The naming of parts WIPO is the World Intellectual Property Organization, properly called OMPI for the French for the same thing. The international law governing Authors' Rights is called the Berne Convention. Authors' rights are different from copyright. The idea of selling Authors' Rights outright is not so much illegal as a grammatical error. Under the Authors' Rights system, the rights to a by-line, to object to distortion of your work, and to decide when and where it appears are fundamental.
Economic rights follow.
Under copyright, as practised mostly in the English-speaking world, the words and pictures you make have the same kind of legal status as the sandwich you bought for lunch. Except that, unlike most sandwiches, your work can be copied and re-sold. These don't apply to news reporting, and in the US they apply only to works of art. Unfortunately for the corporations, the Berne Convention is based on the Authors' Rights system. That's simply because it's the legal mainstream around the world.