The Bulgarian Telegraph Agency Celebrates its 120th Birthday

The Bulgarian Telegraph Agency is 120 years old. It was founded in 1898 by the decree of Prince Ferdinand. The Agency is the main and most modern source of information for the print and electronic media, the state institutions and the non-governmental organizations in Bulgaria.

BTA is one of the first news agencies in Europe and the world. It is among the ten agencies that operated in the 1890s, along with Havas (established in 1835, predecessor to Agence France-Presse, which was set up in 1944), Reuters (established 1851) and Press Association (1868), the Danish Ritzaus Bureau (1866), the Norwegian Telegraph Bureau (1867), the Hungarian Telegraph Agency (1880), the Lehtikuva Finnish Telegraph Bureau (1887), the Swiss Telegraph Agency (1894), and Harbour News Association (est. New York, 1848, ultimately becoming Associated Press). Unlike most of its 19th century counterparts, BTA was and has always been a state-owned institution.