The Associated Press (AP) is a U.S.-based not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. Its members are U.S. newspapers and broadcasters.

The AP has earned 53 Pulitzer Prizes, including 31 for photography, since the award was established in 1917. It earned a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for coverage of the civil war in Yemen.

The AP has counted the vote in U.S. elections since 1848, including national, state and local races down to the legislative level in all 50 states, along with key ballot measures.

AP collects and verifies returns in every county, parish, city and town across the U.S., and declares winners in over 5,000 contests.

The AP news report, distributed to its members and customers, is produced in English, Spanish and Arabic.

AP content is also available on the agency's app, AP News.

A 2017 study by NewsWhip revealed that AP content was more engaged with on Facebook than content from any individual English-language publisher.^[3]

As of 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters.^[4] The AP operates 263 news bureaus in 106 countries.^[5] It also operates the AP Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative. As part of their cooperative agreement with the AP, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. The AP employs the "inverted pyramid" formula for writing which enables the news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication area without losing the story's essentials.

Cutbacks at rival United Press International in 1993 left the AP as the United States' primary news service, although UPI still produces and distributes stories and photos daily. Other English-language news services, such as the BBC, Reuters and the English-language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States.

The Associated Press was formed in May 1846^[6] by five daily newspapers in New York City to share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican–American War.^[7] The venture was organized by Moses Yale Beach (1800–68), second publisher of The Sun, joined by the New York Herald, the New York Courier and Enquirer, The Journal of Commerce, and the New York Evening Express.^[8] Some historians^[9] believe that the Tribune joined at this time; documents show it was a member in 1849. The New York Times became a member shortly after its founding in September 1851. Initially known as the New York Associated Press (NYAP), the organization faced competition from the Western Associated Press (1862), which criticized its monopolistic news gathering and price setting practices. An investigation completed in 1892 by Victor Lawson, editor and publisher of the Chicago Daily News, revealed that several principals of the NYAP had entered into a secret agreement with United Press, a rival organization, to share NYAP news and the profits of reselling it. The revelations led to the demise of the NYAP and in December 1892, the Western Associated Press was incorporated in Illinois as The Associated Press. A 1900 Illinois Supreme Court decision (Inter Ocean Publishing Co. v. Associated Press)—that the AP was a public utility and operating in restraint of trade—resulted in AP's move from Chicago to New York City, where corporation laws were more favorable to cooperatives.

When the AP was founded, news became a salable commodity.

The invention of the rotary press allowed the New York Tribune in the 1870s to print 18,000 papers per hour. During the Civil War and Spanish–American War, there was a new incentive to print vivid, on-the-spot reporting. Melville Stone, who had founded the Chicago Daily News in 1875, served as AP General Manager from 1893 to 1921. He embraced the standards of accuracy, impartiality, and integrity. The cooperative grew rapidly under the leadership of Kent Cooper (served 1925–48), who built up bureau staff in South America, Europe and (after World War II), the Middle East. He introduced the "telegraph typewriter" or teletypewriter into newsrooms in 1914. In 1935, AP launched the Wirephoto network, which allowed transmission of news photographs over leased private telephone lines on the day they were taken. This gave AP a major advantage over other news media outlets. While the first network was only between New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, eventually AP had its network across the whole United States.^[10]

In 1945, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Associated Press v. United States that the AP had been violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by prohibiting member newspapers from selling or providing news to nonmember organizations as well as making it very difficult for nonmember newspapers to join the AP. The decision facilitated the growth of its main rival United Press International, headed by Hugh Baillie from 1935 to 1955.

AP entered the broadcast field in 1941 when it began distributing news to radio stations; it created its own radio network in 1974.

In 1994, it established APTV, a global video newsgathering agency.

APTV merged with WorldWide Television News in 1998 to form APTN, which provides video to international broadcasters and websites.

In 2004, AP moved its world headquarters from its longtime home at 50 Rockefeller Plaza to a huge building at 450 West 33rd Street in Manhattan—which also houses the New York Daily News and the studios of New York's public television station, WNET. In 2009, AP had more than 240 bureaus globally. Its mission—"to gather with economy and efficiency an accurate and impartial report of the news"—has not changed since its founding, but digital technology has made the distribution of the AP news report an interactive endeavor between AP and its 1,400 U.S. newspaper members as well as broadcasters, international subscribers, and online customers.

