The Baltic News Service (BNS) is the largest news agency operating in the Baltic states. Founded in April, 1990, by a group of students (the founding CEO was Allan Martinson), it sought to inform foreign correspondents in Moscow of developments in the Baltic states' struggles for independence from the Soviet Union. Within a few months, it had been recognized by numerous Western media sources.
Today, BNS is a holding company for separate organizations in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. BNS is wholly owned by Alma Media, a Finnish media group.
BNS disseminates news in five languages via the internet and by other means. Subscribers include media, financial, industrial, and government institutions in the Baltic states. BNS also collaborates with Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and Interfax.
Famous quotes containing the words news and/or service:
“The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)