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Information Telegraph Agency of Russia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR-TASS; Russian: ИТАР-ТАСС, Информационно Телеграфное Агентство России - Телеграфное Агентство Советского Союза) is the major news agency of the Russian Federation. It is headquartered in Moscow.
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Its origin is in a letter sent by Finance Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov to foreign minister on March 26, 1904 writing that "our trade and industrial circles, as well as the Finance Ministry, are ever more in need of an independent exchange of information with foreign countries by telegraph and of a way to make internal business developments widely-known".
In July 1904 a meeting was held about setting up an official telegraph agency, St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency (SPTA). Its purpose was "to distribute political, financial, economic, trade, and other information of public interest within the country and abroad...". SPTA began work as Russia's official news agency on September 1, 1904.
On August 19, 1914, one day after St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd, SPTA was renamed the Petrograd Telegraph Agency (PTA). It was seized by Bolsheviks on November 7, 1917; on December 1, PTA is decreed to be the central information agency of the RSFSR Sovnarkom.
On September 7, 1918, PTA and Sovnarkom Press Bureau (бюро печати) were merged into the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). On 25 July 1925 it became the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union or Telegrafnoe Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza (TASS) (Russian: Телеграфное агенство Советского Союза при кабинете министров СССР, ТАСС) by decree of the USSR Central Executive Committee Presidium.
In 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it officially became the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia; due to its long past as TASS, it has operated as ITAR-TASS ever since. As of May 2006, while the main press agency is still called ITAR-TASS, it prefers TASS as a brand; its slogan on its English website is "Every time in real time. TASS", and most of its other businesses use only TASS in their names. (Its Russian website uses ИТАР-ТАСС and ТАСС in the same manner.)
It is still state-funded, and according to its website now produces about 700 newspaper pages per day, just under its Soviet peak. It has 74 bureaus and offices in Russia and other CIS countries and 65 bureaus in 62 foreign countries.
It has itself made news recently, when its long-time business director Anatoly Voronin was found dead in his apartment on October 16, 2006 in an apparent murder.
According to Russian law, ITAR-TASS must be cited when its news reports are distributed by others.