Ashwini Vaishnav
New Delhi: Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnav, while addressing the National Press Day celebrations through video conference, highlighted India’s vibrant and diverse media ecosystem. He discussed the struggle and contribution of the press during the freedom struggle and then the Emergency and also highlighted the challenges of digital media. Ashwini Vaishnav in her address said, “Let us remember the contribution of the press in the two struggles for freedom from oppressive forces in the last century. First, the long-term struggle to gain independence from British rule. Second, the struggle to preserve democracy during the emergency imposed by the Congress government.
Ashwini Vaishnav said, “We should not forget these struggles, because history repeats itself and those who forget history have to face the same challenges again. This is why the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to celebrate June 25 as ‘Constitution Murder Day’.” Ashwini Vaishnav said that India has a vibrant press. It is vocal. There are opinions from all sides in this. Some are very strong. Some are centrists. He said that there are more than 35,000 registered daily newspapers in the country. There are thousands of news channels. And the rapidly expanding digital ecosystem is reaching crores of citizens through mobile and internet.
Major challenges facing media and society
Highlighting the major challenges facing media and society, Vaishnav said that traditional media is suffering losses on the economic side as news is rapidly shifting from traditional to digital mediums. He said, “In traditional media, the investment that goes into building a team of journalists, training them, creating editorial processes and methods to check the authenticity of news, and taking responsibility for the content, is huge in terms of both time and money.” It is very big, but these platforms are becoming irrelevant because the intermediate media have a huge advantage over them in terms of dissemination capacity.” The Union Minister said, “This issue needs a solution. The hard work that traditional media platforms put into creating content should be compensated through fair payment.”
Rapid spread of fake news and rumors
Vaishnav said that the rapid spread of fake news and rumors is also a big challenge before the media and society. He said, “This is not only a big threat to the media, as it reduces its credibility, but is also fatal for democracy. Since intermediate platforms do not verify what is posted, a large amount of false and misleading information can be found on practically all platforms. “Even people who are supposed to be conscious citizens fall into the trap of such misinformation.”
