Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore today said the centre has taken initiatives to give "importance" to the regional media by holding informal interaction with them.
"Modi government has given importance to regional press and media ever since the elections. As compared to the UPA government in 2012-13, the number of press conferences held in 2014-15 in the present government rule is higher," he said while speaking at an award ceremony of Jawaharlal Darda Smruti Lokmat Patrakarita Puraskar here.
"This shows that there is ample interaction of the government with journalists," he said.
The minister said the regional media has been given importance by the government.
Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said "everyone, irrespective of his field of working, should work with honesty."
Veteran journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik said the journalist should not compromise with their principles and work impartially and in an unbiased manner.
"The journalists should be independent, they should not associate themselves with anyone.
"It was me and Baba Ramdev who first supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi two years back but everyone knows that I write honestly (irrespective of any influence)," he said.
Chairman of Lokmat Media pvt ltd and RS MP Vijay Darda expressed concern over commercialisation of news papers and media as a whole.
He said that newspapers should compete in news only.
"Competitions should be only of news and nothing else," he said.
The guests on the occasion felicitated selected journalists with Freedom Fighter Jawaharlal Darda Smruti Lokmat Patrakarita Puraskar and Ashok Gehlot Lokmat Mitrata Puraskar.
Freedom Fighter Jawaharlal Darda Smruti Lokmat Patrakarita Puraskar was given to local journalists Vinod Bharadwaj, Chandra Mehta, Surendra Jain Parasa, Rakhi Jain and Amrita Maurya while Prakash Bhandari, Chiranjeev Joshi, Mahesh Sharma, Vijay Trivedi and Padam Mehta were felicitated with Ashok Gehlot-Lokmat Mitrata Puraskar award.
Vishvwanath Sachdeva, Editor of Navneet-Mumbai was also felicitated.
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