Five news agencies, headquartered in four countries, are responsible for relaying most of the world's news. This article is a quantitative and qualitative survey of these so-called “Big Five” at the beginning of the 1990s. Diversification of their operations to include more information services, in addition to news, was found to be the major trend in the 1980s. This diversification was financially necessary if the agencies were to remain alive. Financial problems also forced some agencies to seek government support, thereby raising questions again about their reliability as a source of objective news. Change in the former Soviet Union has also influenced the ideological character of the international news flow debate because TASS ceased being a communist news agency, an antithesis to the liberal-democratic press ideologies represented by the other four agencies.