TASS
 TASS  (News agency)    | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Formation | 1904 |
| Type | News agency |
| Russian state-owned news agency, successor of Soviet-era agency with same name. | |
The Russian News Agency TASS (or Information agency of Russia), abbreviated TASS (ТАСС), is a major Russian state-owned news and one of the largest news agencies worldwide.
TASS has 70 offices in Russia and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), "along with 56 global branches in 53 countries".[1]
History
The origin of TASS dates back to December 1902 in Tsarist Russia, when it began operations as the Commercial Telegraph Agency (TTA, Torgovo-Telegrafnoe Agentstvo) under the Ministry of Finance, with Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta's staff being the main supplier of journalists.
It was seized by Bolsheviks in November 1917 and by December was renamed as the Central Information Agency of the Soviet Russian Council of People's Commissars. On 7 September 1918, the presidium renamed PTA and the Press bureau into the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), which became "the central information agency of the whole Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic"[2]
In July 1925 the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) was established by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and took over the duties of the ROSTA as the country's central information agency. TASS enjoyed "exclusive right to gather and distribute information outside the Soviet Union, as well as the right to distribute foreign and domestic information within the Soviet Union, and manage the news agencies of the Soviet republics". Official state information was delivered as the TASS Report.[2]
In addition to producing reports for general consumption, TASS produced packages of content for non-public use. Western news reports and potentially embarrassing domestic news would be compiled daily into a collection known as "White Tass", and particularly important news would be compiled into a smaller collection known as "Red Tass". These collections were made available only to journalistic and political leaders, and to top journalists and political leaders, respectively.[3]
In 1961 Ria Novosti was created to supplement TASS, mainly in foreign reporting and human-interest stories.
The agency was frequently used as a front organization by the Soviet intelligence agencies, such as the NKVD (later KGB) and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), with TASS employees serving as informants.[4]
In January 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Presidential Decree signed by Boris Yeltsin re-defined status of TASS and renamed it the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR-TASS).[5]
In September 2014 the agency regained its former name as Russian News Agency TASS.
References
- ↑ https://tass.com/today
- ↑ a b https://old.bigenc.ru/domestic_history/text/3033261
- ↑ Hoffman, Erik P. (1984). The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era New York: DeGruyter. p. 644. ISBN 0202241645.
- ↑ Kruglak, Theodore Eduard (1962). The Two Faces of TASS. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1-4529-3712-0.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150402094529/http://kommersant.ru/doc/2892
