Being at the helm of power seems to have given the Congress an edge over other parties in getting more coverage on the front page of newspapers, with a new study claiming that the grand old party got almost three times more space than their co unterparts.
While a total of 377 reports on Congress appeared in the Delhi edition of four leading English newspapers - Indian Express, Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Hindu - the opposition BJP could get their affairs onto the front page only 138 times duri ng the first six months of this year.
Similar was the case with three Hindi newspapers - Dainik Bhaskar, Hindustan and Dainik Jagran - where Congress ruled the front page with 206 stories compared to BJP's 83.
A total of 854 reports on affairs of political parties found their way to the front pages of the English dailies while the figures for three Hindi newspapers were 416, according to a study conducted by the Centre for Media Studies.
The Left parties, which were in the limelight with their high-pitched battle against the UPA on the nuclear deal, also did not get much front page space during the period. There were only 130 reports from their fold in the English papers. The three Hind i papers published 49 stories during that period.
“It is interesting to note that the newspapers gave the Left and the BJP almost equal weightage and even sometimes they preferred Left over the BJP,'' CMS Media Lab head Mr Prabhakar told PTI.
Ms Mayawati's BSP managed to get 58 reports on the front pages of English papers while the number was exactly half in Hindi newspapers. However Ms Mayawati's arch rival Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party's show was dismal with 37 front page storie s in English papers and just 11 in Hindi dailies.
