2023-09-12 10:26 update: 2023-09-12, 19:43
Fot. PAP/Marcin Obara
The European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) will hold a vote to expel TASS, Russia’s state news agency, from its ranks on September 14.
The vote is a result of opposition to TASS’s apparent role in spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation.
TASS’s membership was suspended by EANA in February 2022, just after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, at a meeting convened following a request by the Polish Press Agency.
Now a vote to expel the agency will be put before the EANA general assembly, which meets in Paris on Thursday.
Speaking ahead of the vote Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director general of Ukrinform, a Ukrainian news agency, said: "The number of votes cast at the General Assembly will show the level of readiness of Europe’s leading news agencies, alliance members, to take a fundamental stand against propaganda and the disinformation massively produced by Russia, which, more than one and a half years into the full-scale war, has got rid of all free media outlets (in Russia – PAP), and ultimately weaponised the remaining ones."
Sergey Mykhaylov, TASS’s CEO at the time of the invasion, was targeted by the EU, the US and the UK with sanctions for spreading a false narrative about the situation in Ukraine.
The current TASS chief, Andrey Kondrashov, has been the deputy head of a state-holding company that controls a number of Russian media channels accused of pumping out propaganda.
He is also on a Canadian sanctions list entitled "Russian Disinformation Agents". (PAP)
