Outlet profile

Associated Press (via KOIN/ClickOnDetroit)

U.S. center to center-left

Owned byNot-for-profit news cooperative collectively owned by approximately 1,400 U.S. newspaper and broadcast member organizations; no single individual, corporation, or government holds a controlling stake. Content is licensed to and distributed by local outlets including KOIN (Portland, OR, owned by Nexstar Media Group) and ClickOnDetroit/WDIV-TV (Detroit, MI, owned by Graham Media Group).

FundingPrimarily through licensing and subscription fees paid by member and client news organizations worldwide; supplemented by philanthropic grants from journalism foundations (AP reported $60.9 million across 81 grants in 2023). No government funding.

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Associated Press was founded in 1846 by five New York City newspapers — the Sun, Herald, Courier and Enquirer, Journal of Commerce, and Evening Press — to pool resources for covering the Mexican-American War. It evolved into the world's largest independent news agency, supplying text, photos, and video to thousands of outlets in more than 100 countries. Its cooperative ownership model, in which member newspapers and broadcasters collectively govern and fund the organization, was designed to prevent any single owner from steering editorial direction. Since the Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917, AP has won 60 of them, including 36 for photography, reflecting a long record of on-the-ground factual reporting. Independent bias analysts disagree somewhat on its ideological tilt: Media Bias/Fact Check places it 'left-center,' citing a pattern of fact-checking conservative figures more often than liberal ones, while AllSides rates it on the border of 'Center' and 'Lean Left.' AP's funding has diversified in recent years to include significant philanthropic grants, which some critics argue could create donor-influence pressure, though the organization maintains an editorial firewall between grant-funded projects and general news operations. Daisy Veerasingham — who became president and CEO in January 2022 and is the first woman, first person of color, and first non-American to lead the organization — launched the AP Fund for Journalism in 2024, aiming to raise $100 million for local news support. Beginning in February 2025, the Trump White House banned AP reporters from press pool events because AP declined to use 'Gulf of America' in place of 'Gulf of Mexico' in its style guide; AP filed a First Amendment lawsuit, won a preliminary injunction at the district court level, but faced partial stays from a D.C. Circuit appeals court panel through at least mid-2025, leaving the legal dispute ongoing.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-15; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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