Author: सुरेशराज न्यौपान/ कान्तिपुर

Every writing or multimedia presentation is for the audience. Since there would be no journalism or media work without the audience and subsequently no advertisers, journalists should identify and cater their services to the audiences. But for most of the journalists, audience is a vague concept, they do not know whom they are writing for but just fulfilling their duty or responsibility to the society, if any.

Robust media
Phenomenal growth and innovation in information and communication technology has created a robust media environment and access to news information has never been so fast and easy, thanks to the ubiquitous internet and hand-held devices. The recent boom in online media including news portals, YouTube channels, podcasts and news briefs, has a profound impact on the entire process of news making. While the journalists have multiple technologies at their disposal, which help in collecting and verifying information, the cut-throat, and sometimes unfair competition has left them with just gasping for additional information, and hankering after one more piece of news. This has turned the journalists to the easily available news sources, and to those which can exchange the news in monetary forms. The second variable is unknown to the journalists, however.
Reporting about the rich people, large corporations and political parties is highly rewarding for both the journalists and the media houses as the feedback might come in the form of prize, gifts, discounts, sponsored trips, and the largest, advertisement. The corporatisation of the media industry, which once considered the social service through truth and accuracy in reporting as the basic tenets of the profession, has commodified the news and other information. As a result, the news that has the potential of economic reward in the future is not missed, even by a chance. That is the reason some of the media carry a press statement even after three days – some in a hope to get an advert while some use the time space to bargain with the company to ensure the advertisement after or along with the publication of the statement. If you turn the business pages of the newspapers or related tabs of online news portals, you get such examples in abundance.
This fact tells a different story of the media why it primarily runs after the affluent people rather than the poor. Continuous support to a political party or a powerful leader might turn into a job of a consultant, or an advisor to a leader or an agency. There are plentiful examples in Nepal where journalists have elevated themselves on the political ladder rather than in the journalism.
There is a special breed of journalists, who make a significant portion in the total media demographics, who only cater their services with constitution-granted ‘press freedom’ to certain powerhouses including the foreign diplomatic missions. They pursue their agenda and try to propagate through the media. They do not hesitate to ask a corporate house or an embassy for a favour to make special foreign visits in the name of observation or fam-trips. However, stories of poor must be allocated a significant time and space due to human interest reason. People prefer to read and watch the stories of another human being in trouble. They might be sympathetic and announce some sort of support and charity in response to the story sometimes, however.
Most of the news of the marginalised and deprived people are not read, listened to or accessed by them, making journalism a highly unrewarding profession. Although prizes, awards, recognitions and mentions do come as sympathy to it, it carries less appeal for the advertisement. On the contrary, a lifestyle piece of a business tycoon or a celebrity would precisely cater to the taste of the advertisers and urban audience, to a great extent.
In a least-developed country like Nepal where almost all the journalists are underpaid, a significant portion of brilliant ones use the profession just as a springboard to jump to the jobs in other areas that offer better economic rewards. This has resulted in well-written press statements and impact feature stories, though. Domestic media, apart from the foreign funded channels and programmes, do not have enough resources to create impactful content every day.
Journalists should have been explaining a complex issue to the audience or analysing the consequence of the government’s steps taken for the well-being of the people as per the principle of serving the public. But many have ended up in distorting ‘public interest.’ They have forgotten the advocacy role of media according to which journalists should be the voice of the voiceless.

Interdisciplinary knowledge
Most of the journalists are not trained on the areas they are assigned to report. Rather they learn by trial and error which makes them vulnerable to mistakes, sometimes, to blunders such as reporting that the swine-flu is transmitted to human beings from pigs. The beat reporters groom themselves over the years and gain expertise in their beat. It’s not their fault because there are no training and higher education institutions that offer area specific trainings and the beats have become complex with the interlinkages to other areas such politics, business and economy, sports and business and politics, and environment, business and politics. Reporters lacking interdisciplinary understandings do not fit for the profession, if they do, they certainly will not be writing the stories the time and audience demand.
Coronavirus pandemic has offered opportunity to generate a lot of human interest stories – daily wage workers walking for days to reach their houses, poor people deprived of food and poor patients not getting the health services. There are not the stories of rich people troubled by the pandemic except the entrepreneurs. It is the destitute who bear the brunt most compared to the rich who face no obstacle in receiving the basic amenities, including the health service and food items or going for an outing.

