New Delhi: Prasar Bharati, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that runs All India Radio and Doordarshan, has courted controversy after it replaced Press Trust of India (PTI) with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) backed Hindusthan Samachar as its exclusive news wire service.
According to a Prasar Bharati official, the contract for Hindusthan Samachar was merely a renewal since they were already “associated with the ministry since 2020”.
The public service broadcaster, the official said, needed a “versatile news wire that could provide information in more than two to three languages” and added that this was “the only reason PTI was replaced”. Hindusthan Samachar operates in 11 languages, including Assamese, Odia and Nepali.
Reports suggested it was involved with Prasar Bharati since 2017 when it provided services for free. It started receiving several central government advertisements once Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
Hindusthan Samachar — founded in 1948 by Shivram Shankar Apte, a senior RSS member and co-founder of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, along with the RSS ideologue M.S. Golwalkar— is expected to provide 100 news stories every day to Prasar Bharati, which would include 10 national stories and 40 “local” ones in regional languages.
The move, however, has not gone down well with the Opposition, who claim that this will “silence dissent” and lead to “saffronisation of news”
The move by @prasarbharati to make Hindustan Samachar, a news agency with links to Sangh Parivar, the sole news source for @DDNational & @AkashvaniAIR is an attempt to saffronize news and silence dissent.
Secular and democratic forces must unite to resist such communal schemes. pic.twitter.com/rZ7zmMNOj8
— CPI(M) Kerala (@CPIMKerala) February 26, 2023
According to former Information and Broadcasting minister Manish Tewari, many saw this coming since 2017, when Hindusthan Samachar started its journey with Prasar Bharati.
“It was a known fact around 2017 that PTI’s services would be terminated, and every other reason given is an excuse. The fundamental question is how can a public broadcaster whose autonomy was sought to be ensured by an act of the Parliament take content from a news agency which has a clear and overt ideological bias? Irrespective of which side the ideology leans on,” the Congress leader told ThePrint.
On 15 February, Prasar Bharati renewed the contract for Hindusthan Samachar for two more years ending a tumultuous relationship with PTI. Reports over the past three years indicated that the state broadcaster was ‘upset’ with PTI’s coverage, “which did not seem to be within the purview of India’s national interest”.
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‘Some want to give this a political colour’
Prasar Bharati’s CEO Gaurav Dwivedi said the contract with Hindusthan Samachar had merely been renewed and all due procedures were followed.
“The selection for wires at Prasar Bharati has been done as per the provisions of the rules and regulations and it was done to ensure people are always up to date with authentic information,” Dwivedi told ThePrint.
According to the Prasar Bharati official quoted earlier in the story, there was a dire need for a news wire that could provide more diversity in terms of languages. “We needed the wire services to be more versatile with languages so that our operations are smoother. The contract with Hindustan Samachar was an old one (since 2020) that got renewed. Their wires existed for the past few years so there is a lack of clarity on why this has become a controversy. Maybe some people want to give this a political colour,” the official said.
The official added that they had to translate news items from wires in different languages manually and said that “if a wire service helps us, we will choose it.” “Moreover, we needed more options for languages, and since no other wire service offered a range, Hindusthan Samachar was the best option,” he said.
For Tewari, the question will be on the plurality of the broadcasting space. “Essentially, this move will ensure the plurality of the broadcasting space will be in negation of the reason why Prasar Bharati was made autonomous in the first place,” Tewari told ThePrint.
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Prasar Bharati vs PTI
The relationship between Prasar Bharati and PTI began to sour in 2020, during the Indo-Chinese standoff, when then-CEO Samir Kumar stated that the Ladakh coverage by the news wire was “not in the national interest” and added that it was time the state broadcaster reviewed its relationship with PTI.
The problem came to the fore when PTI interviewed Vikram Misri, the Indian ambassador in Beijing, who had made contradictory statements on India’s stand on the Indo-Chinese standoff, which differed from PM Modi’s.
The other controversial interview that widened the chasm between the agencies was of Sun Weidong, China’s ambassador to India, who had said that the ball was entirely in India’s court since it was, according to him, the Indian side that had crossed the Line of Actual Control and sparked provocation.
Finally, in October 2020, Prasar Bharati decided that it will stop its subscriptions with PTI and United News of India (UNI) due to ‘pricing issues’.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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