Many of such questions were answered when we visited Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) office on Monday, August 17. The biggest news agency in Germany was founded in 1949 and gradually has grown to be a major worldwide operation serving print media, radio, television, online, mobile phones, and national news agency.

The Hamburg-based news agency provides news in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic. They also have video services. It has additional branch offices in Berlin and Frankfurt.

Mr. Blume, who was the spokesman for DPA, described how each morning they held a video conference with the employees from three different places, exchanging their opinions with others and making plans for each day.

When he was asked how DPA is meeting the new challenges like decreasing the circulation of newspapers in worldwide, he first admitted that it is a problem for the entire media world but still as a news agency they are in good shape. However, he also referred that many of the clients did not renew their contract with DPA.

Before going to DPA, I visited their official website in order to get some idea about the agency and there I found that initially the agency had gone though many sufferings too. They did not even have enough chairs in the newsroom for their staffs when they started operation in 1949. Look at them now, starting from such condition, they gained the trust of all and become very competent and now they are showing paths to others too.

As a young journalist, for me this is truly remarkable; and very significant one too .

The interesting topic kicked off when Prof Thomaß with the help of a two dimensional co-ordinate system  described freedom and responsibly as independent and dependent variables respectively.

It happens many times that the media system of a country enjoys enormous freedom but they misuse it, or sometimes they don’t even use the freedom of the media for promoting development.

The 2-D system is genuinely a scientific tool to measure how responsible the media  of a country are and  whether they are doing their task in a dignified manner.

In a broader angle it can be said that there are four different kinds of media such as:  media that is free and at the same time responsible, media that is free but not responsible, media that is responsible but not free. and media that is neither.

Besides, each of the media systems has its own characteristics and the media of any country also reflects the government system of any country. For example, a country where democracy has been restored after a long period, the role of the media tends to become more public service oriented rather than limiting itself to regular day to day news collection.