Another News Channel emerges from Northeast India

Another new television channel ‘News Network’ is emerging from the northeastern part of India. Scheduled to be launched in the first half of August, 2011, News Network will be the eighth electronic media organization in Guwahati, the virtual capital of Northeast India. The new channel will try to cater the need of the entire populace of Assam in addition to thousands of non-resident Assamese families around the world through cable and internet communication, informed Rana Zaman, the CMD of News Network.

The office of the channel is located at Ulubari in the city, where from it will beam news bulletins from early morning to late evening. Moreover, the viewers will get news updates for 24 hours a day. News Network will be guided by an Advisory Board comprising of some distinguished personalities from different field of activities. The Advisory Board will keep an eye to all programmes telecast by the channel and provide feedbacks with their conscience.

The editor of the channel assured that News Network will try its best to present the news with utmost sincerity, impartiality and credibility. More over insisting on factual reality in the news content and disseminating the information with ethical norms will be its motto, said its editor N. Thakuria.

The trouble-torn Northeast India, which is surrounded by Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet (China), Burma and Bangladesh had witnessed the emergence of television channel in Nineties and soon the electronic media witnessed a boom. Today the region with a population of over 55 million supports almost hundred local cable channel and most of them air news and other entertaining programmes in different languages. The history of mainstream journalism in the region is more than 150 years old. Amid troubles in the region, the print media witnessed a rapid boom in Nineties. Today Guwahati witnesses the publication of more than 30 morning daily newspapers, half of those are in the Assamese language. Most of the dailies are published from more than one center.

Similarly the era of satellite news channel in the region started with NE Television. Soon more satellite news channels namely News Live, DY365, NewsTime Assam, Frontier TV and Prime News joined the list. All these channels beam news in various languages like Assamese, English, Hindi, Bengali with some dialects of the region. Of course the response to the news channels from the audience is divided. While a section believes that the local channels are helping in disseminating the information very quickly to the viewers the other section argues that those channels are practicing bad standard of journalism. Many times, they claim, some channels cross the border of sensitivity, impartiality and the most needed social commitment!

with regards,

Nava Thakuria

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