shri vinod sharma - Rajya Sabha

of feminist ideas and now they pass them as commercially viable ideas about a
working woman looking good, looking fair and lovely and doing certain things or a
diamond being a girl's best friend. Likewise, things like patriotism, things like certain
phrases, which have been co-opted from mainstream journalism are being blatantly
used to build what is politely termed as advertorials. I would not pick out any one
particular newspaper because we all know that when these things begin to happen,
they happen across the board because the mindset is if he will not, someone else
will. One reason which I feel, of late, bothering me also, for a long time, is that
slowly we are seeing the basic lines, the dividing lines between the editor and the
owner disappearing. In the last 10 years, practically, every editor of an English
Daily has become an owner and practically, every owner of a Hindi Daily has
become an editor. I was an exception, but notice the word 'was'. This is
happening and this is going to be there for some time to come. If the editor
becomes an owner and the owner becomes an editor then the dividing lines of
interest between English and Vernacular also go away. I have noticed under the
table exchange of notes and information. I mean, one wanted parity but certainly not
at this level. So these are the two things which I thought I must point out today.
Then the Chairman pointed out another very important factor, that is, lack of
training. We find that in the Annual Budget, I do not know about the English
language papers, the component for training journalists has been shrinking. Training
is very vital because the media is changing so fast. We will always need news
collectors. But newspapers are the only one who are actually paying for the news
that is being collected. The Internet is just happily taking away from the newspapers
whatever is the day's news and displaying it. They are not incurring much by way of
newsgathering cost. The cover price being low, the newspapers are in a corner and
they need money to cover up with this. I think there needs to be a free and frank
debate among owners/editors about how this is eventually going to, like an ingrown