Vietnam says most publications rely on state cash
HANOI - Just 40
of Vietnam's nearly 500 newspapers
and magazines were financially
self-supporting, while the state spent
around $36 million annually shoring
up the rest, official media reported
on Monday.
The Vietnam News daily, quoting an
interview with Culture and
Information Minister Nguyen Khoa
Diem published to coincide with
Vietnam Journalists Day, said state
support was necessary to assist
media in its obligation to provide
information as a form of social
welfare.
Private media ownership in Vietnam
is banned, and the priority role of the
press is to support the ruling
Communist Party and state.
Diem said his ministry would soon
close any publications that limited
themselves to purely commercial
purposes and neglected the role of
providing information to the public.
The daily did not elaborate.
A warning was also sounded against
those supplements and magazines
featuring ``harmful extravagrant and
strange foreign lifestyles'' saying these
ran counter to official policy to build
an advanced, healthy and traditional
cultural identity.
Since Vietnam embarked on its
landmark reform policy over a
decade ago there has been an
explosion in the number of
publications appearing on
newsstands. An emerging trend is to
sensationalise in order to win readers
and capture advertising revenue.
The Hong Kong-based Political &
Economic Risk Consultancy, in a
new report earlier this month, said
press censorship in Vietnam was the
heaviest for any of the Asian
countries that had been surveyed.
Reuters - June 21, 1999.
|