Over the last six months, the coronavirus has not only caused a serious public health problem but also posed a severe immediate threat to the centuries-old human traditions. Let’s take an example of mass communication as one of the prominent areas of human communication in current global scenario. Under the technological development along with the ever-changing human awareness, the media of communication have gained mass characteristics. But the pandemic is adversely affecting the institutions of media across the world. Now, our publishers, and media tycoons and moguls are expressing their worry with the conclusion that coronavirus is killing the media industry, too.

Unexpected blow
By March and April this year, the economic crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic started to surface throughout the world. Subsequently, the crisis began to hit the media industry globally, forcing media houses to go for cuts. Trade unions and journalists’ associations have opposed the layoffs, salary reduction and called for waiting for good days as they saw storm-weathering measures to be effective temporarily. But the situation has gone from bad to worse. When one of the big media houses of Nepal closed down its three publications simultaneously last week, the crisis within the Nepali mass media appeared more visibly. Every day, the crisis of media outlets, which had already made the coronavirus-era cuts, is deepening. The big news of the world these days is the coronavirus infections and killings.
But the newspapers’ crisis is the news that causes impact worldwide. On one hand, the coronavirus crisis has led to heightened interest in the news while it has also devastated the advertising revenue on which many outlets rely, on the other. From the news organisations that continuously running for the last 200 years to those existing over the last decades are facing the same sort of challenges to survive. Thus, the pandemic has dealt a massive and unexpected blow to publishers.
With the advertising revenue going down, people have started to perceive that this is an adverse time for journalism. But there is a strong quest for an honest appraisal of all the ways the journalism business needs to modify—whether they are linked to the pandemic or not.
So far, it has been our understanding that the importance of communication for the functioning of democracy could be addressed by the big media outlets, which make profit out of the news business. As we believe, democracy needs a fair and frank political communication to encourage pure discussions about the allocation of public resources or revenues. An exercise of official authority by the legitimate power-holder makes a legal, legislative and executive decision, and official sanctions. Through communication, non-politicians such as voters and newspaper columnists address those actors. However, such underpinning of liberal democracy would be altered in the absence of current modus operandi of the flow of communication.
Against this backdrop, we need to assess the present realities and try to foresee the elements and the landscape of the future public communication. Traditionally, the elements of political or public communication comprise of political actors, media and the audience. The purpose of all human communication, more distinctly in the case of public communication, is to persuade the general public. The target of this persuasion will be the audiences or people. They will be one of the key elements in the process of public or political communication, without which no message can hold any relevance. But the forms of mass media or media would be transformed in the future. Till date, the big media organisations, which comprise of print, broadcasting, and online channels since about two decades, are another key player in the process of public communication. The situation might change in the aftermath of a crisis created by the coronavirus.
Amid the on-going communication revolution, people have started to envisage the upcoming communication scenario. Some of the scholars present a few elements, which in their opinion, are extremely probable. The idea is to foresee the future of human communication that will be influenced by the extensive utilisation of integrated electronic equipment. Communication will be based on the process of convergence and subsequently exchange of information and generation of content. Communication will become an unprecedented large field, as people will move on from exchange of information to exchange of services and products. But the traditional forms of advertising would die.
Right from interpersonal to global communication, including mass media and social media, would be changed and our traditional mode of dependency on big media outlets would be shifted. The days of media logic and discourse would be altered by relatively small media outlets or new kinds of media. Some argue sooner or later that all media organisations will move towards a stage where there will be an integration of different parts of the news-making process including audio, video, text, images, and graphics. Marketing, cross-promotion, sales, redistribution and inter-activities with publics will also be achieved. The discourse is initiated with the argument that first mobile phones, then laptops, wireless technology and tablets modified yet again the way we communicate. A similar observation is that the TV set in the living room or bedroom, the computer in the study or at work has lost ground to the newcomers. It is, certainly, a new face of convergence and it has kept bringing about changes in public and private lives, especially by the integration offered by social media.

Mediatisation
One vital concept in understanding the role of the traditional media in the functioning of democracies is mediatisation. During the last decade, mediatisation, as the strength of big mass media, has also become an increasingly popular concept. It is applied not only in the context of politics and democracy but also in other areas ranging from the toy industry to consumption and culture and society in a wider sense. But things are changing rapidly. The COVID-19 has intensified the process of change. Thus it is the right time for the media persons to think about the chances of modification of the existing mass media outlets in the upcoming communication framework.

