Mass media in India is that part of the
Indian media which aims to reach a wide audience. Besides
the news media, which includes print, radio and television,
the internet is playing an increasing role, along with the
growth of the Indian blogging community. Compared with many
other developing countries, the Indian press is relatively
unfettered, except for obstacles in the way of setting up
media companies which were part of the pre-1990 license
raj. In 2001, India had 45,974 newspapers, including 5364
daily newspapers published in over 100 languages.
The largest number of newspapers were
published in Hindi (20,589), followed by English (7,596),
Marathi (2,943), Urdu (2,906), Bengali (2,741), Gujarati
(2,215), Tamil (2,119), Kannada (1,816), Malayalam(1,505)
and Telugu (1,289). The Hindi daily press has a circulation
of over 23 million copies, followed by English with over
8 million copies. There are several major publishing groups
in India, the most prominent among them being the Times
of India Group, the Indian Express Group, the Hindustan
Times Group, The Hindu group, the Anandabazar Patrika Group,
the Malayala Manorama Group (Malayala Manorama is the largest
circulated daily newspaper in India), the Sahara group,
the Bhaskar group, and the Jagran group. India has more
than forty domestic news agencies. The Express News Service,
the Press Trust of India, and the United News of India are
among the major news agencies.