News Agencies in India

The birth of news agency in India dates back to 1908

when the idea of an Indian agency first dawned on the mind
of Keshab Chandra Roy, a political correspondent stationed
in Calcutta, the then capital of India. He sought the
cooperation of Everett Coats of the Statesman and Edward
Buck of Reuter to create a pool that would serve the
newspapers using multiple telegraph. Actually it was this
pooling arrangement that shaped the birth of the India's
first news agency. A few Indians also extended their
cooperation to Mr. Roy in starting an agency that was
primarly designed to cater the needs of Indian newspapers.
The Indians were Ushanath Sen in Calcutta, Amulya
Chandra Chatterjee in Bombay and B. P. Ghosh in Madras.
Thus started the first news agency in India, the Associated
Press of India in 1909. The birth of API attracted the
attention of Reuter who formed a subsidiary Eastern News
Agency in 1910 for expanding their activities in India.
API brought a significant change in the content of
Indian newspapers. Previously the newspapers' content
was confined to local news tainted with
The birth of API changed the scenario
personaljournalismn.
news of different parts of the
by providing diverse
country. The amount of news
coverage had greatly increased and the diversity of the
content made the presentation
very much attractive.
Another important as well as remarkable
introduction of objectivity which had change
was the
replaced personal
journalism in order to make the news content much more
credible and adoptable to meet
the demands or
newspapers.
Though the influence of API was rapidly increasing, 1
existence was at stake as Keshab
Chandra developeu
differences with his European partners BuckRoy and Coates.
220
 News
Agencies in India
1919 Mr.
In Roy agreed
to sell the
221
dition that the name of API
condition that
would agency to Reuter on
the be
accepted proposal and took over the maintained. Reuter
andmerged it with its owenership
THll his death in 193I Mr. subsidiary Eastern News of API
r K. C. Roy the Roy was the director Agency.
of this
responsibility
nt to Mr. Ushanath Sen who of running the agency. agency
agency in the
subsequent years.
very efficiently guided the
It was felt in the
backdrop of rapid spread of Indian
1ationalism that API under the
foreign agency, could not management Reuter, a
of
movements across the
adequately cover the nationalist
the Free Press
country. So in 1927 S. Sadanand of
Journal founded another news agency Free
Press of India in order to fill in the
dearth of nationalist
coverage at that time. The main objective of the Free Press
of India was to supply news on nationalist
movements and
the items were connected with Indian
nationalism. Very
soon F.P.I. became a
strong competitor of API by extending
its international coverage. But with in a few
years it faced
crisis because of its involvement with the
starting of
newspapers from different parts of the country.
Other newspapers could not welcome this venture which
was supposed to put pressure on them. Meanwhile F.P.I.
also became a victim of the oppressive measures taken by
the British Government that demanded high penalty from
the
agency for publishing seditious report. But Indian
newspapers did not come forward to support the F.P.I. and
eventually F.P.I. was closed dowm in 1933. Another news
1933
ECncy the United Press of India started functioning in
Ln most of the staff of the Free Press of India.
n1937 there was a remarkable change in tne
Associated PresS o
l o n of Indian news agencies.
India ESorted to use telegraph links that connectea
the pace of
provincial towns
wns and this link
had increased
the entire
disseminat
issemi
countr
of inform mation. Within
network
few years
link and
of telegraph
came under the
 and Mass Communication
222 Introduction to Journalism

thus the entire process of information network hu

he
agencies was revolutionaised.