It is 2000-2001 when a series of short-term trainings were conducted for the journalists throughout the country, the trainees were asked not to write the stories about suicides. Danish instructors who were here to support the capacity building of the working journalists made this suggestion. It was the first time when the Nepali journalists were advised to avoid reporting suicides in the classrooms of ethical reporting. Two decades on, this media approach stands valid in both classrooms and newsrooms.
Last week, when a promising Bollywood actor suddenly passed away in Mumbai, the responsible and established institutions of mass media refrained themselves from describing the cause of the death. They informed the people about his death and discussed his contribution to the film industry. As Daniszewski, vice president for standards of the Associated Press (AP), suggests that the less said in the media about the methods of suicide, the less likelihood that a celebrity’s death will prompt vulnerable persons to take their own lives with that same method on the spur of the moment.

Guidelines
The AP has been breaking the news since 1846 but it believes that reporting on suicides, like reporting on sexual abuse, is one of the areas in which a journalist should not tell all that he or she knows. All the reputed institutions of mass media in the world follow the similar norms on reporting suicide cases in line with the WHO guidelines. The specialised UN agency that is responsible for international public health calls upon the media professionals to practise its guidelines so as to help prevent suicides.
Like in other parts of the world, suicide is a serious health problem in Nepal as well. The Nepali society is still shy of discussing mental health and suicide prevention measures. However, the mass media can play an effective role in preventing the trend of copycat suicides. Some media reports claim the number of suicide cases is far higher than the official data. The WHO puts Nepal as the country with the 7th highest suicide rate in the world. Statistics show that in the first month of the nationwide lockdown, a total of 487 people committed suicide. Now the Nepali media, instead of merely reporting, needs to take the opportunity to educate the public about suicide.
Scholars suggest that reports on suicides and the treatment of this subject in works of the mass media could induce others to take on the suicidal path. They consider the problem of the modelling effect of press reports on suicide. They provide examples of increases in the rate of suicide by similar methods when the press had given detailed reports on cases of suicide and the accompanying circumstances. The influence of newspaper stories has been emphasised by journalists and experts in suicidal behaviour. McQuail, a British communication theorist, observes that many studies have produced seemingly shocking statistics of average exposure to mediated violence. According to him, the argument of critics has not been just that it might cause violence and crimes, especially by the young, but that it is often intrinsically undesirable, producing emotional disturbance, fear, anxiety and deviant tastes.
It has frequently been suggested that suicidal behaviour, too, might be learnt by a process of modelling and that this may be the case, especially for children, adolescents and young adults. In relations to contagion and imitation, McQuail mentions that there has been empirical support for the theory that presses reports can trigger individuals but widespread actions of a pathological kind. Suicides along with vehicle and plane fatalities tend to increase following press publicity of suicides. It reminds the media of taking care of the effects of contagion on suicidal behaviour.
The danger as indicated by the hypotheses of imitation of suicidal behaviour is that the effects of the mass media could unknowingly be instrumental as transmitters of models for imitation. Because media reports have the potential to either strengthen or damage suicide prevention efforts. Media reports about suicide can increase suicide risk because of imitative or copycat suicides. But responsible reporting on such incidences can help educate the general public about suicide and its prevention. Such reporting offers hopes to people at risk, reduces stigma and encourages conducting an open and positive dialogue.
The WHO, on one hand, reveals that close to 800,000 people commit suicide every year in the world and for each suicide, there are more than 20 suicide attempts. On the other, as an encouraging fact, it stresses that much can be done to prevent suicide at individual, community and national levels. It firmly believes that suicides are preventable and journalists can halt a ripple effect of suicides and suicide attempts on families, friends, colleagues, communities and societies.

Sensitive portrayal
Many institutions in different countries such as the Press Council of India have adopted reporting guidelines on suicides based on the WHO guidelines. Nepali media institutions also need to codify the norms in this regard. As the WHO states that the sensitive portrayal of suicide in media is an important suicide prevention strategy, the Press Council of India recommends the media that while reporting such cases they must not use language which sensationalises or normalises suicide or presents it as a constructive solution to problems. It suggests the media should not use sensational headlines, photographs, video footage, or social media links. It is a global quest that media coverage of suicide prevention needs to be focused on toning down the portrayal of suicidal behaviour.
Once again, a robust discussion needs to be undertaken in both the classrooms of journalism and the newsrooms of media houses. It is because the mass media are always expected to unreservedly abide by the ‘do no harm’ policy.

(Dr. Aryal is associated with the Central Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Tribhuvan University.) 

