Need to update govt policies with changing dynamics of print media, says Naidu

In the context of government’s fairness jibe to the media organisations that sometimes criticise its policies and decisions, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu clarified that the Centre always welcomes the criticism, but doesn’t allow rumours.

While speaking at the launch of Government of India Calendar 2017 and Press in India Report 2015-16, Naidu said that the phenomenal growth of the print media sector has mandated changes in the print media policy and guidelines in the past years.

“The need to update policies keeping in mind the changing dynamics in the print media sector has resulted in evolving a robust mechanism for RNI to maintain an updated list of publications in the country,” he said.

“This mechanism also facilitated weeding out illegal publications that may prove to be an irritant to law enforcement agencies,” he further added.

On the New Print Advertisement Policy framework, the minister said: “It provided for circulation verification procedure for empanelment of newspapers and journals with DAVP. The procedure involved certification by RNI if circulation exceeds 45,000 copies per publishing day.”

The minister also gave a broad analysis of the general trend of the Indian Print Media based on the Annual Report by RNI. On this context, Naidu said: “The Indian print industry continued its growth story at a steady rate of 5.13 per cent over the previous year. A total of 5,423 new publications has been registered in 2015-16 with the total number of Registered Publications as on 31 March, 2016, standing at 1,10,851.”

Giving the circulation-wise details, he added that Hindi publications continued to lead with 31,44,55,106 copies per publishing day, followed by English with 6,54,13,443 copies and Urdu with 5,17,75,006 copies per publishing day.