This volume reveals how the news agencies have contributed both to the process of globalization and to the process of national construction. By both describing and theorizing these media, this book provides a critical survey of the contemporary international news business. The contributors take a look at news agencies from institutional, historical, political, economic and cultural studies perspectives, reviewing agency provision of general news, video news and financial news, analyzing agency-state relations through periods of dramatic social upheaval, and examining the impact of deregulation in both advanced industrial and developing markets. In addition to looking at the leading players like Reuters and Associated Press, the contributors also consider attempts by national news agencies to establish radically different news agendas.