news agency: Government Agencies

Government ownership of news agencies stems from the early 1900s. In 1904 the St. Petersburg (later Petrograd) Telegraph Agency was founded by the Russian government. In 1918, Soviet Russia founded Rosta, the Russian Telegraph Agency, by merging the telegraph agency with the government press bureau, and in 1925 Rosta became TASS, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. Renamed the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia in 1992 and known as ITAR-TASS, it became the official news service of Russia. Since 2014, when it was renamed Russian News Agency TASS, it has been known as TASS. In 1915, Germany established a service called Transocean to broadcast war propaganda. The New China News Agency (Xinhua), founded in 1931 as the Red China News Agency, maintains official news and financial service wires, publishes dozens of newspapers and magazines, has its own advertising and public relations firms, and runs a school of journalism. Since 1990 independent news agencies have appeared in Eastern Europe, including Interfax in Russia and A. M. Pres in Romania.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• News Transmission
• Government Agencies
• Evolution of News Agencies
• Bibliography

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Journalism and Publishing