Question

Write an article on ‘Role of Newspaper in India’ in about 100 words.

Answer 1

Answer:

A newspaper is any printed periodical or work containing public news or comments on public news. Each newspaper tries to win the heart and loyalty of its readers through news and views, articles, pictures, poems, cartoons, editorials, presentation techniques and exclusive stories and news items. It censures the corrupt and the erring. It airs public grievances sad reflects public opinion through letters to the press. Napoleon feared four hostile newspapers more than a thousand bayonets. According to him “a newspaper is a grumbler, & censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations.” Gopal Krishna Gokhale considered the newspapers to be the rousers and the sentinels of the voice of people.

In India newspapers have a vital role to play and an important duty to perform, both as ‘vox populi’ (voice of the people) and as builder of public opinion. In this sense, it is the ‘people’s university’—book, pulpit, platform, forum, theatre and counselor, all in one. There is no interest—literary, social, political, religious, commercial, economic, scientific, technological, agricultural, mechanical, cultural, histrionic and so on and so forth—which is not covered “by the news­paper. There, a vast majority of the people in this country are still illiterate or at least unenlightened, even among the literate persons, about two-thirds do not read newspaper regularly. The Indian masses lack intellectual capacity and comprehension required in reading a newspaper. Approximately 17 percent of people read newspapers and out these dot even half of the people read editorials, comments or serious initial articles. The rest content themselves by reading the headlines or the topical news.