Market Position and Manipulation As the dominant news agency in Germany, the dpa has significant influence over public opinion. Its main competitors within the same market area include the Germany branches of foreign press agencies
Agence France-Presse and
Thomson Reuters. Domestic competitors include the Evangelical Press Service, the Catholic News Agency and the Sports Information Service. There have been ongoing accusations of the dpa abusing its power within the marketplace, using its position for agenda-setting and to manipulate the general public. These sentiments have led to isolated recommendations for restrictions to be placed on the agency's power. Such concerns have been reported as early as 1970 with articles published in ZEIT and
SPIEGEL generating discussion on the agency's close affiliation to the government and of the dpa colouring its reporting.
Structure As early as 1969, the dpa has been subject to critical scrutiny due to its structure. Journalist Stefan Zickler included the company as part of his criticism of the structure of the German Press in a publication in which he challenged the belief that total privatisation of the agency by its around 170 in which the agency fabricated a quote from the then Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin, regarding the reunification of Germany in December 1966. In subsequent years, the agency was forced to apologise for inaccurate reports regarding the protests against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm (2007) as well as the news of a scandal involving the then Federal Economics Minister
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (2009). The role of the dpa in the Bluewater affair in 2009 led to new internal regulations regarding the sources of the disseminated news. The Otto Brenner Foundation conducted a large-scale study in March 2010, led by Hans-Jürgen Arlt and Wolfgang Storz. This study, named "Business Journalism during Crisis - The Mass Media's Handling of Financial Market Policy", evaluated the working procedures of the dpa from spring 1999 to autumn 2009. The ultimate conclusion of the study was that German business journalism failed to provide proficient and informative coverage of the financial market and its related policies prior to the onset of the global financial market crisis. The evaluation of the dpa's contribution to financial market policy journalism was described as being "highly deficient" and that it gave a sense of confusion rather than offering orientation. The editor-in-chief of the dpa rejected these criticisms, citing the selectivity of the articles examined as a reason why the results were not representative. == See also ==