Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The three-day Indian Journalism Festival organised by the State Press Club of Madhya Pradesh kick-started on promising note at Ravindra Natya Graha on Friday.
At the inaugural function, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said, “The society and the country benefit when the pen of a journalist does justice to his work.”
In a lighter vein, he said the media has hunted him many a time.
Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargav said that a truly democratic system exists in India. “Whenever any journalist will try to mislead public by misusing his work, the public will reject him,” he said.
On Day-I of the fest, there was a brainstorm on ‘Media and Society: Crumbling Faith’ and a session on the challenges facing cartoons.
In the first session, a discussion was held on the topic of trust in society and media. Senior journalist Om Thanvi, PCI member Jaishankar Gupta, Bharat Express managing director Upendra Rai, senior journalist Ramesh Sharma, senior journalist Kumar Rakesh, Hridayesh Dixit, news anchor Sana Parveen Waris and others spoke on the occasion.
Club president Praveen Kumar Khariwal said that the gist of the session was that journalists are doing their duty fairly ensuring the democratic setup of the country remains intact.
In the second session, cartoonists shared their pain. They said that commercialism and interference of politics in journalism have played spoilsports to the importance of cartoons.
They noted that the first victim of commercialisation of media houses remains the cartoonists.
Rajendra Ghodpkar, Sandeep Adhwaryu, Pawan Toons, Nilesh Khare, and Manoj Sinha spoke in the session. They were of the view that businessmen investing in media houses couldn’t take the humour so they finished off careers of cartoonists.
“A three-day cartoon exhibition was also started on Friday in the art gallery of Pritamlal Dua auditorium. Cartoons of various cartoonists have been displayed in this exhibition. The general public can visit this exhibition anytime during the day,” club chief general secretary Navneet Shukla said.
