In late 1992, Belarus had 586 officially approved periodicals: 140 in Belarusian, 159 in Russian, and 241 in both Belarusian and Russian. Other publications combined Russian with another language or were published in English, Polish, or Ukrainian. The only daily newspaper published completely in Belarusian was Zvyazda (Star). Other dailies included Sovetskaya Belorussiya (Soviet Belorussia) and Vechernyy Minsk (Evening Minsk), published in Russian, and Narodnaya hazyeta (People's Newspaper), published in both Belarusian and Russian. Belarus's official news agency is BelTA (Belarusian News Agency), and the independent news agency is BELAPAN.

In the early to mid-1990s, Belarus had a high level of censorship in its media. Works no longer had to be approved before publication, but all nonfiction materials had to be presented to the Inspectorate for the Protection of State Secrets, a small government department subordinate to the Ministry of Information, which once had been a branch of Glavlit, the Soviet censorship body. Most publishing houses in the country were funded and controlled by the Ministry of Information.

Data as of June 1995