W
e, journalists of Agence France-Presse (AFP), have decided to speak out to express our deep concern about the reforms currently being proposed by management. By targeting the rules governing journalists' mobility and expatriation allowances, this reform will ultimately have the disastrous consequence of destroying the Agency's historic network.
AFP was founded on August 20, 1944, five days before the liberation of Paris, when a small group of Resistance fighters seized control of the Office Français d'Information (OFI), the propaganda arm of the Vichy regime.
Their ambition was strong: to build an independent and reliable news network worldwide. Gradually, the network expanded and over its 80-year history, AFP has established itself as an international news agency alongside its two Anglo-Saxon competitors, Associated Press and Reuters.
Today, behind the acronym AFP, which readers find at the bottom of thousands of articles on the web and in the newspapers worldwide, without always fully understanding what it stands for, behind those three letters mentionned in passing during news flashes on radio and television broadcasts, or appearing under the photos that illustrate the news, lies a global network of several hundred journalists, driven by an ambition to offer their clients the fastest and most reliable information possible.