The AP began diversifying its news gathering capabilities and by 2007 AP was generating only about 30% of its revenue from United States newspapers.

37% came from the global broadcast customers, 15% from online ventures and 18% came from international newspapers and from photography.^[11]

The AP's multi-topic structure has resulted in web portals such as Yahoo! and MSN posting its articles, often relying on the AP as their first source for news coverage of breaking news items. This and the constant updating evolving stories require has had a major impact on the AP's public image and role, giving new credence to the AP's ongoing mission of having staff for covering every area of news fully and promptly. The AP was also the news service used on the Wii's News Channel.^[12] In 2007, Google announced that it was paying to receive Associated Press content, to be displayed in Google News,^[13] though this was interrupted from late 2009 to mid-2010, due to a licensing dispute.^[14][15]

In 2011, AP expanded its fact checking web presence to Twitter.

The AP conducts polls for numerous college sports in the United States. The AP college football rankings were created in 1936, and began including the top 25 teams in 1989. Since 1969, the final poll of each season has been released after all bowl games have been played.^[23] The AP released its all-time Top 25 in 2016.^[24] As of 2017, 22 different programs had finished in the number one spot of the poll since its inception.^[25]

The AP college basketball poll has been used as a guide for which teams deserve national attention.

The poll first began its poll of college basketball teams in 1949, and has since conducted over 1,100 polls.

The college basketball poll started with 20 teams and was reduced to 10 during the 1960-61 college basketball season.

It returned to 20 teams in 1968-69 and expanded to 25 beginning in 1989-90.

The final poll for each season is released prior to the conclusion of the NCAA tournament, so all data includes regular season games only.^[26] In 2017, The AP released a list of the Top 100 teams of all time.

The poll counted poll appearances (one point) and No. 1 rankings (two points) to rank each team.^[27]

The AP began its Major League Baseball Manager of the Year Award in 1959, for a manager in each league.^[28] From 1984 to 2000, the award was given to one manager in all of MLB.^[29] The winners were chosen by a national panel of AP baseball writers and radio men. The award was discontinued in 2001.^[28]

Every year, the AP releases the names of the winners of its AP College Basketball Player of the Year and AP College Basketball Coach of the Year awards. It also honors a group of All-American players.

In 1994, London-based Associated Press Television (APTV) was founded to provide agency news material to television broadcasters.^[30] In 1998, AP purchased Worldwide Television News (WTN) from the ABC News division of The Walt Disney Company, Nine Network Australia and ITN London.^[30] AP publishes 70,000 videos and 6,000 hours of live video per year, as of 2016. The agency also provides four simultaneous live video channels. AP was the first news agency to launch a live video news service in 2003.^[31]

Washington, D.C. bureau reporter Christopher Newton, an AP reporter since 1994, was fired by AP in September 2002 after he was accused of fabricating sources since 2000, including at least 40 people and organizations. Prior to his firing, Newton had been focused on writing about federal law-enforcement while based at the Justice Department. Some of the nonexistent agencies quoted in his stories included "Education Alliance", the "Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago", "Voice for the Disabled", and "People for Civil Rights".^[32]

In 2007, an FBI agent working in Seattle impersonated an AP journalist and infected the computer of a 15-year old suspect with a malicious surveillance software.^[33][34] The incident sparked a strongly-worded statement from the AP demanding the bureau never impersonate a member of the news media again.^[35] Moreover, in September 2016 the incident resulted in a condemnation by the Justice Department.^[36]

In December 2017, following a US court appearance, a judge ruled in favor of the AP in a lawsuit against the FBI for fraudulently impersonating a member of the news media.^[37][38]

In June 2008, the AP sent numerous DMCA take down demands and threatened legal action against several blogs. The AP contended that the internet blogs were violating AP's copyright by linking to AP material and using headlines and short summaries in those links. Many bloggers and experts noted that the use of the AP news fell squarely under commonly accepted internet practices and within fair-use standards.^[39] Others noted and demonstrated that AP routinely takes similar excerpts from other sources, often without attribution or licenses. AP responded that it was defining standards regarding citations of AP news.^[40]

In August 2005, Ken Knight, a Louisiana photographer, sued the AP claiming that it had willfully and negligently violated Knight's copyright by distributing a photograph of celebrity Britney Spears to various media outlets including, but not limited to: truTV (formerly CourtTV), America Online and Fox News.^[41] The case was settled in November 2006.

