International Press Service
| Not-for-profit cooperative | |
| Industry | News media |
| Founded | 1964 |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
| Products | Wire service |
| Website | www.ipsnews.net |
Inter Press Service (IPS) is a global news agency. Its main focus is the production of news and analysis about events and processes affecting economic, social and political development. The agency largely covers news on the Global South, civil society, and globalization.
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 Argentine 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, beginning with a Latin American base in Costa Rica in 1982, and extended its editorial focus. In 1994, IPS changed its legal status to that of a "public-benefit organization for development cooperation".
In 1996 IPS had permanent offices and correspondents in 41 countries, covering 108 nations. It had as subscribers over 600 print media, around 80 news agencies and database services, and 65 broadcast media, in addition to over 500 NGOs and institutions.
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.
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).
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