Page-price control must for newspapers: Vaidya

Nagpur, Dec 17 (UNI) Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue M G Vaidya today said the government must control the minimum price that newspapers can charge for a certain number of pages.

Speaking at a programme to mark the birth centenary of the late senior journalist B N Ekbote here, Mr Vaidya said the government must issue a page-price schedule to end the lopsided competition wherein large newspapers sold a 30-page issue at one rupee, while regional journals had to mark even a 12-page issue at Rs 2.50.

Such a schedule had been mooted several years ago when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, but nobody knew what happened of it, he said.

Large newspapers launched multiple editions not to cater to the needs of the readers, but with the sole motive of monopolising the market and earning huge profits, Mr Vaidya, who himself was the editor of the RSS mouthpiece 'Tarun Bharat' for some time, said.

Expressing concern at the entry of undesirable elements into the noble profession of journalism, Mr Vaidya described sting operations as a form of yellow journalism. Media organisations carried out sting operations not for themselves but for someone else, the former RSS spokesman said.

Describing the Press Council of India (PCI) as a toothless tiger, Mr Vaidya called upon the government to create a watchdog body to ensure that the media followed certain ethics even in this age of professionalism and cut-throat competition. Criticising newspapers for publishing provocative photographs of women in the name of glamour, Mr Vaidya said these were indecent if not outright obscene.

While conceding that it would be wrong to expect the idealistic journalism of the pre-independence era at present, Mr Vaidya said scribes must not forget the rich traditions of Indian journalism.

''They must work by the past, through the present to the future,'' he said.

In his speech, former Union Minister Vasant Sathe said there would have been no suicides by farmers in Vidarbha if the region had been a separate state. ''The government appears distant and aloof to the farmers in their present state of distress,'' Mr Sathe said.

Not a single suicide by a farmer had been reported from small states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal and Haryana, he said.

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