In a case filed February 2005, McClatchey v. The Associated Press, a Pennsylvania photographer sued the AP for cropping a picture to remove the plaintiff's embedded title and copyright notice and later distributed it to news organizations without the plaintiff's permission or credit. The parties settled.^[42]

In March 2009, the Associated Press counter-sued artist Shepard Fairey over his famous image of Barack Obama, saying the uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo violated copyright laws and signaled a threat to journalism. Fairey had sued the AP the previous month over his artwork, titled "Obama Hope" and "Obama Progress", arguing that he did not violate copyright law because he dramatically changed the image. The artwork, based on an April 2006 picture taken for the AP by Mannie Garcia, was a popular image during the 2008 presidential election and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. According to the AP lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Fairey knowingly "misappropriated The AP's rights in that image". The suit asked the court to award AP profits made off the image and damages. Fairey said he looked forward to "upholding the free expression rights at stake here" and disproving the AP's accusations. In January 2011 this suit was settled with neither side declaring their position to be wrong but agreeing to share reproduction rights and profits from Fairey's work.^[43]

In January 2008, Associated Press sued competitor All Headline News (AHN) claiming that AHN allegedly infringed on its copyrights and a contentious "quasi-property" right to facts.^[44][45] The AP complaint asserted that AHN reporters had copied facts from AP news reports without permission and without paying a syndication fee. After AHN moved to dismiss all but the copyright claims set forth by AP, a majority of the lawsuit was dismissed.^[46] The case has been dismissed and both parties settled.^[47]

In June 2010, Associated Press was accused^[48] of having unfair and hypocritical policies after it was demonstrated that AP reporters had copied original reporting from the "Search Engine Land" website without permission, attribution, or credit.^[49]

In April 2013, AP stated that it had dropped the term "illegal immigrant" from its stylebook. AP follows ABC, NBC, and CNN in not using the term. Jose Antonio Vargas commended The Associated Press for its decision.^[50]

Syndicated writer Ruben Navarrette criticized the decision, stating the reasoning behind the decision was political correctness and called the blog "incomprehensible."^[51] Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said of the decision, that she doesn't get involved in "vocabulary wars" and then stated "They are immigrants who are here illegally, that's an illegal immigrant."^[52]

On April 23, 2013, the AP's Twitter account was hacked to release a hoax tweet about fictional attacks in the White House that left President Obama injured.^[53] This erroneous tweet resulted in a brief plunge of 130 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, removal of $136 billion from S&P 500 index,^[54] and the temporary suspension of their Twitter account. Although all executed trades were considered final, the Dow Jones later restored its session gains.

On May 13, 2013, The Associated Press announced telephone records for 20 of their reporters during a two-month period in 2012, had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department and described these acts as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations.^[55][56] The AP reported that the Justice Department would not say why it sought the records, but sources stated that the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia's office was conducting a criminal investigation into a May 7, 2012 AP story about a CIA operation that prevented a terrorist plot to detonate an explosive device on a commercial flight.^[57] The DOJ did not direct subpoenas to the AP, instead going to their phone providers, including Verizon Wireless.^[58] U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified under oath in front of the House Judiciary Committee that he recused himself from the leak investigations to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Holder said his Deputy Attorney General, James M. Cole, was in charge of the AP investigation and would have ordered the subpoenas.^[59]

In his book Broken Spring: An American-Israeli Reporter's Close-up View of How Egyptians Lost Their Struggle for Freedom, former AP correspondent Mark Lavie claims that the AP upheld a narrative line in which Arabs and Palestinians were entirely without blame in a conflict where all guilt lay with Israel.^[60][61][62] Israeli journalist Matti Friedman accused AP of killing a story he wrote about the "war of words", "between Israel and its critics in human rights organizations", in the aftermath of the Israel/Gaza conflict of 2008–09.^[60]

The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors.^[63] Since April 2017, the chairman is Steven Swartz, president and CEO of Hearst Communications.