Another News Channel emerges from Northeast India
Nava Thakuria
July 17, 2011
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, and 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!
ENDS