Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) President Arif Nizami, Senior Vice President Imtinan Shahid and Secretary General Dr Jabbar Khattak have welcomed the announcement of Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry regarding clearance of government advertisement dues to the newspapers in two weeks while talking with CPNE members.
"Due to non-payment of dues, the newspaper organisations had fallen into decrepitude and journalists as well as countless other media workers were feeling the crunch of economic instability," they said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
They expressed hope that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting would do away with non-equitable distribution of advertisements and provide medium, small and local newspapers their permissible share of advertisements.
They said the state helps organisations for economic development, hence, the government has to play its due role to bail the small, medium and local newspapers as well as the country's print media out of crisis.-PR