MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. TASS has been expelled from the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) without any notification or explanation, the alliance said on its website following a secret ballot by its General Assembly.
In February 2022, the alliance’s governing body, the EANA Council, informed TASS that it was suspending the agency’s membership. The reason it cited was that, due to restrictions imposed by Russia’s telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor, TASS "is acting contrary to the EANA’s mission, namely, it can no longer serve as a provider of unbiased news."
The issue of expelling TASS was raised during the EANA assemblies in 2022 and 2023, but at those times, the expulsion didn't garner enough votes to pass. A decision was made to suspend TASS’s membership in the alliance without formally expelling it.
Russia has repeatedly pointed to the biased nature of the Western media and how the European authorities were persecuting the Russian media. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stated that Western elites are doing everything they can to deprive their voters of access to information. In his words, this is why they shut down media outlets or restrict their access.
According to the top Russian diplomat, another tactic used in the West is to allow a particular media outlet to continue operating in a Western country while expelling the journalists who work for that outlet, and so on. At the same time, the West continues to claim that it's committed to ensuring freedom of access to information, Lavrov pointed out.