The Associated Press (AP) is a not-for-profit news cooperative founded in 1846, when five New York newspapers pooled resources to share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican-American War. Nearly 180 years later, it operates as an independent, member-owned organization spanning journalists in 250 locations across nearly 100 countries, reaching four billion people every day.
AP gathers and distributes journalism across text, photo, video, audio, and data formats. Beyond its core newswire, it provides infrastructure that much of the news industry depends on: elections data systems, content verification tools, and the AP Stylebook, the widely adopted editorial style guide for English-language journalism. Its archive - maintained as the world's largest news archive - holds 2 million video clips and 1.2 million photos, with 400,000 stories added each year.
As a cooperative owned by American newspaper and broadcast members, AP operates without shareholders or advertisers driving editorial decisions. Its journalists cover the full range of global events - conflicts, natural disasters, elections, and major international gatherings - often in demanding or high-risk conditions. The organization's stated mission is to gather facts without fear or favor and deliver accurate, unbiased reporting in service of informed citizens and democratic societies.