The International News Service (INS) was a U.S.-based news agency (newswire) founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.^[1]

History[link]

Established two years after Hearst-competitor E.W. Scripps combined three smaller syndicates under his control into United Press Associations,^[2] INS battled the other major newswires. It added a picture service, International News Photos, or INP. The Hearst newsreel series Hearst Metrotone News (1914–1967) was released as International Newsreel from January 1919 to July 1929. Always a distant third to its larger rivals the Associated Press and the United Press, INS combined in 1958 with UP to become UPI. New York City's all-news radio station, WINS originally took its name from INS.^[3]

Among those worked for INS were future broadcasters William Shirer, Edwin Newman and Irving R. Levine, who in 1950 covered the outbreak of war in Korea for INS.^[4] Marion Carpenter, the first woman national press photographer to cover Washington, D.C. and the White House, and to travel with a US President, also had worked for the INS.^[5]

International News Service v. Associated Press[link]

During the early years of World War I, Hearst's INS was barred from using Allied telegraph lines because of reporting of British losses. INS made do by allegedly taking news stories off AP bulletin boards, rewriting them and selling them to other outlets. AP sued INS and the case reached the United States Supreme Court.^[6]

The case was considered important in terms of distinguishing between upholding the common law rule of "no copyright in facts", and applying the common law doctrine of misappropriation through the tort of unfair competition. In International News Service v. Associated Press of 1918, Justice Mahlon Pitney wrote for the majority in ruling that INS was infringing on AP's "lead-time protection", and defining it as an unfair business practice. Pitney narrowed the period for which the newly defined proprietary right would apply: this doctrine "postpones participation by complainant's competitor in the processes of distribution and reproduction of news that it has not gathered, and only to the extent necessary to prevent that competitor from reaping the fruits of complainant's efforts and expenditure."^[6] Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote a minority opinion, objecting to the court's creating a new private property right.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Harnett, Richard M. and Billy G. Ferguson, UNIPRESS: United Press International--Covering the 20th Century, Fulcrum Publishing, 2003

External links[link]

• • "The Press: New York, May 24 (UPI)". TIME magazine. 2 June 1958. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,893956,00.html.  (Report on United Press International/INS merger)