Daily Times

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Firdous Ashiq Awan on Monday said that the government was considering making direct advertisement payments to newspapers.

“Without undermining the role of advertisement agencies and keeping in view the hardships faced by media houses, the government intends to make direct payments against government adds to news papers,” she said while talking to a Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) delegation.

She said that the government would soon launch a new media advertising policy to make it compatible with the modern requirements.

“All the stakeholders would be consulted for preparation of the new policy. The government is taking measures to resolve issues of the media houses so that the media workers were not affected and they were paid salaries timely.”

The special assistant said changes would be introduced in the role of the advertising agencies.

Firdous Ashiq Awan said the government would make efforts to create a comfort zone for the media industry in order to ensure a conducive environment for media workers.

She said that Prime Minister Imran Khan would come up to the expectations of the media community. “Media workers were close to the heart of the prime minister and during the present media situation he had sympathies with them. The government is desirous of settlement of all issues related to media through consultation and dialogue.”

She said that she had advised Principal Information Officer Tahir Khushnood to hold consultations with media organisations and media workers’ organisations and prepare strategy for resolution of their problems.

In this age of information, Firdous Ashiq Awan said social media was also a major source of information and a social media policy would also be formed after consultation with the stakeholders.

She said that in the past anti-PTI campaign was launched on the media by the previous government from public sector funds and ironically payment of that media campaign would have to be made by the present government.

She said that fake news was a big challenge and media help was required to overcome this problem. She said that breaking status quo was PTI’s narrative. “Maulana has called an APC to disclose his pain he is going through now,” she said.