The photo from November 5, 1943 shows the first editorial staff of the new agency: Moša Pijade, Vladislav Ribnikar, Lepa Pijade, Olga Humo and Jara Ribnikar. Ivo Lola Ribar, Vladimir Velebit and Dr. Ivan Ribar can also be seen on it. This photo of the first, wartime newsroom of Tanjug was taken by Vili Šimunov-Barba. He immortalized that moment with his "Like".
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At the time when the Agency started working, and the first report was broadcast on December 5, 1943, the director of Tanjug was Vladislav Ribnikar. Reporters were Milan Gavrić and Mahmut Konjhodžić, photo-reporters Vili Šimunov-Barba and Danilo Kabić, and radio-telegraphers Veljko Dragićević, Jozo Butorac, Anđelko Gančević and Ante Runjić, stenographers Aleksandar Tepavčević and Nikita Bakov, and translators Lepa Pijade and Olga Humo and Jara Ribnikar.
( CULTURE OF MEMORY – TANJUG >
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GLORY AND DAMAGE TIME | BR 1180 | AUGUST 15, 2013 )
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During the Second World War, a new Yugoslav news agency - Tanjug - was created. Tanjug was the first news agency on the free territory of a country, founded in occupied Europe during the Second World War, making it unique in the world. Namely, it was not founded by the state, it was not organized by shareholders, nor was it formed by newspaper publishers. Its first newsroom worked mostly in the forest.
Tanjug was founded in November 1943 in Jajce (Bosnia and Herzegovina) with the aim of faithfully presenting to the world what is happening in our country and to inform readers about what is happening in the world. The founder of Tanjug was Moša Pijade, who also gave it its name, and the first director was Vladislav Ribnikar. Tanjug began work with a small trophy transmitter, a gestetner (duplicating machine) in poor condition and a typewriter. "Here is the Telegraph Agency of the new Yugoslavia... Tanjug reports, Tanjug reports...", were the words used by the newly created agency for the first time on November 5, 1943.
Since its establishment, this agency has been strongly influenced by the Soviet news agency Tass. Rodoljub Čolaković was the Tanjug liaison officer in Moscow with the headquarters in Tass. Through Moscow, Tanjug broadcasted to the world what was happening in Yugoslavia.
The new agency published a newsletter. The first issue was dated November 10, 1943, and the first information read: "Some time ago, British Brigadier General McClain came to Yugoslavia as an envoy of the commander of the Allied Armed Forces in the Middle East, EM Wilson, to the Supreme Headquarters of the NOV and POJ." During his visit, General McClain handed over Commander Wilson's letter to Commander-in-Chief NOV and POJ, Comrade Tito..."
The first information about the formation of Tanjug was published by the radio station Slobodna Jugoslavija in mid-November 1943, whose headquarters were in Moscow. The listening service of the BBC, which monitored the broadcasts of Free Yugoslavia, was the first foreign radio station to publish information about the establishment of Tanjug.
In the first years, the work was organized according to the model of the Soviet Tass, so that over time, with the expansion of the correspondent network in the world and contacts and cooperation with agencies, Tanjug would grow into an agency that will strive to meet the basic professional standards: speed, accuracy, precision, interest, analytical.
Tanjug correspondents most often used the technical services of Reuters correspondents around the world, so socializing with the journalists of the world's most respected agency undoubtedly contributed to good professional development. Thanks to correspondents and news from other agencies, Tanjug reported almost everything that could satisfy even the most demanding: from reports on natural disasters and coups d'état, political gatherings and world sports championships, intimacies of crowned heads to oddities that sometimes happen to ordinary people.
Tanjug's first task was, as Moša Pijade explained in November 1943, to inform the world through radio-telegraph broadcasts about the events on the Yugoslav front in the fight against Nazi Germany, but also about the revolutionary social, political and economic socialist reforms, which prepared for the post-war period by the leader of the anti-fascist struggle, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. That task was successfully accomplished thanks to the help of allied media, such as the BBC.
In the post-war period, Tanjug quickly developed its network of correspondence in the country, but also in the world. The agency therefore became an important source of information for all Yugoslav media.
At the very beginning, this agency was a purely budgetary institution. Since 1952, it has introduced a subscription to its services, so the partial self-financing of Tanjug began. The state, however, continued to take care of the functioning of the "Foreign Broadcast", a newsroom that was, in fact, the Tanjug for the world, offering the foreign market a wealth of information in English, French, Spanish and German. The agency also developed rapidly technically, so the first teleprinters were introduced already in 1947, and the first radio-printer channels 10 years later. The computer era of Tanjug began in 1985.
In the conflict between Tito and Stalin in 1948, Tanjug played a very significant role, in an atmosphere in which the USSR and its allies from the Eastern Bloc tried to isolate Yugoslavia.
During the period of the Cold War and the division of the world into blocs, Tanjug positioned itself better and better in the world. This was primarily due to the role of the SFRY in the Non-Aligned Movement, where it appeared as one of the leaders. Such its role of political neutrality in a divided world contributed to the growth of trust in Tanjug. Information from the Yugoslav News Agency was used by the media from both the West and the East. On the other hand, the state took serious care of the development of Tanjug, invested in the development of the correspondence network and in the modernization of equipment. At the peak of its development, in the period from the sixties to the eighties of the last century, Tanjug grew into an agency that in 1968 was ranked as the eighth news agency in the world in terms of strength. In the mid-seventies, Tanjug was one of the most reliable news agencies in the world. Back then, it was not uncommon for him to overtake Reuters, AFP and AP with exclusive information. So, for example, Tanjug's correspondent from Vietnam, Mihailo Saranović, was the first to report on the fall of Saigon in 1975. That news was reported by all world agencies, citing Tanjug as the source (Briza, 2009).
