AMN //

Information and broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley today said that the growth of print media was a favourable factor for democratic functioning of the country. He said this while releasing the 59th Annual report on print media compiled by Registrar of newspapers for India.

Mr Jaitley said, though the print media all over the world is shrinking, India stood as an exception from this trend. He said the print media has registered a growth of around 6 per cent and the daily news paper segment registered growth of more than 8 per cent. He opined that the reason for growth of print media in India is due to the drive of regional news and regional news papers.

Mr Jaitley also cautioned the public against the blurring of the distinction between news and views by few sections of media. He also said, due to the decreasing life span of news it self, the magazine journalism is coming down in India and it needs to revive it self in a new format.

The press in India report claimed that the total circulation of publications has crossed 50 crore copies per publishing day. Hindi publications continued to lead with over 25 crore copies followed by English with 6 crore copies and Urdu with just above 4 crore copies.

The report also acknowledges that out of more than 1 lakh registered news publications, less than a quarter of them have filed their annual statements with registrar of newspapers for India.