INDIAN NEWS AGENCIES AT A GLANCE 1. Press Trust of India (PTI) by IENS on August 27, 1947. 2.

United News of India (UNI) by 8 major dailies on December 19, 1959. 3. Other news agencies.

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA (PTI) Meanwhile, the Indian and Eastern Newspapers Society (IENS) launched on August 27, 1947 its own agency, the Press Trust of India (PTI), but it began functioning from February 1, 1949. This news agency could only be formed due to the efforts of such stalwarts as Ramnath Goenka (Indian Express), Devda Gandhi (Hindustan Times), Kasturi Srinivasan (Hindu), C R Srinivasan (Swadesamitran), and S Sadanand (FPI) and with the blessing of Sardar Ballabhbhai Patel, who as a member for Homa and Information & Broadcasting in the Viceroys Executive Council in 1946 had told Reuters in plain terms, hand over to PTI and leave India. PTI began as a non- profit making enterprise. It arrived at a 3-year agreement with Reuters by which it took over the API and joined Reuters as an equal partner in the gathering and dissemination of world news. The agreement was that the PTI purchased Reuters news at Mumbai and distributed them to its subscribers in India. It also has arrangements with the AP and AFP for distribution of their news in India. APs photo and international commercial information are also distributed through PTI in India. It runs its news services in English and Hindi (Bhasha). Most newspapers, radio/TV channels in India and several others abroad, including BBC in London, are its subscribers. Its subscribers include 500 newspapers in India and scores abroad. It is also available on the Internet. With a staff of about 1,500, including 400 journalists, it has about 100 bureaus across the country and foreign correspondents in major cities of the world. Besides, its television wing PTI-TV does feature and undertake corporate documentaries on assignment basis. It is a leading participant in the Pool of News Agencies of the NonAligned Countries, Asia Pulse International and the Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies. UNITED NEWS OF INDIA (UNI) Another major effort for starting a national news agency was taken ten years after the launch of the PTI. Known as the United News of India (UNI), it was launched on December 19, 1959 established by Dr. B.C. Roy and sponsored by eight of the mainstream dailies- The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Hindu, Statesman, Hindustan Standard, Amrita Bazar Patrika, Deccan Herald, and Aryavarta (Hindi). It started functioning from March 21, 1961. Launched to infuse a sense of competition in news

collection and dissemination, it has emerged as a competitor to the PTI. It got organized under the stewardship of men like Kuldip Nayar and G.G. Mirchandani. In the early 1980s it began its full-fledged wire service Univarta and in June 1992 the first ever wire service in Urdu. Begun in 1961 with only 13 subscribers, it has today 825 subscribers in total. It has 70 offices in India and strength of more than 1000 persons, including 323 journalists. It is now the first Indian news agency to deliver its entire news services in English, Hindi and Urdu, as well as its photo service through the Internet. In a major step forward it has recently switched over to satellite technology for transmission of news. Its VSAT network, linking 44 units, provides it the capability to send news and photos. UNI takes world news from Reuters and German news agency Deutche Press Agency (DPA). It also has arrangements of exchange of news with UNB (Bangladesh), Xinhua (China), KUNA (Kuwait), GNA (Bahrain), QNA (Qatar), ONA (Oman), WAM (UAE), Anadolu (Turkey) and Ria Novosti (Russia).

OTHER AGENCIES Besides, several small news as well as feature agencies have been in recent years with the aim of filling in the many gaps in internal news coverage. Hindustan Samachar, set up in 1948 by S.S. Apte as a private limited company, was one of them. This agency worked to distribute news among newspapers through the Devnagri script. In the beginning telegrams were being distributed in Hindi, but when Devnagri teleprinters came, they were used. However, in 1957 the cost of transmission forced Apte to hand over the Hindustan Samachar to a cooperative of agencys workers in Delhi. When this agency merged with Samachar along with other news agencies following Emergency in 1975, it had by then 14 teleprinter circuits and supplied news to over 135 subscribers in Hindi, Hindi and eight regional languages. Similarly, another news agency Samachar Bharati with a view to establish a multilingual news agency was started on January 1, 1967. It had the blessing of people like Jai Prakash Narain. It met the same fate like that of Hindustan Samachar, and was merged in Samachar. Apart from wire agencies, there have been a large number of agencies that delivered news and features by hand or mail like the India Press Agency (IPA), Indian News and Feature Alliance (INFA), Press Asia International (PAI) and Feature and News Alliance (FANA). The history of news agencies in India would remain incomplete if there is no talk of its traumatic experience during the period of Emergency (1975-77). Then censorship of news applied to the agencies too. But soon the four news agencies- PTI, UNI, Hindustan Samachar, and Samachar Bharati- were merged to form a single agency following the

notice from radio network that the services of the agencies would be discontinued from February 1, 1976. Thanks to the end of the Emergency and formation of the Janta Party government on March 24, 1977, censorship was totally lifted and the trauma of the agencies was over. A committee headed by senior columnist Kuldip Nayar was set up to suggest how to undo the damage and make the news agencies function in a healthy and independent atmosphere. The committee recommended in August 1977 the formation of two separate agencies, Varta and Sandesh, ultimately leading to an international news agency, News India. However, the government instead decided to restore the status quo of the four news agencies.