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BELGRADE - The Yugoslav national news agency Tanjug celebrates 56 years of work on Friday.
Founded during World War Two, in 1943, with the objective of informing the world public about the struggle against fascism of the peoples of the Yugoslavia of that time, together with the Russian Red Army and western alies, the agency was this year again in the position to inform the world about aggression on Yugoslavia committed on the occasion of Kosovo and Metohija province by these very former western allies.
Between these two wars in Yugoslavia, over the past 56 years, Tanjug grew from an office of nine reporters into a modern world agency, which was the eighth most popular world agency in 1967 according to a study conducted by the University of Illinois.
Once again this year, during the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia (from March 24 until June 10), Tanjug was, according to many estimates, the most reliable source of information, whose reports were used by leading world media. The General News Desk at that time released about 350 reports daily, and there were up to 180,000 daily visits of Tanjug's Internet site. Tanjug's Photo Service on the Internet was visited 650,000 times during the aggression.
Tanjug was the only media which maintained a team of correspondents in the most dangerous spot in Europe during the whole period of the aggression, and after, following the arrival of the United Nations force in Kosovo and Metohija.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic presented Tanjug with an award for its reporting to the home and world public and its irreplacable contribution to spreading the truth about the NATO aggression on Yugoslavia.
Tanjug today has 456 employees and its services are received well in all regions of the world, thanks to successful organization and modern equipment. The agency's biggest service is the General News Desk which broadcasts news, reports, analyses and reviews on the most important political, economic, commercial, cultural, and sports events in the country and abroad.
The General News Desk annually broadcasts an average of about 80,000 items prepared by reporters of the Home Desk, Foreign Desk, and Economics Desk. Tanjug also has a very wide network of correspondents in the country and foreign correspondents in all major metropolises of the world. Thanks to this wide correspondent network, Tanjug's Phono Service daily broadcasts about 40 telephone reports from the spot for radio and TV stations.
Tanjug-Ekos is the biggest Yugoslav center for compiling, processing and distribution of economic reports from the country and abroad. Users are daily informed about the most up to date developments in the areas of the economy, commerce, finances, industry, agriculture, and from stock exchanges.
The World Service Desk broadcasts selected items from the General News Desk in English and publishes daily bulletins - Daily News in English and Foreign Press Selection in Serbian, as well as other publications per user requests.
Tanjug's site on the Internet, which provides a World Service Desk in English, French and Serbian, records 21,000 visits daily. The site also contains a series of other important information on the history, politics and culture of Yugoslavia.
Photo Tanjug daily provides a telephoto service with about 20 most important and most interesting photographs taken by Tanjug's photojournalists, as well as photographs taken over from other world agencies. Tanjug's photograph library is of exceptional value as it contains over three million negatives on almost all developments in Yugoslavia and the world since the founding of the agency.
An important segment in the functioning of the agency is the Data Bank which daily processes about 400 texts which are distributed and stored under 12,000 headings. This covers the entire social, political, economic, cultural, sports, and other relevant areas of Yugoslavia and most countries of the world. The Data Bank every year publishes a political and business register of Yugoslavia, and also selectively follows certain subjects in Yugoslav papers according to special requests of users.
The youngest member of the Tanjug family, as of this year, is Radio Tanjug which broadcasts news and music 24 hours daily on the FM 105.6 mhz frequency.
The International Press Center of Tanjug, with its recently opened renovated Reporters' Club, has long been the most well-known part of the agency. Located in the heart of Belgrade, in Knez Mihajlova street, it is the focal point of foreign correspondents and home reporters, a place for news conferences, meetings with public figures, exhibitions, and various other presentations.