Agence France-Presse


Agence France-Presse is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Its origins date back to 1835, when it was founded as Havas, the world's oldest news agency. In August 1944, following the Liberation of Paris, it was reorganized as Agence France-Presse to succeed Havas.
AFP's mission is to provide fast, comprehensive, impartial, and verified coverage of global events across all fields and formats, including video, photography, text, infographic, and audio. It collects, verifies, cross-checks, and distributes information in a neutral, factual form, intended for direct use by all types of media. It also serves as a source and alert service for major companies and public administrations.
AFP operates one of the world's most extensive networks of correspondents. With 2,400 employees representing 100 nationalities, it maintains an editorial presence in 260 cities across 150 countries. Its main regional headquarters are located in Nicosia, Hong Kong, Washington, D.C., and Montevideo. The agency publishes stories, videos, photos, and graphics in French, English, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and German. Two-thirds of its revenue is generated from commercial activities, while the remaining one-third is funded by the French government as compensation for fulfilling its mission of general interest.

History

Agence France-Presse has its origins in the Agence Havas, founded in 1835 in Paris by Charles-Louis Havas, making it the world's oldest news service. The agency pioneered the collection and dissemination of news as a commodity, and had established itself as a fully global concern by the late 19th century. Two Havas employees, Paul Julius Reuter and Bernhard Wolff, set up their own news agencies in London and Berlin respectively.
In 1940, when German forces occupied France during World War II, the news agency was taken over by the authorities and renamed "Office français d'information" ; only the private advertising company retained the name Havas. On 20 August 1944, as Allied forces moved on Paris, a group of journalists in the French Resistance seized the offices of the FIO and issued the first news dispatch from the liberated city under the name of Agence France-Presse.
Established as a state enterprise, AFP devoted the post-war years to developing its network of international correspondents. One of them was the first Western journalist to report the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on 6 March 1953.
AFP was keen to shake off its semi-official status, and on 10 January 1957, the French Parliament passed a law establishing its independence. Since that date, the proportion of the agency's revenues generated by subscriptions from government departments has steadily declined. Such subscriptions represented 115 million euros in 2011.
In 1982, the agency began to decentralize its editorial decision-making by setting up the first of its five autonomous regional centres, in Hong Kong, then a British dependent territory. Each region has its own budget, administrative director and chief editor. In September 2007, the AFP Foundation was launched to promote higher standards of journalism worldwide.
The Mitrokhin Archive identified six agents and two confidential KGB contacts inside Agence France-Presse who were used in Soviet operations in France.
In 1991, AFP set up a joint venture with Extel to create a financial news service, AFX News. It was sold in 2006 to Thomson Financial.
In October 2008, the Government of France announced moves to change AFP's status, including the involvement of outside investors. On 27 November of that year, the main trade unions represented in the company's home base of France – the CGT, Force Ouvrière, Syndicat national des journalistes, Union syndicale des journalistes CFDT and
SUD, launched an online petition to oppose what they saw as an attempt to privatise the agency.
On 10 December 2009, the French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand announced that he was setting up a Committee of Experts under former AFP CEO Henri Pigeat to study plans for the agency's future status. On 24 February 2010, Pierre Louette unexpectedly announced his intention to resign as CEO by the end of March, and move to a job with France Télécom.
In November 2013, AFP and Getty Images were ordered to pay $1.2 million compensation to freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel for using his images posted on Twitter related to the 2010 Haiti earthquake without his permission, in violation of copyright and Twitter's terms of service.
AFP's statute was changed in 2015 to bring it into line with European legislation through Law No. 2015-433 of 17 April 2015.
The State's financing of AFP was thus modified and was structured into two components:
  • Financial compensation for the Agency's missions of general interest
  • Commercial subscriptions from the State
The current CEO and chairman is Fabrice Fries and the Global News Director is Phil Chetwynd.
AFP returned to profitability in 2019 for the first time since 2013 and has consistently posted positive net results every year since. In 2023, the net profit reached 1.1 million euros. The debt, which stood at 50.2 million euros at the beginning of 2017, was reduced to 26.9 million euros by the end of 2023.
On 11 February 2025, Deputy News Director for Digital Strategy and Director of Communications Grégoire Lemarchand spoke at the AI in the City event at École normale supérieure, part of the AI Action Summit. Editorial Manager of the MediaLab Denis Teyssou participated in a roundtable discussion and Deputy News Director for Photo and Documentation Eric Baradat joined a panel discussion with representatives of Google, Microsoft and Imatag.

Notable journalists

AFP was voted "Best News Agency" in 2021 and 2020 by the Association for International Broadcasting.
Two photographers won the Pulitzer Prize for an AFP photo: Massoud Hossaini for his photo of a young girl in tears after a suicide bombing in Kabul, and Javier Manzano in 2013 for his photo of two Syrian rebel soldiers in a room lit by rays of sunlight shining through bullet holes in the wall.
The World Press Photo of the Year has been awarded on three occasions to AFP photographers: Hocine Zaourar in 1998 for his photo of a woman in tears in front of a hospital in Algiers, Ronaldo Schemidt in 2018 for his photo of a man running while on fire during a series of riots in Caracas, and Yasuyoshi Chiba in 2020 for his photo of young protesters in Khartoum.
The Albert Londres Prize has been awarded to AFP journalists on five occasions: Patrick Meney in 1983, Sammy Ketz in 1988, AFP's Moscow office in 1995, Michel Moutot in 1999, and Emmanuel Duparcq in 2011.
Five AFP collaborators have won the Rory Peck Prize: Pacôme Pabandji in 2014, Zein Al-Rifai in 2015, Will Vassilopoulos in 2016, Luis Sequeira in 2019, and Solan Kolli in 2021.
The Visa d'Or has been awarded on four occasions to AFP photographers; Georges Gobet in 2003, Bülent Kılıç in 2015, Aris Messinis in 2016, Guillermo Arias in 2019, as well as Sameer Al-Doumy, who won the Visa d'Or Humanitaire in 2022.
AFP was distinguished by the "Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards" in 2021 for photos taken by Josh Edelson and in 2022.

Prizes and awards

In 1983, the Albert Londres Prize was awarded to Patrick Meney, who wrote a series of articles about 600 French people forcibly detained in the Gulag after World War II. In 1984, his book Les Mains coupées de la Taïga was published.
In 1988, Sammy Ketz received the next Albert Londres Prize. Together with his colleague from the liberation movement, Serge Chalandon, he covered the events of the Libyan Civil War for six years.
On 17 October 2014, AFP international director Michèle Léridon received the Investigation and Reporting Award at the International Congress of Journalism and Information. Michèle Léridon was the author of the article "Covering ISIS", which was posted on the agency's blog.
In December 2014, Bülent Kılıç was named Time magazine Photojournalist of the Year for his coverage of events in the Middle East and Europe. The photographer received the same acknowledgement from The Guardian newspaper.

AFP projects