ABSTRACT
Estonia is a small Baltic country (population 1.34 million) located on the eastern border of the European Union. The tradition of foreign correspondents (FCs) is not very old in Estonia because during the period in which Estonia belonged to the Soviet Union (1944–1991), the Communist Party and censorship institution, Glavlit, strictly controlled all foreign correspondents working in the Soviet Union, and FCs were only infrequently allowed to work on a republic’s level (Veskimägi, 1996; Vihalemm & Lauristin, 1997). After the restoration of Estonia’s independence, the changes at the end of 1980s attracted much interest from the rest of the world. The first foreign correspondents officially moved to Estonia after the nation acquired its independence from the Soviet Union, and the first international press cards were given to correspondents from Finnish Yleisradio and the Russian daily Moskovskie Novosti by the Estonian Foreign Ministry in October 1991 (Nõmmik, 2013). During the first year of independence, about 40–50 FCs were active in Estonia, with most of them hailing from European countries like France, Poland, Sweden, Germany, and Estonia’s neighbouring countries, but there were also residing correspondents from Mexico and the United States. This was probably the period that saw the highest number of FCs working in Estonia; nowadays, usually no more than 30 FCs are on the list of accredited journalists, and not all of them reside in the country.
