ABSTRACT
Soviet citizens were treated by the mass media like immature children. The glasnost media policy which amazed Soviet citizens and the outside world began only after the Twenty-seventh Party Congress and the abortive attempt to play down the Chernobyl catastrophe in the time-honored manner. Soviet citizens' confidence in their mass media increased; they preferred and prefer those journals which carry a great deal of information, information about things which formerly were taboo. The state news agency TASS is for the overwhelming part of Soviet mass media the most important, perhaps the only source for national and international information. In the context of glasnost TASS has improved its distribution of information. G. Shishkin, first deputy to the general director, has noted, "TASS correspondents always have considered themselves and still consider themselves soldiers in the front line of the ideological struggle".
