Associated Press of Pakistan

Antecedents

The news agency called Associated Press of India (API) was formed in British India in 1905 and was acquired by Reuters in 1915. In the 1940s, Reuters altered its constitution enabling co-partnership of news agencies in British Dominions, and the Associated Press of India became an independent company in 1946, though with significant backing by Reuters.

After the Partition of India in August 1947, API continued to function for more than a year. Some Indian journalists such as G. K. Reddy worked in Pakistani areas. In 1948, the Indian press formed the Press Trust of India to take over the operations of API, which occurred in September 1948. In January 1949, the Pakistani operations were reorganised as a Reuters subsidiary under the name "Associated Press of Pakistan". In September 1949, company was transferred to national control.

Initial years

The APP was organised as a trust, with the Chief Justice of Pakistan serving as the chairman of the board of trustees. The remaining members of the board were elected on two-year terms.

The newly-formed country's press was economically weak, and was unable to financially support the agency. APP instead received financial support from the Government of Pakistan. APP then subscribed to the services of the world's news agencies and to opened offices in major cities of Pakistan.

Government take-over

The financial situation of APP continued to deteriorate until it was on the verge of collapse. This was a direct result of the withholding of payment of funds from the Government of Pakistan due towards APP from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in an effort to create a financial crisis for the national news agency. In the early 1960s, APP owed about Rs. 8 lakhs (Rupees 800,000) to the government's Post and Telegraph Department and another Rs. 12 lakhs (Rupees 1200,000) in unpaid subscription fees to foreign news agencies. The Government of Pakistan intervened and took over the agency on 15 July 1961 following the instructions of certain vested interests within the Government of Pakistan. A government ordinance was issued for it. The given reason was to strengthen APP's financial foundation.

The takeover initiated a number of changes: A K Qureshi, a senior government officer with some journalistic experience, was hired as Administrator of APP. The head office of the agency was shifted to Islamabad, the new capital of Pakistan. APP was directed by the government at this time and also by later governments to carry just the official version of political events. A K Qureshi was a member of the ill-fated National Press Trust delegation traveling to London by PIA Flight 705 that crashed at Cairo on 20 May 1965. He is buried in a mass grave at Cairo alongside his fellow passengers: victims of Pakistan's first jet aircraft disaster.

Up until the early 1970s, APP had been supplying news from Reuters and United Press International. Later, it started providing news from also Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press.

In 2015, Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid and a three-member committee had conducted interviews of 18 candidates for the position of Managing Director of Associated Press of Pakistan to be able to finally appoint a Managing Director.

Editorial operation

The APP head office operates in Islamabad. Additionally, APP maintains five bureaus at Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar Quetta and Rawalpindi and eight news centres at Sukkur, Multan, Quetta, Faisalabad, Larkana, Hyderabad, Muzaffarabad, Sialkot and now Gilgit-Baltistan.

Communication networks

Despite APP being considered Pakistan's "premier" news agency, for decades the agency ran on old, obsolete and unreliable equipment. News copy was being carried on a 50-baud duplex circuit between Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.

M. Aftab, APPs General-Manager in 1991, undertook to improve the agency's technical resources. The resulting upgrade saw a transformation of data output speed from 50 words per minute (WMP) to 1200 WPM, most of which is now directly fed into the computers of the subscribers simultaneously throughout Pakistan and overseas.

Subscribers

APP collects and disseminate domestic and international news to 84 (1992) newspapers of Pakistan besides radio, television and government offices and some foreign media. APP's subscription rates are higher than other agencies in Pakistan, due to its credibility and services. For this reason every newspaper in Pakistan tries to subscribe to its services. Notable newspaper subscribers to APP's services include: Dawn, Pakistan Times, Frontier Post, The Statesman, The Nation, The News International, Business Recorder, The Observer, The Post and Nawa-i-Waqt, Jang, Khabrain, Daily Express (Urdu newspaper), The Express Tribune and some other English and Urdu national newspapers.