Friday, May 26, 2006

Ha ha hee hee hoo hoo: Small/ medium newspapers want govt ‘protection’ now

For years — nope, make it decades — they slammed the powers that be for its supposedly dreaded “protection” policy for Indian inductry and manufacturers. Circa 2006, it’s newspapers, and news media, who want government protection. That surely is funny. Funnier even than BJP questioning the Punjab government’s inane decision to ban the Da Vinci Code.

Something called the Indian Federation of Small and Medium Newspapers (out here, they must even have an Association of People Who Fail to Crack the Across Section of Daily Crossword in Newspapers) has asked the government for “protection” and a comprehensive revision of the press and registration of books act. That’s a PTI report by the way.

“The media has evolved to a great extent in the past few years and it was becoming increasingly difficult for small and medium newspapers to exist in the changed scenario. So many of them have closed down owing to a financial crunch,” the federation’s president Pushpa Pandey said, if PTI is to be believed. The government, she says, “must provide necessary protection for their survival.”

Well and good. Only, don’t Indian manufacuters still require such “protection” from the big fish, like the “medium and small newspapers” need from the biggies like Times, HT, ABP, Manorama, Hindu and other groups?

Or did someone say each according to his ability, and each according to his strength of voice?

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