The Belarusian Private News Agency or shortly BelaPAN is a non-governmental independent Belarusian news agency, one of the main in the country. BelaPAN provides news on politics, economy, and sports from Belarus in Russian, Belarusian and English. The staff includes a wide net of reporters and correspondents. The company also runs projects related to advertising, elections monitoring, etc. BelaPAN owns the on-line newspaperBelorusskiye Novosti. Since 2004, BelaPAN is the only Belarusian representative in the CEE-BusinessLine. According to Media IQ in 2019, BelaPAN had the highest rating of being clear from state propaganda. The agency is characterized by a well-balanced, objective and impartial coverage of current events both on Eastern and Western political spheres.
History
Foundation and Early Years
The agency was founded on November 19, 1991, by the journalist Ales Lipay. In 1992 Irina Levshina joined the team, as of 2020 she is the editor-in-chief. In her recollections, BelaPAN’s first office was located at Брылеўскі blind alley in a small wooden building with an outhouse. The office had only one PC, one fax machine and three work desks. Apart from Levashova and Lipay, the staff included three more employees, they printed the news and on foot brought them to editors offices of Minsk newspapers. Gradually the company grew and in 1996 it rented the office from BelTA. In the early 2000s, it launched Отдыхай newspaper, but soon the project had to be shut down due to low profitability. By 2001 six of nine Minsk FM radio stations worked on a news feed, provided by BelaPAN. In 2002 the agency included analytical, advertisement, publishing, social, and web design departments. On the 1st of 2002 BelaPAN launched the web newspaper ‘Belorusskiye novosti’. It became the first in ByNet and Belarus. Unlike paper ones, it published the news to the day. In 2007 the separate editors office for multimedia was launched, in July of the same year first infographics was introduced. By 2008 at least 100 news articles were published in BelaPAN's feed, the company had a monitoring service and an advertising agency. Through the years, BelaPAN’s journalists were numerous times arrested,, questioned in the state General Prosecutor’s Office, obstructed in the discharge of professional duties.
2010s
BelaPAN’s website was hacked on October 24, 2011, the attackers left Lukashenko’s portrait on the main page. BelaPAN and Naviny domains were blocked on December 20, 2014. On October 3, 2015, BelaPAN’s server experienced a significant DDoS attack after publishing materials on the ‘Pray for Belarus’ action. Other blockages occurred on March 27, 2015, and February 15, 2016. At that time several important political events took place: private entrepreneurs meeting at the Oktyabrskaya Square, in Brussels the EU Council meeting discussed the possibility of lifting the sanctions on Belarusian officials Though the site's blockage could be done only by order of the government, officially it was named hackers' attack. Simultaneously several other independent media portals were blocked.
BelTA case
Several journalists and the editor-in-chief of BelaPAN were arrested for alleged stealing of news from a paid subscription of a government-owned BelTA agency. BelaPAN’s editor-in-chief Levshina was held in a temporary holding facility for three days. Human rights activists, BAJ and OSCE members unanimously called the BelTA case an intimidation to all the independent media, and the reaction of local authorities to be highly disproportionate.
