the entire region. These few correspondents are responsible for the coverage of the entire continent. Thus, the importance of the newswire in setting the agenda is substantial.

The question about whether newspapers are (over) dependent on news agencies, either in the content or in the agenda level, is also explored in other media systems such as Australia (Johnston and Forde, 2011) or the Netherlands (Boumans et al., 2018; Welbers et al., 2018). Although AP and Reuters play a crucial role in providing video news-reports worldwide (Paterson, 2011), content analyses regarding sources of television are complicated since the sources are generally not clearly ascribed as in the case of reliable newspapers (Quandt et al., 2014). Further research designs comparing similar videos among different channels could shed some light on the issue and measure the possible convergence effect. Additional analyses investigating the role of global agencies in foreign reporting from the perspective of their own staff is also desirable to enhance and complement the comprehension of this article.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my advisor Professor Dr. Kai Hafez for the theoretical background and research support; the program DAAD/Capes/Cnpq for the financial contribution; my colleagues in the German Institute of Global and Area Studies and Professor Dr. Detlef Nolte for receiving me as a visiting scholar in Hamburg; Dr. Christopher Joyner for the proofreading of the manuscript, the two anonymous referees who gave me insightful suggestions and lastly my life partner Dr. Rodrigo Panosso Macedo for the whole support.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research had the support of the German-Brazilian research program DAAD/CNPQ (290017/2014-9) – a partnership between The German Academic Exchange Service and The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development.

ORCID iD

Regina Cazzamatta

Notes

Author biography

Regina Cazzamatta obtained her PhD in media and communication at the University of Erfurt, Germany. She also received her Master Degree in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Erfurt and had an international background of academic experience. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, she graduated in Communication Studies and had post-graduation in International Journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paolo. Author of the books – ‘Brasilien-Berichterstattung in der deutschen Presse’ and ‘Lateinamerikaberichterstattung der deutschen Presse: Struktur und Entstehungsbedingungen’ (forthcoming) – her research interests include compared media systems, news value approaches, international news coverage and media discourse. This research had the support of the German-Brazilian research program DAAD/CNPQ (290017/2014-9) – a partnership between The German Academic Exchange Service and The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development.

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