Agence France-Presse has its origins in the
Agence Havas, founded in 1835 in Paris by
Charles-Louis Havas, making it the world's oldest news service. The agency pioneered the collection and dissemination of news as a
commodity, Two Havas employees,
Paul Julius Reuter and
Bernhard Wolff, set up their own news agencies in
London and
Berlin respectively. On 20 August 1944, as
Allied forces moved on Paris, a group of journalists in the
French Resistance seized the offices of the FIO and issued the first news dispatch from the liberated city under the name of Agence France-Presse. Established as a
state enterprise, AFP devoted the post-war years to developing its network of international correspondents. One of them was the first Western journalist to report the death of the Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin on 6 March 1953. AFP was keen to shake off its semi-official status, and on 10 January 1957, the
French Parliament passed a law establishing its independence. Since that date, the proportion of the agency's revenues generated by subscriptions from government departments has steadily declined. Such subscriptions represented 115 million euros in 2011. In 1982, the agency began to decentralize its editorial decision-making by setting up the first of its five autonomous regional centres, in Hong Kong, then a
British dependent territory. Each region has its own budget,
administrative director and
chief editor. In September 2007, the AFP Foundation was launched to promote higher standards of journalism worldwide. The
Mitrokhin Archive identified six agents and two confidential
KGB contacts inside Agence France-Presse who were used in
Soviet operations in France. In 1991, AFP set up a joint venture with
Extel to create a financial news service,
AFX News. It was sold in 2006 to
Thomson Financial. In October 2008, the
Government of France announced moves to change AFP's status, including the involvement of outside investors. On 27 November of that year, the main trade unions represented in the company's home base of France – the
CGT,
Force Ouvrière,
Syndicat national des journalistes,
Union syndicale des journalistes CFDT and
SUD, launched an
online petition to oppose what they saw as an attempt to
privatise the agency. On 10 December 2009, the
French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand announced that he was setting up a Committee of Experts under former AFP CEO Henri Pigeat to study plans for the agency's future status. On 24 February 2010, Pierre Louette unexpectedly announced his intention to resign as CEO by the end of March, and move to a job with
France Télécom. In November 2013, AFP and
Getty Images were ordered to pay $1.2 million compensation to freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel for using his images posted on
Twitter related to the
2010 Haiti earthquake without his permission, in violation of copyright and Twitter's terms of service. AFP's statute was changed in 2015 to bring it into line with
European legislation through Law No. 2015-433 of 17 April 2015. The State's financing of AFP was thus modified and was structured into two components: • Financial compensation for the Agency's missions of general interest • Commercial subscriptions from the State The current
CEO and chairman is
Fabrice Fries and the Global News Director is Phil Chetwynd. AFP returned to profitability in 2019 for the first time since 2013 and has consistently posted positive net results every year since. In 2023, the net profit reached 1.1 million euros. The debt, which stood at 50.2 million euros at the beginning of 2017, was reduced to 26.9 million euros by the end of 2023. On 11 February 2025, Deputy News Director for Digital Strategy and Director of Communications Grégoire Lemarchand spoke at the AI in the City event at
École normale supérieure, part of the
AI Action Summit. Editorial Manager of the MediaLab Denis Teyssou participated in a
roundtable discussion and Deputy News Director for Photo and Documentation Eric Baradat joined a panel discussion with representatives of Google, Microsoft and Imatag. == Notable journalists ==