Outlet profile

Associated Press (via The Hill/ABC affiliates)

U.S. center-left

Owned byNot-for-profit news cooperative owned collectively by more than 300 U.S. member newspapers and broadcast organizations; no single private owner or government stake

FundingMember licensing fees paid by subscribing news organizations worldwide; additional revenue from global broadcast customers and international publications; a new philanthropic arm (a 501(c)(3) entity) is being developed to attract foundation grants

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The AP traces its roots to 1846–1848, when six New York City newspapers pooled telegraph resources to share incoming news and divide costs, making it one of the oldest continuously operating news organizations in the United States. It grew over the following decades into a national and then global wire service, delivering standardized, fact-focused copy to thousands of outlets that could not afford their own foreign correspondents. Its cooperative structure — members share news and costs — has remained essentially intact, insulating it from the single-owner editorial influence that shapes many commercial outlets. The AP Stylebook, first published in 1977, became the de facto grammar and usage standard for American newsrooms. Controversies over the decades have included a 1943 antitrust ruling for blocking a competing paper from membership, and more recent allegations from former staffers of editorial tilt in its coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In 2022, Daisy Veerasingham became the AP's first non-American president and CEO. Independent media-bias reviewers, including AllSides, rated AP as 'Left' in a 2025 editorial audit, citing word-choice bias and a tendency to quote more left-leaning sources — though the AP contests claims that it abandons objectivity. The most visible test of its editorial independence in the current era came in February 2025, when the White House banned AP journalists from Oval Office and Air Force One press pool events after the wire service refused to adopt Trump's executive-order renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America'; the AP sued, won an initial district court order restoring access, but that ruling was reversed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision in June 2025.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-18; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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