Reuters Removes TASS Russian News Agency from Its Content Marketplace

Reuters is report­ing that it has removed Russ­ian news agency TASS from its busi­ness-to-busi­ness mar­ket­place for cus­tomers. Accord­ing to the report:

March 23, 2022 March 23 (Reuters) — Reuters has removed TASS from its busi­ness-to-busi­ness mar­ket­place for cus­tomers, accord­ing to a Reuters mes­sage to staff on Wednes­day, amid grow­ing crit­i­cism of how Rus­si­a’s state-owned news agency is por­tray­ing the war in Ukraine.  “We believe mak­ing TASS con­tent avail­able on Reuters Con­nect is not aligned with the Thom­son Reuters Trust Prin­ci­ples,” Matthew Keen, inter­im CEO of Reuters, wrote in an inter­nal memo to staff on Wednes­day. […] In response to a request for com­ment from Reuters, TASS shared a let­ter that its CEO Sergei Mikhailov sent to Keen on Wednes­day in which he said he was “extreme­ly sor­ry to learn of Reuters’ deci­sion” and that he under­stood it was “influ­enced by the cur­rent world atmosphere.”

Read the rest here.

TASS is a major Russ­ian state-owned news agency and one of the largest news agen­cies world­wide. Accord­ing to a 2017 research paper on TASS’ cov­er­age of the Ukraine cri­sis,  Rus­sia uses the news agency for inter­na­tion­al pro­pa­gan­da in its hybrid war. Fol­low­ing Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, Russ­ian state-backed out­lets Sput­nik and RT were banned or restrict­ed by the Euro­pean Union and West­ern social media and tech com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, TASS has avoid­ed any sanc­tions so far, and its web­site can still be accessed in Europe.

In March, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report report­ed that TASS was dom­i­nat­ing Google search results for “LPR” (Luhan­sk People’s Repub­lic) and “DPR” (Donet­sk People’s Republic).

For more GIOR cov­er­age on TASS, go here.