World War II and the freedom struggle increased the

scope of national and international news. People of India
became much more curious to know developments of th
war fronts, activities of Subhas Chandra Bose in the far
east and the dramatic developments of the freedom
movemments in India. The scope of functioning of news
agencies was widened and a keen sense of nationalism
among Indian newspapers developed to break the monopoly
of Reuter over news flows from and to India. Arthur Moore,
the first President of the Indian and Eastern
newspapers
Society persued vigorously Reuter to transfer proprietorship
of API to Indian newspapers. This was followed
up by others
and after wide negotiations spread over
many years, the
Press Trust of India was
went into operation from
registered in August 1947 and
February1, 1949.
PTI
PTI was formed
cooperative trust owned by Indian
as a
It took over the
newspapers. operations of API under a four
year partnership agreement with Reuter.
ended in 1953 and a contractual The partnership
between Reuter and PTI that relationship was made
act as buyer and seller.
these two
organisations would
Press Trust of India is at
news agency in the present the biggest national
30 bureaus in 1949country with diversified activities. From
PTI has now
bureaus. It had its expanded to almost 100
correspondents at the UN headquarters,
Moscow, London, Kathmandu
everyday 7 lakhs words and and Colombo. It transmits
services to its subscribers. provides round the cloc
news
At present PTI is a computeriseu
agency that transmits news at high speed with
help of modem. It has also uled
Bhasa which is launched a new wing cale
PTI was also designed to send news in Hindi
involved in languag
Doordarshan and the videopreparing video programmes lfor
wing was called PTI TV.
 News Agencies in
India
223
UNI
The rst Press mision was of the view
he at least two news that there
should
agencies each
the other and also acting asa
the corrective to competing with
the other. The
Indi ewspapers shared the view of the
came
commission and
forward together to start another news
agency. Thus
Jnited News of India was formed in March 1961.
The UNI
The
took over teleprinter machines of the defunct UPI.
has 75 bureaus scattered over the entire country. ItNow it
ae a often
challenge
to the PTI andmaintains a competitive
atmosphere in which agency journalism in India is
improving its performances.
The UNI has also diversified its functions with the
launching of specialized services like agriculture, economy
and commerce and starting of Hindi language service under
the name of UNIVARTA. It has also collaboration
arrangements with AP, AFP and DPA.
Other Agencies
The first news agency in Inidan languages was registered
in 1948. It was Hindustan Samachar started as a private
limited company by S. S. Apte. It was India's first multi-
and
lingual agency. In 1957 the agency was reorganised
became a of the workers. In 1975 it had
cooperative society
21 bureaus offering services in Indian languages.
Samachar
The second language news agency was
its operation
Bharati which was formed in 1966 and began
over the country
in 1967. In 1975 it had 13 bureaus all
news. According
and had collaboration with UPI for foreign
to the Second Press Commission,
Samachar Bharati became
state
sector company in 1970 when five
Virtualy public
a
of its shares.
8overnments bought more than fifty percent

Samachar PTI, UNI,

four news agencies,
the
uring the emergency, Samachar Bharati were mergea
H
lndusthan Samachar and
 Introduction to Journalism and Mass Communication
224

into a single agency

called
har +that started
Samachar
1976. The new
functioning from February
a government grant of half a million rupeesagency
in 1976received
facilitate its operation. The Janata government thoe to
that came
into office in 1977 hapPPY with the forced one
was not
of Samachar. A committee was appointed to studun
recommend a desirable structure of news agencies. The f and
our
agencies resumed their erstwhile functioning separatel
from 14 April, 1978. ely
News Pool
In the seventies, opinion gathered momentum within
the developing world in favour of bilateral, multilateral,
regional as well as international cooperation in the sphere
of news exchange. Thus the Non-Aligned News
Agencies
Pool (NANAP) was created in 1975. The leaders of the non
aligned nations were of the view that an alternative
arrangement was needed to counter the dominance of
western news agencies like Reuter,
AP, AFP, and UPI. So
they took initative for establishing an agency of themselves.
The Pool was a voluntary effort on the
part of non-aligned
countries to promote flow of news within the
nations. But in reality the pool never developing
it was
suceeded in the way
designed. Now the non-aligned movement isinot
strong enough to provide the effective support for its
operation and consequently it has almost become a
body. defunc
Evaluation
Indian news
agencies though very effective in their
operation, particularly in
supplying
subscribers have failed to meet the spot news to r

of
the
language newspapers, because theincreasing demai
mostly supplied in English agency serV of
language journalism is language. When the itscop
desirable to depend expanding rapidly, 15 not

only on English language a8 cy

 News Agencies in India
225
.Rut this
service. But is happening in India with
virtually no
option for the. language ewspapers for getting news in
Indian languages.
Ror covering international neWs, for covering
even
neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka and Afghanisthan, Indian newspapers are still
very much dependent on the big foreign agencies like A.P.,
Reuters and AFP. Few years back the devastating
earthquake in Nepal was reported in Indian papers quoting
the AP and Reuters. In case of Bangladesh cyclone in 1992
Indian papers were heavily dependent on AP and AFP. Such
dependence proves the limitations of national agencies in
covering important news. The basic reason of their
limitations is lack of infrastructure which is needed for
infrastructure
running news agency efficiently. For building
money is needed and the Indian agencies suffer basically
accrued is not
Irom having enough fund. The revenue

suficient to run their operation at optimum level. in the

highly
is related to the
age of technology efficiency
new
these
the organisation. But despite
revenue capacity of remarkable good
mitations PTI and UNI are still in a
particularly about
POSition to serve the Indian newspapers,
national affairs.