The application for the expulsion of TASS was submitted by Ukraine's Ukrinform agency at the end of February 2022, a similar request was submitted by the president of PAP.
EANA
The European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), which brings together 32 news organisations, failed to expel the Russian agency TASS in a secret vote on Thursday, PAP president has said.
Wojciech Surmacz, who heads the Polish Press Agency (PAP), said on Thursday that even though the majority of EANA members voted in favour of expelling the Russian state news agency TASS from the organisation, there were not enough votes to do so.
The application for the expulsion of TASS was submitted by Ukraine’s Ukrinform agency at the end of February 2022, a similar request was submitted by the president of PAP.
But in a secret vote that took place at the EANA General Assembly in Paris on Thursday, 14 news agencies voted to expel TASS from the organisation, 11 were against and four abstained.
According to the EANA statute, in order to exclude one of its members from the Association, it is necessary for three-quarters of the agencies present at the General Assembly to vote in favour. Out of 32 EANA members, representatives of 29 agencies appeared in Paris on Thursday, including PAP.
“There were no statutory 3/4 votes to expel TASS,” Surmacz said. “But 14 agencies voted in favour and only 11 against. This means that most EANA members do not want TASS in the organisation. This is a completely different situation than in Sarajevo (at the extraordinary EANA assembly in May 2022), where only six agencies supported the expulsion of the Russian TASS.”
Surmacz added that “we will not give up and together with Ukrinform we will continue to fight.”
In his speech in Paris, the first deputy director general of TASS, Mikhail Gusman, referred to a letter he said he had sent to all press agencies before the meeting, but neither PAP nor Ukrinform received such a letter. Gusman argued that TASS reported events objectively, providing “balanced and absolutely reliable information.”
In turn, in his speech in Sarajevo in May 2022, Gusman argued that TASS is a credible, professional and independent agency. The Russian made reference to talks with the ambassadors of the USA, Poland and Germany in Moscow, who, Gusman argued, had no objections to the credibility of the information provided by TASS.
After this event, PAP verified Gusman’s speech, including the reference to his conversations with diplomats from the United States, Poland and Germany. His words were denied by the American side and the Polish ambassador to Russia, Krzysztof Krajewski. The German embassy in Moscow did not provide PAP with an answer on this matter.
“The facts speak for themselves,” Surmacz said in Paris. “I have sent you a fact-check report with a small summary. Unfortunately, the truth is that almost everything that Mr. Gusman said in Sarajevo is not true.”
The outgoing EANA President Clemens Pig said that, with a member of the organisation suspended for the first time in the history of the organisation and a vote to expel them twice, it is necessary to amend the EANA statute to more effectively deal with similar challenges. Therefore, he called for an extraordinary general assembly to be convened later this year.