INDIA is the nation where constitutional provision guarantees media freedom. However, as the rational media personalities even in India observe, in the context of foreign relations, especially in dealing with the neighbours’ wisdom of the media has been questioned time and again. India shares land borders with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. However, during the seven decades in the aftermath of independence from British Empire it has been exchanging not only the fires, even has been waged the full-fledged wars intermittently with two neighbours on the pretext of border disputes. It has almost failed to console these seven bordering neighbours in seven decades. It has still such disputes with harmless neighbours like Nepal.
Indian news media, with the history of nearly two-and-a-half hundreds years, have been undergone through different phases, from authoritarian imperial rule to the democratic governance. Even in the late 1930s, the Indian newspapers such as Janata from Patana, Bihar were the platforms for the expression of agony against Rana rulers of Nepal. Great martyr Dasharath Chand, by using a pseudonym, had exposed the despotic rulers though the Janata weekly of the socialist Rambriksha Benipuri. In the global context, Indian media were seen in solidarity with the antiapartheid movement of South Africa and the various national impendence movements in different parts of the world.
Hostile media
The juxtaposition to their earlier global stance, with the demise of an era of the patriotic journalists of the quit India movement generation, Indian media, mostly the TV channels, later started to become hostile towards Nepal. A loud and visible section of Indian media is not in line with the legacies of Indian media from the era when they were in the tireless struggle for social justice and independence. They do not reflect the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, non-violence and peaceful coexistence. Gandhi was not only the tallest figure of Indian democracy but a practicing journalist, who had immensely contributed to the development Indian journalism.
Today, it would be a matter of study whether it is an appropriate to use term ‘media capture’ to denote the performance of Indian media. Indian critical thinkers and journalists observe that the media system in India is now revolved around the state power. In the case of the relation with the neighbouring countries the choreographed attacks used to be first communicated in a briefing by the government senior officials. It is said in India that the South Block, Delhi’s Ministry of External Affairs along with the Ministry of Defense officials share a few details aimed at creating spin and entertain no questions.
Thereafter, a handful of lapdog media begins to supply the doctored messages. The media, especially the Hindi language TV channels propagate the unconfirmed details eventually leaked by their highly placed sources. Those doctored materials used to be poured out all day from the networks and even newspapers and online portals. Consequently, the India TV channels and some of the newspapers have been gaining a jingoist image. It is a general perception here in Nepal that they do not question those in power, rather happily go along with the official narratives about the neighbouring countries.
It is difficult to conclude that the entire Indian media have forgotten to advocate nonviolent communication as tirelessly pursued by Gandhi. However, it is unfortunate that the voices of reasonable and wise intellectuals who are in favour of peaceful dialogue with the neighbours are not heard in the channels. It is even more unfortunate that the rational intellectuals who are in opposition to the armchair jingoism that routinely takes over public discourse in India and fuelling tension in the region are muted in these channels. Now, the patriotic Indian intellectuals need to break the spiral of silence and come forward without fearing of the tags of anti-national or traitors. History of the world has proved that over time, the jingoism and unrestrained violent rhetoric are most dangerous to national pride.
It has been proved that jingoistic eruptions distract from the crux of the issue. The jingoist Indian TV channels are jeopardising the world’s largest democracy. Indian intellectuals, who are rational, are raising the issues on different occasions. They have been observing that the Indian news channels are unable to evaluate the issues relating to foreign relations. However, the media’s general psyche to demonstrate the strongest patriotic credentials along with the increasingly scrutinised and controlled media environment has been interrupting the way for the rational discourse. Consequently, most of the Indian news channels serve as public relations machines for the ruling elite. By serving in this manner they have ignored Nepal’s evidence-based claims.
Ideally, media needs not buy the government’s world view in every issue either domestic or foreign. Although the general public of South Asia, beyond the Indian borders, respect the act of Indian media to harbour nationalistic feelings, they also expect reciprocity. The people of Nepal also wish to see professional commitment always be to the news presented in Indian media outlets. It is contradictory to the liberal school of journalism to be sounded like blind cheerleaders of the government. The sponsored media environment does mean lack of vibrancy.
Orchestra for hegemony
Before losing the complete trust of the millions of people from neighbouring nations, Indian media needs to review their biased performance. If the things go unchanged, the people would start to perceive that the entire Indian media landscape collaborates with the hegemonic ruling class to espouse and dominate the particular narratives. In the current case, amid the historical facts and shreds of evidence the Indian ruling class is not even ready to listen to Nepal. It has been imposing its own narrative that Kalapani area including Limpiydhura and Lipulekh does not belong to Nepal. Despite being a media of a democratic country, the Indian TV channels are being placed as the orchestra for the hegemony.

(Dr. Aryal is associated with the Central Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Tribhuvan University)