Freedom to Libel

Like any other news service, Tass, the Russian agency, has reporters in most world capitals. There the resemblance stops. Tass's chief clients are Russian newspapers, its reporters are frequently Communists, and they often seem more interested in keeping the Kremlin in formed than they do about making a Pravda deadline. For this reason, their presence at off-the-record press conferences has sometimes worried officials of Western nations who prefer to keep their confidences off-the-record from Moscow.

For anyone still in doubt as to the real status of Tass, a London court made a clarifying decision last week. Vladimir Krajina, a refugee Czech now living in London, had filed a libel suit against Tass for charging in a news bulletin distributed to London newspapers that he had betrayed British paratroopers to the Gestapo. The Court of Appeal dismissed Krajina's complaint. Reason: on the testimony of the Russian ambassador himself, Tass was an official organ of the Soviet state; as such, it was entitled to full diplomatic immunity, even when it published a libel.

In short, the representatives of Tass were not primarily newsmen; they were Soviet agents.

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