Domestic media welcomes FDI cap for digital news

NEW DELHI: Domestic media entities have welcomed the decision to bring digital news media under the ambit of the FDI policy regime. The Union Cabinet had decided on Wednesday to cap the FDI limit for “uploading/streaming of news and current affairs through digital media” at 26% — the same as for print media.Indian Newspaper Society president Jayant Mammen Mathew said: “It is a right decision for the government to cap FDI in digital media at 26%, which is in line with the FDI (limit) in print. This will ensure Indian news sites have a level playing field with news aggregators and other digital news sites.”Government officials said there had been a vacuum for decades with regard to FDI policy for the sector, which had led to a deluge of news and other content from entities — including news aggregators — without any checks and balances. In this context, they said, digital applications that disseminate news include aggregators that ‘source’ or ‘link’ news articles from multiple sources into a single feed for users. This news content may be in the form of text, video, images, etc, and covers the entire spectrum of news and current affairs — including politics, national security, business and economy, and local city developments.Sensitive SectorFormer secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Ramesh Abhishek said: “The government has provided much-needed clarity on FDI in digital media. This has been rightly kept on par with FDI in print media. This provision is likely to apply to all those who disseminate news through digital media in any form. The policy should cover aggregators of news as well.”Official sources said the FDI policy in the news media space has always been regulated closely, given the sensitivity of the sector. 70918735 Hence, the mushrooming of news aggregators was a source of concern, especially as China has become an aggressive investor in this space with many Chinese-owned or funded entities creating and curating content.In contrast, China bars or tightly controls media and social media entities in all respects, with Facebook and Twitter blocked in mainland China by censors.These companies include Dailyhunt, which has 207 million monthly active users in India. The company is majority-owned (75%-plus) by foreign entities, of which 17% is with Byte-Dance — the largest Chinese news company. Indian promoters hold only about 20% stake in Dailyhunt.ByteDance also owns 100% of Helo, the fastest-growing vernacular news app in India with 50 m1illion monthly active users. Helo aims to hit the 100-million-user mark by 2019-end. ByteDance also wholly owns TikTok, the fastest-growing social network in India.Hence, the largest Chinese news company wholly owns, or has large stakes in, the biggest news, vernacular language news, as well as social networks in India with no controls whatsoever until the recent FDI regulation.There are also a host of other Chinese news aggregators, including UCNews (owned by Alibaba), Opera (whose largest shareholder is Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd) and NewsDog (incubated in China and funded by Tencent).Sources said these aggregators are far bigger than traditional news outlets, and owing to the large financial backing from Chinese investors, have invested aggressively in marketing and growth. A few of these have spent more than Rs 100 crore each per year just on marketing.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2HAQsYW