Information Telegraph Agency of Russia
The Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (Russian: Информационное телеграфное агентство России, Informatsionnoye telegrafnoye agentstvo Rossii; abbr. ИТАР-Тасс, Итар-Тасс; ITAR-Tass, Itar-Tass), is the major news agency of Russia. It is headquartered in Moscow.
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[edit] History
Its origin dates back to December 1902 when it began its activities as Commercial Telegraph Agency under the Ministry of Finance and with the Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta's staff being the main supplier of journalists. As the demand for non-business news began to prevail with the first battles of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904, the agency had to change its name to St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency (SPTA). As there was no change of headquarters and almost no change in its staff and functions, it was a mere renaming, not an establishment of a new agency on September 1, 1904. On August, 1914, one day after St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd, SPTA was renamed the Petrograd Telegraph Agency (PTA). It was seized by Bolsheviks on November, 1917; on December, PTA is decreed to be the central information agency of the Soviet Russian Council of People's Commissars'.
On September, 1918, PTA and the Press Bureau of Council of People's Commissars' were merged into the Russian Telegraph Agency (Rosta). From it in July 1925 the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS, Tass) was created by decree of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
[edit] Post-Soviet period
In January 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Presidential Decree signed by President Boris Yeltsin re-defined status of Tass which is the abbreviation for Telegrafnoye Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza, or, in English, The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, and changed its name to the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia. In May 1994 The Russian Government adopted a resolution "On approval of the Charter of the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia", under which it operates as a central government news agency. It was wanted that the known Tass remains in the name abbreviation, so Tass became the specifier of the official name Телеграфное агентство связи и сообщения, Telegrafnoye agentstvo svazi i soobshcheniya, i.e. the Telegraph agency of communication and messages.
It is state-owned and according to its website now produces about 700 newspaper pages per day. It has 74 bureaus and offices in Russia and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and 65 bureaus in 62 other countries.
[edit] Legal information
According to Russian law, Itar-Tass must be cited when its news reports are distributed by others.
