Alex Randall on Voice of America – from Russia and Ukraine – download

This is a live report – from Moscow. Alex had just been to visit ANI – the Agency for News and Information – a tiny news enterprise, the first free media business in the new Commonwealth of Independent States. The Soviet Union had ended and the giant TASS news agency was still delivering the “official” news to millions of people in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the nations that were part of the Soviet Empire. ANI was tiny – a handful of people, operating with dial-up 300 baud modems, cassette recorders and they were facing down TASS – armed only with news and information that did not have the government’s official imprint. ANI was the first breath of freedom of information in the former Soviet Union. “This is Alex Randall reporting on the freedom technologies on the Voice of America.”