In the late eighties and early nineties of the 20th century, however, Tanjug experienced a dramatic decline in every sense. With the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989, the bloc division of the world officially disappeared, thus the Non-Aligned Movement, one of whose leaders was the SFRY, drastically lost its importance. As a result, the importance of an agency like Tanjug in the world becomes much smaller.
And while the fall of the Berlin Wall is being celebrated in Europe, bloody wars are being prepared on the territory of the former Yugoslavia at the same time, which will significantly set back the media in this region, including Tanjug.
During the nineties, under the regime of Slobodan Milošević, Tanjug turned from a once respected world agency into a propaganda machine for the preparation of war. All state media in Serbia experienced a similar fate. During the wars in the territory of the SFRY, Tanjug violated the basic rules of agency reporting, because the most important characteristic - objectivity - disappeared from his news and reports. In addition, the infrastructure, which had been built for decades, was almost completely destroyed due to the bad management of various managements of the agency. Most of the correspondence network was also destroyed. However, the biggest price that Tanjug paid was the loss of clients' trust in the truth of the information. A once-respectable agency was smashed to smithereens, and the consequences of such business are still being felt to a good extent today (Briza, 2009).
Together with the disintegration of the SFRY into its constituent parts, Tanjug also disintegrated, so that the news agencies in the newly formed states were actually mostly created from Tanjug. In Croatia Hina (Croatian news agency), in Bosnia and Herzegovina Srna (Serbian news agency) and Fena (Federal news agency), in Montenegro Mina, in Slovenia Sta (Slovenian news agency), in Macedonia Mia (Macedonian news agency), in Kosovo - Kosova press.
Tanjug was never politically neutral. His advantage at that time was that he was the head of a pool of news agencies of non-aligned countries, so he had sources in the national agencies of many non-aligned countries, which were often closed to large agencies, and because, thanks to Yugoslavia's non-aligned position, he had easier access to both Washington and Moscow than, for example, AP had to Moscow and TASS to Washington (Briza, 2009).
( Dinko Gluhonjić: Discourse of agency journalism, Novi Sad 2011.)
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Moši Pijadije came up with an idea: it will be called Tanjug, which in its full name will say - Telegraph Agency of New Yugoslavia...
The telegraphic agency New Yugoslavia - Tanjug - was founded on November 5, 1943 in Jajce.
"Here is the new Yugoslavia Telegraph Agency...Tanjug reports, Tanjug reports..." were the words used by the newly founded agency for the first time on November 5, 1943.
"Tanjug's first task was to inform the world about everything that happened at the Second Session of AVNOJ in Jajce via radio-telegraph broadcasts."
It is recorded how Tanjug got its name, how the six-letter abbreviation came to be.
Many variants and ideas were considered. Some advocated that it be called the Telegraph Agency of Free Yugoslavia (TASJUG), the News and Telegraph Agency of New Yugoslavia (notasjug), or the Telegraph Agency of New Yugoslavia (TENANOJ). They say there were more ideas, but most abbreviations, when pronounced, sounded either pro-Chinese or pro-Soviet.
Moši Pijadije came up with an idea: it will be called Tanjug, which in its full name will say - Telegraph Agency of New Yugoslavia...
The founding of Tanjug was immortalized with a photo camera. The photo from November 5, 1943 shows the first editorial staff of the new agency: Moša Pijade, Vladislav Ribnikar, Lepa Pijade, Olga Humo and Jara Ribnikar. Ivo Lola Ribar, Vladimir Velebit and Dr. Ivan Ribar can also be seen on it.
This photo of the first, wartime newsroom of Tanjug was taken by Vili Šimunov-Barba. He immortalized that moment with his "Like". By the way, he worked for Tanjug and fought in the war. He died on May 26, 1944, during the German landing on Drvar.
The first director was Vladislav Rybnikar.
At one point, Tanjug had as many as 48 correspondents around the world, and was ranked among the 10 strongest world agencies and had a leading position in the pool of agencies of non-aligned countries, which was of great importance in the international circumstances of the time.
Such a high rating Tanjug deservedly was the first to report that the Vietnamese liberated Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) in 1975, that the invasion of Cuba began in 1961, and that the troops of the Warsaw Pact entered Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1972, he was the first to announce that Bobby Fischer had become the world chess champion, and he was the first to announce the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania in 1989.
Many well-known, most famous names of Yugoslav journalism passed through Tanjug, who will be remembered even outside these areas, because their texts were also published in foreign newspapers: Branko Bogunović, Momčilo Pudar, Mihailo Saranović, Mirko Aksentijević, Miloš Ćorović, Božidar Kažić, Borislav Lalić , Jovan Vavić...and many others.
(HOW THEY STARTED: Telegraph Agency New Yugoslavia... Tanjug reports, Tanjug reports, Serbian Television
