Fars News Agency (FNA) is a news agency in Iran. While it describes itself as "Iran's leading independent news agency",^[1] news organizations such as CNN^[2] and Reuters^[3] describe it as a "semi-official" news agency with ties to the government. The Wall Street Journal has stated the agency is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps.^[4]

Its managing director Saeid Noubari is a former head of the public relations office of the Tehran Justice Department. FNA's managing editor Mehdi Fazaeli is also the spokesman of Iran's Association of Muslim Journalists.

In addition to Persian, FNA also provides news in English, Turkish and Arabic.

Rewording of press release[link]

In May 2012, Human Rights Watch sent out a press release regarding the United Nations' scrutiny of Bahrain. In part, it said: "The voice of the international community has been subdued regarding Bahrain’s manifold violations, especially compared with the international response to abuses in Syria, Libya, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries."^[5]

Fars News Agency chose to publish it with this wording: "The voice of the international community has been subdued regarding Bahrain's manifold violations, especially compared with the international response to abuses in Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries."^[6]

See also[link]

• Islamic Republic News Agency
• List of Iranian news agencies

References[link]

External links[link]

• Fars News Agency

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2011)

A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire, or news service.

History[link]

The oldest news agency is Agence France-Presse (AFP).^[1] It was founded in 1835 by a Parisian translator and advertising agent, Charles-Louis Havas as Agence Havas. Two of his employees, Paul Julius Reuter and Bernhard Wolff, later set up rival news agencies in London and Berlin respectively. In 1853, in Turin, Guglielmo Stefani founded the Agenzia Stefani, that became the most important agency in the Kingdom of Italy, and took international relevance with Manlio Morgagni.

In order to reduce overhead and develop the lucrative advertising side of the business, Havas's sons, who had succeeded him in 1852, signed agreements with Reuter and Wolff, giving each news agency an exclusive reporting zone in different parts of Europe.^[2]

Commercial services[link]

News agencies can be corporations that sell news (e.g. Press Association, Thomson Reuters and United Press International). Other agencies work cooperatively with large media companies, generating their news centrally and sharing local news stories the major news agencies may chose to pick up and redistribute (i.e. AP, Agence France-Presse (AFP) or American Press Agency (APA)). Commercial newswire services charge businesses to distribute their news (e.g. Business Wire, the Hugin Group, GlobeNewswire, Marketwire, PR Newswire, CisionWire, and ABN Newswire). Governments may also control news agencies: China (Xinhua), Canada^{[citation needed]}, Russia (ITAR-TASS) and other countries also have government-funded news agencies which also use information from other agencies as well.^[3]

The major news agencies generally prepare hard news stories and feature articles that can be used by other news organizations with little or no modification, and then sell them to other news organizations. They provide these articles in bulk electronically through wire services (originally they used telegraphy; today they frequently use the Internet). Corporations, individuals, analysts, and intelligence agencies may also subscribe.

News sources, collectively, described as alternative media provide reporting which emphasizes a self-defined "non-corporate view" as a contrast to the points of view expressed in corporate media and government-generated news releases. Internet-based alternative news agencies form one component of these sources.

References and notes[link]

Victoria Nuland
Spokesperson for the United States Department of State
Incumbent
Assumed office May, 2011
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Philip J. Crowley
18th United States Permanent Representative to NATO
In office June 20, 2005 – May 2, 2008
President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	R. Nicholas Burns
Succeeded by	Kurt Volker
Personal details
Born	1961 New York City, New York
Spouse(s)	Robert Kagan

Victoria Nuland (born 1961) is the spokesperson for the United States Department of State.^[1]

Career[link]

In summer 2011, Nuland became the State Department Spokesperson. She was declared a "consummate professional who proved that Foreign Service officers could be trusted to put professionalism over politics."^[2]

She was Ambassador of the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 2005 to 2008. As NATO Ambassador, she focused heavily on strengthening Allied support for the Afghanistan war, on NATO-Russia issues, and on the Alliance’s global partnerships and continued enlargement.

A career Foreign Service officer, she was Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney from July 2003 until May 2005, where she worked on the full range of global issues, including those relating to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the broader Middle East.

Nuland was the Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO from July 2000 to July 2003. There she was instrumental in NATO's invocation of Article 5 of its charter – "an attack on one ally is an attack on all" – in support of the United States after September 11, 2001. She also worked intensively on the enlargement of the Alliance to include seven new members, the creation of the NATO-Russia Council, NATO's first deployment "out of area" to Afghanistan and its defense of Turkey during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

From 1997 to 1999, Nuland was Deputy Director for former Soviet Union affairs at the United States Department of State, with primary responsibility for U.S. policy towards the Russian Federation and the Caucasus countries. In that capacity, she was awarded the Secretary of Defense's Distinguished Civilian Service medal for her work with the Russians during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Nuland has twice been a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1999 to 2000, she looked at the effect of Anti-Americanism on U.S. relations with other major world powers as a "Next Generation" Fellow at the Council, and from 1996 to 1997, as a State Department Fellow, she directed a CFR task force on "Russia, its Neighbors and an Expanding NATO," which was chaired by Senator Richard Lugar.

From 1993 to 1996, Nuland was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot with whom she worked on the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, Bosnia and Kosovo policy and the U.S. intervention in Haiti, among other issues. From 1991 to 1993, she covered Russian internal politics at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow focusing on Boris Yeltsin and his government. She has also served on the Soviet Desk (1988–1990), in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in the State Department's Bureaus of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1987) and in Guangzhou, China (1985–1986).

Personal life[link]

Nuland is the daughter of Yale bioethics and medicine professor Sherwin B. Nuland. She graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979 and has a B.A. from Brown University. Nuland is married to historian Robert Kagan, with whom she has two children. Nuland speaks Russian and French, and some Chinese.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Biography – from the U.S. State Department (2010)
• Official Biography – from the U.S. State Department (2008)
• Victoria Nuland biography – from the U.S. NATO Mission website
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Nuland, June 18, 2006

v t e United States Permanent Representatives to NATO William H. Draper, Jr. · John C. Hughes · George W. Perkins · Warren R. Burgess · Thomas K. Finletter · Harlan Cleveland · Robert F. Ellsworth · David M. Kennedy · Donald Rumsfeld · David K. E. Bruce · Robert Strausz-Hupé · William T. Bennett · David M. Abshire · Alton G. Keel, Jr. · William Howard Taft IV · Reginald Bartholomew · Robert E. Hunter · Alexander Vershbow · R. Nicholas Burns · Victoria Nuland · Kurt Volker · Ivo Daalder