Cong mulls media blitzkrieg; to set up own houses

Hyderabad: As the general elections are round the corner, with an objective to reach the people through the mass media, political parties have been launching their own media houses and the Telangana Congress will soon join the bandwagon.

According to party sources, the Telangana Congress will launch dailies in English, Hindi and Telugu in Telangana. The launch may take place in the next year. The AICC is trying to launch the Congress’s dailies in Telangana by the time of the next general elections.

The Congress has already launched English, Hindi and Kannada editions of National Herald in Bengaluru. The Karnataka Congress will be entrusted with the responsibility of bringing Telangana edition of National Herald in three languages. The National Herald has been launched recently in Chhattisgarh. Congress leaders said owning a media house had become a must for the political parties these days. As the other main political parties were having own media houses, the Congress too should have one, they said.

The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has Telugu daily Namasthe Telangana and English daily Telangana Today. It is also contemplating to bring an Urdu edition of Namasthe Telangana. The YSRCP has been running Sakshi Telugu daily and AIMIM has been publishing Eitemad, an Urdu daily.

After the formation of Telangana, left parties, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPIM) launched their own dailies, Mana Telangana and Nava Telangana respectively.

The ruling party owns a TV news channel T News and Congress MLC K Rajagopala Reddy launched TV news channel, Raj News. Telangana CPM has been running a news channel, 10 TV, and the CPI is running 99 TV channel.

Against this backdrop, the Congress strongly felt the need to have its own media house to corner the government and also to spread its message among the people and the cadre. The Congress is of the opinion that several news channels and dailies have not been giving much importance to the party activities.

Leader of the Opposition K Jana Reddy, while talking to the media informally recently, said that news channels and dailies had been ignoring the main Opposition party in Telangana Assembly. Their speeches would find no place in the dailies and channels.

He said the dailies and channels were not analyzing the issues and not reporting the failures of the government. They had already been struggling to get time to speak in the Assembly and if media ignored how the Opposition could take its message to the people, he lamented.

Of late, the Congress is putting focus on the media and has been using social media extensively. Its presence could be felt on Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and other social media platforms.

However, it also wants to take the help of mass media which would take the messages to the people in a better manner and has decided to launch the dailies in Telangana.