Senior Congress leader and former information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari has alleged that the Centre has instructed the government-run Prasar Bharati to terminate the services of two news agencies -- Press Trust of India (PTI) and United News Of India (UNI) -- and replace them with the RSS-backed agency Hindustan Samachar.
However, Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar, in tweet today, denied the report and said that the "Prasar Bharati (DD and AIR) has ongoing subscriptions with both PTI and UNI."
In a series of tweets on Thursday, Tewari wrote: “Sources- Prasar Bharti being instructed to terminate the services of both PTI&UNI and replace with RSS backed Hindustan Samachar.ANI”.
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“Sources say both are paid 15. 75 cr PTI (9.15 CR) &UNI (6.9 cr.).Pressure being applied that both wire agencies only provide slanted feed,” he added.
The former minister also slammed the government for the idea of managing news feed out of wire agencies and controlling the “narrative”.
“Govt idea -Manage feed out of wire agencies you control narrative.If PTI, UNI&ANI do not fall in line Hindustan Samachar default option,” he wrote.
The PTI, founded in 1949, is the largest news agency in India. It commands 90% of new agency market share in the country.
Founded in 1961, the UNI too has several hundred subscribers across the nation.
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Last year, Hindustan Times reported that a new policy by the NDA government on print media advertisements had included Hindusthan Samachar as one of the three news agencies to which newspapers could subscribe, to score points to qualify for government ads.
Under the new policy, the government introduced a marking scheme to identify medium and large newspapers that could get its advertisements for the maximum impact. Newspapers have to score at least 45 out of 100, the newspaper reported.
"So there are marks for newspapers to get their circulation certified — such as subscribe to the employees’ provident fund, pay subscription dues to regulator Press Council of India, number of pages and so on. Newspapers that subscribe to any of the three news agencies, PTI, UNI or HS will get 15 points," HT reported.
Senior RSS pracharak Shivram Shankar Apte had started Hindusthan Samachar in 1948 as a multilingual agency.
