New Delhi, Nov 4: Vice President Hamid Ansari today said that extensive malpractices of “paid news and coverage packages” was detrimental to the Indian democracy and it has ‘damaging influence on press functioning as well as free and fair election process’.
 Addressing a workshop on “Parliament and Media” he said that paid news could cause “double jeopardy” to the Indian democracy. The Press Council of India had already issued guidelines to media asking them not to “accept or publish any advertisement at the cost of public exchequer regarding achievements of the party or a government in power”.
 The workshop was attended by eminent journalists including N Ram, Mrinal Pande, Vinod Sharma, Vijay Naik and several others. Vice Chairman of the Rajya Sabha K Rehman Khan presided over it.
 The Vice President said that in today’s world demands of professional journalists are carefully balanced with the interests of owner and stakeholders of media companies and their cross media interests. The interplay of these conflicting demands is evident and subject of public debate.
 Ansari said that in the last few years India has witnessed amazing growth in the media industry. Huge investments have been made in it. New technologies and products such as IPTV, mobile TV and community radio have emerged alongside new media genres such as reality TV and advertorials. The phenomenon of convergence between news media, entertainment and telecom has meant that the demarcation between professional journalistic output, public relations, advertising and entertainmeny is rapidly eroding.
 Mirnal pande said that language press has emerged stronger in the past one decade. All the ten leading newspapers in the country are either in Hindi, Tamil, Malyalum, Bengali and other languages. This shows that vernacular press has greater reach.

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