The government is mulling over "bringing in more" Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into television news channels, but has said that no specific timeframe has been assigned to it.
According to The Times of India, I&B minister of state Rajyavardhan Rathore, while speaking at a CII event on Monday, said, “Can't really say that we are going to make it happen in a given timeframe, but the very fact that we have started thinking about it, means we have started moving ahead with it."
The report states that the minister was referring to a comment made by an industry representative regarding shortage of funds available with news channels which often led to less investment in the training of journalists.
“Unfortunately, because of that, there is not much investment happening in training of the journalist. The quality of the journalist, the questions, the news that is being presented and we as a growing nation, we need to have journalists as fourth pillar of democracy (sic). We need to have very good quality news being given out. And therefore there is need to investment into the quality of journalism itself," he said.
Currently, 26% FDI is allowed in uplinking of news and current affairs TV channels.