The Board of Directors stated the objective of the IPTC as:
"To establish and maintain an open, apolitical international forum to promote and enable the exchange of news information in an efficient manner, while maintaining the highest technical quality. At the same time taking advantage of the advances in telecommunication and computing technology."

To meet this objective, the IPTC is looking forward and needs the skills and ideas of a worldwide membership to ensure that the essential issues are identified and solved on time.
The reasons for being an IPTC member include:

• IPTC is the only organisation that addresses the news industry concerns for standardisation of news exchange formats.
• IPTC is an organisation concerned with news providers and their customers' news exchange problems.
• IPTC fosters exposure to business ideas used around the world to distribute news.
• IPTC encourages personal relationships among peers from around the world.
• IPTC provides a world news lobby voice for standardisation of telecommunications services.
• IPTC allows members to request research and development in areas of specific interest to their business activities.

The IPTC meets at least 3 times a year when its Standards Committee and Working Parties develop their ideas that are subsequently endorsed by the membership at the Annual General Meeting held each year.

IPTC provides two types of membership:

• Voting Members: any organisation which conducts its business as news agency, news syndicator, news aggregator, news publisher by any kind of media technology, and any national or international association of such organisations.
  Voting Members may send up to 3 delegates per Contributory Unit (which is equal to a share) to a meeting. Voting Member delegates are eligible to vote at General Meetings, Committees and all Working Parties of the IPTC.
  The membership fee for each Contributory Unit (more than 1 can be subscribed by one organisation) is 4740 EUR per year.
  
  
• Associate Members: any organisation whose aims are those of a Voting Member organisation (see above) or which is otherwise part of the publication, information or information technology sector, like a system vendor, a technology research organisation, and any national or international association of such organisations.
  Associate members may send 1 delegate to the meetings, but they receive all papers and other material. Associate member delegates are only eligible to vote at Working Parties, not at General Meetings and Committees.
  The membership fee for each member organisation is 1580 EUR per year.
  

You want to become a member of the IPTC?
Please send a short notice including:
- the company name
- your name and job title
- your business postal address
-a web address of your company
to the IPTC office - office@iptc.org - and we will send an application form and all relevant company documents for joining our organisation to you.