PM calls upon media to consolidate India as plural, inclusive & progressive society Aug 24, 6:22 PM The Prime Minister has called upon the media to consolidate India as a plural, inclusive and progressive society. Dedicating the National Media Centre of the Press Information Bureau to the nation in New Delhi today he said the media is a reflection of the entire society and therefore it has a special role to assess and tackle the challenges brought about by socio-economic changes. Cautioning the media against turning the spirit of investigative journalism to a witch-hunt, he said personal prejudices must not replace the public good. Dr Singh called for mature and wise handling of social media to save innocent people from becoming victims of online propaganda campaigns. About the new media centre, the Prime Minister said the state-of-the-art facility is the latest step to address the diverse communcation needs of people. He said it will be a single window facility to fulfill the needs and requirements of the media. UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi said the government welcomes the watchdog role of the media and well-intentioned criticism, but there is a need to disseminate news truthfully and objectively. She also stressed on the need for space in public debates for conflicting and opposing points of view. Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said though the print media is witnessing closure of major publications globally, in India, the print industry is expected to clock 10 per cent growth rate and emerge as the 6th largest newspaper market in the world by 2017. He said the Union Cabinet has approved e-auction of 839 new FM radio channels in 94 cities. Tewari asked the MSME sector to leverage the opportunity of manafacturing set-top boxes to convert the ongoing cable TV digitisation into India story. AIR correspondent reports that the Media Centre is equipped with the latest technologies of information dissemination on the lines of media centres in some of the prominent capitals of the world such as Washington and Tokyo. It has a press conference hall which can accommodate 283 media persons, a briefing room for about 60 persons, 24 work stations for journalists, a library, media lounge and cafeteria. The press conference hall and media lounge are wi-fi enabled. Among the facilities provided at the centre are optic fibre internet backbone with redundancy, mini-data centre for application development and hosting webcast, including live webcast, Video feed to TV channels, IT facilities to media persons in work area and lounge, internet telephony and AV Video Wall.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:51:51 +0000
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