Hyderabad|India|August'2009: The three pillars of our democracy being highly ineffective, the press or the fourth estate is the only hope left for a potential superpower like India, said H K Dua, Editor in Chief of The Tribune, Chandigarh here on Monday.

Speaking on ‘The Future of Print Media in India’ at the 3rd Dr. C V S Sarma Memorial Distinguished Lecture organized at University of Hyderabad (UoH) by Department of Communication, he asserted that there is hardly any threat posed by television or new media to the Indian print media.

The anxiety about print media losing out to the media of the digital age is relevant in the western context. Some of us are just importing this fear into our country when, in reality, the scenario is very different here, said Dua. To start with, there is a large section of our population which is illiterate. For that entire chunk to catch up on literacy, let alone education, it will take three to four decades. Whenever they do, they will most likely start subscribing to a newspaper than get to the Internet right away because their peers and elders have been doing the same.

In India, the impact of digitalization has been that the quality of newspapers has considerably improved. If at all any publication has folded up, it is due to poor management or compromise on quality.

Television, in fact, whets the appetite for news in detail because print media has the scope to give more holistic knowledge to the media consumer. Newspapers have the time to assess and analyse before coming up with the content. “Newspapers still hold the laurel of showcasing the approximate truth, if not the perfect truth,” he said.

Most national Hindi television channels cater to the metro audiences because their advertising revenue lies there. However, print has more scope to address the areas that are largely ignored like education, health care and unemployment.

India has also a clear advantage of having multiple languages and active newspaper industries here. Current statistics indicate that our vernacular press has a faster growth rate than our English newspapers which is proof enough that there is scope and future for print media in India.

However, he agreed that it is not a rosy picture, thanks to the threats like commercialization and lack of social accountability, which print media faces from within. Compromising on quality with an eye on profits would sound the death knell for any medium. Relevance to the society is the one deciding factor that will help print media survive in the coming times.

With the Executive, the Judiciary and the Parliament failing desperately to fulfill the promises made by the Constitution to its citizens, the press now has a greater responsibility to ensure justice to all. This is required not just for the survival of print media, but our democracy itself. “We should not fail our people by not doing that,” H K Dua concluded.

Vice Chancellor of UoH, Prof. Syed E Hasnain presided over the event and felicitated the speaker. Prof. Vinod Pavarala, Dean, S N School also spoke.