Problems of Newspaper Industry in Pakistan

PROBLEMS OF NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY IN PAKISTAN

Problems of newspaper industry in Pakistan can be categorized in to two main parts:-

 Internal Problems
 External Problems

INTERNAL: Internal problems comprises on the newspaper organizational problems. Following are the main problems:

o Workload: Workload problem means the huge work on the organization. Any organization which has the huge work need to be employed a staff to meet the requirement. There is shortage of staff.

o Non Professional: Non professional staff is also the burden on any organization. There are non professional staff who can not meet the requirement as they are not expert.

o Press Laws: Print and Publication laws are the major problem of the industry. There is laws who has to be amended and needs to be implemented.

EXTERNAL: External problems are those who directly or indirectly affect the industry, following are the main problems:

o Government: Government plays vital role in the industry. Its policies are affecting the industry.

o Advertisement: Un-equal distribution of advertisements. Advertisements are the main source of income of newspaper. All the newspapers depends on the advertisements. The government issues advertisements through its department Press Information Department (PID) which give the advertisement to the newspaper. There is a gap and monopoly to distribute the advertisement. On the other hand there is no fair policy to distribute the advertisement.

o Pressure Groups: Pressure groups means Political, Social, Commercial and Religious. These groups have a prominent role in the fluctuation of newspaper society. Sometime, political influenced in a negative sense sometime commercial. So these groups are the main factor and problem of the news industry.

o Newsprint: Newspaper material (newsprint) is the main component which is imported from abroad. The government imposed the taxes on the import of that. Because of these taxes the price of newspaper cannot be remain constant and the owners has to increase the price as they has to meet their expenses and cost.

o Import Duties: It is unfortunate that in Pakistan there are lots of taxes, duties imposed. Government imposing the duties, excise, taxes on the import and export. If this will continue then the time will come when we will not be able to import things and there will be shortage of the things which are not available in our country. Import duties on printing material and machinery etc are the major problems of the industry.
SOLUTION:
In my point of view, the problems of industry can be reduce or completely solve. The thing is that the industry owners should be united. They think individually and the above factors get advantage. And the other thing is there should be printing laws which should be implemented on all the industry without the difference of major or minor group. Third suggestion is government should take a step to stabilize the industry through its fair advertisement distribution. The advertisement should be fair and according to the industry circulation. In this scene the organization who are publishing the newspaper have to be fair. They should submit and work honestly and pay taxes as per laws. Fourth thing is organizational training, the industry has to conduct training programmes and other initiatives to train their people/staff, so that the efficiency of staff and lack of perfection and workload factors can be removed.
As far as printing items ie. paper, machinery, taxes etc are concerned these can be meet by the government level. Government should discuss these matter to industry and give them some extra favour in importing the items.