Free Press of India
| Industry | News media |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1920s |
| Founder | Swaminathan Sadanand |
| Defunct | July, 1935 |
| Headquarters | India |
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Key people
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Swaminathan Sadanand |
Free Press of India was an Indian nationalist-supporting news agency founded in the 1920s by Swaminathan Sadanand, during the period of the British Raj. It was the first news agency owned and managed by Indians. Beset by dubious business acumen from the outset, and beholden to those who financed it, the agency failed to obtain substantial support from Indian-owned press and hence closed down in 1935. It was revived briefly between 1945 and 1947 before being stifled by the government of the newly independent country. It was at various times a supporter of the Swaraj Party and, later, of the Responsive Cooperation Party, as well as various business interests.
In the three decades prior to independence of India, the Reuters news agency and its affiliates, such as the Associated Press of India (API), Eastern News Agency and Indian News Agency Service, had more or less complete control of newswire services in India. They supplied news services to the Government of the British Raj in that country, as well as from India to the international media, and vice versa. Sadanand had worked for API and left that arm of the Reuters monopoly soon after being dismayed by government suppression of reportage concerning the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919. Thereafter, he worked for the Independent newspaper in Allahabad and then for the Rangoon Times in Burma, but he held a desire to break the monopoly, as did Gandhi and others involved in the Indian independence movement.
The Free Press of India (FPI) was the first news agency in the country to be both owned and managed by Indians. Sadanand said that he had planned its creation in 1923 and that it was actually established in 1925. K. M. Shrivastava, a professor of news agency journalism, notes that Sadanand's account of the origins is one of several differing versions. Milton Israel notes late 1924, but also an announcement of the FPI office opening that was published by the Bombay Chronicle on 8 January 1925. Sadanand had issued an appeal in September 1924, and earlier in that year he had approached Congress with his ideas and costings. His appeal noted that he proposed "An independent news agency that will collect and disseminate news with accuracy and impartiality from the Indian viewpoint [which is] a long-felt public want". One difficulty that would have to be surmounted, as the Chronicle noted, was that among all the various nationalist factions there was no common "Indian viewpoint"; Israel describes the extant monopoly as "efficient, dependable, and generally accurate". Another difficulty was to be the poor financial acumen of Sadanand, who envisaged that the FPI could be financially self-supporting by its second year of operation. Experienced newspaper businessmen, such as J. B. Petit and F. H. Holsinger, foresaw a much longer period of subsidy being required, as well as little chance of success because there were neither sufficient newspapers in print to justify another agency nor means to prevent the existing agencies from temporarily engaging in a price war to see off the new business. J. K. Singh was later to describe him as a great journalist but a poor business manager and a "sad failure".
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