Associated Press of Pakistan
Encyclopedia : A : AS : ASS : Associated Press of Pakistan
Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) is a government-operated national news agency of Pakistan. It is not associated with the Associated Press agency (AP).
History
APP was conceived at the meeting between Quaid-e-Azam (the founder of Pakistan) and Malik Tajuddin in September 1944. The agency started in 1948 in Karachi, shortly after Pakistan's independence. Tajuddin formed a joint stock company and invited some of Pakistan's leading newspaper publishers to act as its board of directors. When it failed to pay up their share capital it was decided to turn APP into trust. The Trust also included some newspaper’s editors as member while government participation was ensured by the appointment of a Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Information to the Trust.Lack of financial resources
Following Pakistan's independence, the new-born country's press was economically weak, and was thus unable to financially support the agency. APP asked the Government of Pakistan for financial support, which was granted in the form of loans and subsidies. Government support enabled APP to subscribe to the services of the world's news agencies and to open offices in major cities of the country. But in return, the agency lost its credibility as it started serving the government.Government takeover
The financial situation of APP continued to deteriorate until it was on the verge of collapse. It owed about Rs. 8 laks to the government's Post and Telegraph Department and another Rs. 12 laks in unpaid subscription fees to foreign news agencies. The Government of Pakistan intervened and took over the agency on 15 July 1961.The take over took place with several changes: Malik Tajuddin was removed and A.K. Qureshi, a senior government officer with some journalistic experience, was hired as administrator of APP. The head office of the agency was shifted to Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan. While the financial position of the agency improved, but its coverage became more bised as the government statred to use it as its mouthpiece.
Editorial operation
Besides its head office in Islamabad, APP maintains three bureaux (Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi) and nine news centres (Sukkur, Multan, Quetta, Faisalabad, Larkana, Hyderabad, Bahawalpur, Peshawar and Muzaffarabad).The editorial function of any news agency is same as that of a newspaper i.e. it is divided between reporting teams and the news desk. In smaller centres, the editorial staff consists of a reporter and a sub-editor. In the larger bureaux of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, the reporting team is composed of about twelve reporters, responsible for specific beats such as economy, sports, crime, national and provincial assemblies or major government departments. These news desks are responsible for copy-writing and for coordinating activities of the reporting team. They also handle press releases of government information and private companies.
The whole news operation is monitored by a Central News Desk (CND) located at the head office. News stories from all bureaux are sent to Islamabad for editing and from there the combined service is distributed nationally. The CND is connected with at least four international satellite circuits for receiving foreign news via a computer network:
- Reuters from Hong Kong
- Agence France-Presse from Paris
- Associated Press from London
- Xinhua from Hong Kong
Communication networks
Despite APP being considered Pakistan's “premier” news agency, for decadeseht agency ran on old, obsolete and unreliable equipment. News copy was being carried on a 50-baud duplex circuit between Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.Mr. M. Aftab, APPs General-Manager in 1991, undertook to improve the agency's techical resources. The resulting upgrade saw a transformation of data output speed from 50 words per minute (WMP) to 1200 WPM, most of which is now directly fed into the computers of the subscribers simultaneously throughout Pakistan and overseas.
Subscribers
Being the national news agency of Pakistan, APP collects and disseminate domestic and international news to 84 (1992) newspapers of Pakistan besides Radio, television and government offices and some foreign media. APP’s subscription rates are higher than other agencies in Pakistan because of its monopoly of world news agencies. For this reason every newspaper in Pakistan cannot subscribe to its services. Notable subscribers to APP's services include: Dawn, Pakistan Times, Frontier Post, The Nation, The News International, Business Recorder and Nawa-i-Waqt.Staff
The number of APP's employees is estimated at between 350 and 400, of whom over 100 are journalists and photographers. The remainder are administrative staff, including computer engineers, technicians, peons, traffic attendants, data entry operators and finance staff.In addition there are a small number of "stringers" (part time correspondents) at various district headquarters in Pakistan and aboard.
After decades gap the system of journalists posting aboard was revived during the first tenure of Mr. M. Aftab. He secured approval of the Ministry to post four senior journalists as special correspondents in Washington D.C., London, Beijing and New Delhi.
Management and financing
APP is a government organisation, responsible to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The agency is headed by a Director-General, appointed by the Ministry. Fazal Ur Rehman is the current Managing Director of APP, who is not a journalist but a Press Information Department.Since the government takeover, APP has continued with an undefined status – neither an official government body nor an independent news outfit, APP has drawn criticism as a mouthpiece for the government of the day. In 1998, however, a Bill was proposed to convert APP into a corporation. A committee of media pundits is reportedly engaged in drafting APP corporation bylaw for final approval of the government.
Due to this unclear status, there is no long-term financing in place for APP, with allocations being made on an annual basis by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. APP’s annual expenditure is now placed at Rs. 140 million. APP generates 60% of its revenue from the government, and the remainder is raised through subscription from electronic media including television and radio and newspapers as well as foreign news agencies, business and non-media subscribers.
Services provided by APP
News service
The APP News Service is mainly divided into three main areas: official, political and district news.
Official news
APP gives a more detailed coverage to the activities and statements of government dignitaries. Newspapers and the government-controlled radio and television rely to the greater extent on APP for government news. According to renowned journalist Zamir Niazi:- "Most of the time and energy of APP since the days of Ayub Khan is being consumed in creeding long speeches of the president and other ministries, the rest are allocated to the government press notes and other lesser government functionaries."
Political news
Being the government agency, APP has extensively concentrated on government news thus neglecting cultural, political, economic and other sectors of national life. Even more damaging to the credibility of APP has been the repeated use of agency to carry out disinformation and smear campaigns against opposition leaders and parties.According to Niazi:
- "How APP has functioned and what is its credibility among its client and public at large is another sorry chapter in the story of our press... the agency has served its masters one after the other with equal zeal and perfect consistency. Thus it gained the notoriety of being a center of news management, fabrication and distortions."
District news
APP's district news service is not highly regarded, as it's resources are so thinly-placed across the country that most of the information from this department comes from government information officers.Foreign news
APP has become the main source of international news for the Pakistani media. The agency subscribes to Reuters, AFP, and the Associated Press of America (AP). United Press International was also linked with APP, but the agreement was allowed to lapse.APP has co-operation agreements with some 35 news agencies, mainly in third world countries. Under these agreements, news is exchanged on a barter basis. Prominent among these are the Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran), the Press Trust of India, and MENA (Egypt).
Commercial service
The commercial service of APP provides currency and commodity rates from Reuters, financial and economic services, banks and large business houses. APP planned to expand this service, but suffered a set back in the mid-1980s when Reuters bypassed APP and began to sell its financial services directly to business houses and newspapers in Pakistan.Photo service
APP has its own photographic section equipped with photo receivers and photo transmitters in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Quetta respectively. Islamabad is the head office to receive photographs from within Pakistan and aboard, and transmits them to the agency's bureaux and stations which distribute them to local newspapers.Urdu service
The agency’s Urdu language service started in the 1980s to cater for the needs of growing fleet of Urdu language dailies in Pakistan. The idea behind the setting up of the service was to avoid errors and ensure accuracy. As a practice, Urdu speech was often translated into English by the APP and then back into Urdu by newspaper editor – greatly increasing the chances of translation, emphasis or context errors. The Urdu Service, while still small, has been effective in producing text in both languages.External links
- [www.app.com.pk] - Associated Press of Pakistan official website
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.