Author: नेपालप्रेस

Around a hundred years ago, Guardian editor CP Scott had put his life-long learning in a sentence: Comment is free…but facts are sacred. However, over the years, Scott’s doctrine of protecting the sacredness of facts has been neglected, manipulated and distorted even in the era of professional practices. As people receive information in their day-to-day life mainly from media outlets, best practices of collecting, verifying and rechecking facts are expected in journalism. The sociology of any subsystem of society could not be independent of other subsystems within the same social system. But, a strong belief is equally pervasive that media as a subsystem of society can induce a process of change in any society. To quote Scott again, the media thrives not only by material existence, rather more importantly by their moral existence.

Pseudo environment
Major efforts of journalistic training are being devoted to making a journalist able to separate facts from rumours. Many a time, rumours surface as facts and the general public may get indulged in pseudo environment. It is journalistic skills that help people know the fact. However, a big question hovering around everywhere in the world is: What will happen if media outlets is captured to produce rumours? It is the question, in line with a hundred-year-old worry expressed by Walter Lippmann that what happens if a huge discrepancy will be created by the media in conveying the picture of the real world into our heads.
Although there are journalistic rules dedicated to fair practices and get rid of dilemma, the world of journalism is still facing rational or sometimes irrational comments that even the professional media are not abiding by their self-made rules. On their part, the proponents of professional media practice argue that the major sources of unethical media practices are the unethical socio-economic and political interventions as well as ignorance of the audience.
In this context, the recent trend of fact-checking is considered as an attempt to ensure the reliability and dependability of the mass media. The Washington Post, with a belief that democracy dies in darkness, has been running a column aimed at fact-checking. Its award-winning journalist Glenn Kessler has been serving as the editor and chief writer of the Fact Checker since its inception in 2011. Many fact-checkers around the world are surfacing the truth behind the rhetoric. The newspaper’s fact-checker claims that in a busy 24-hour news cycle, it is hard to spot the truth behind the rhetoric.
In 1981, Jean Baudrillard presented his seminal work ‘Simulacra and Simulation’. It is even more relevant in the context of the current debates on partisanship and pure lies flying around and going viral in new media. Based on the media in existence during that time, Baudrillard had recognised that simulation of communications media and mass reproduction creates an environment where an inherent lack of connection to the real would be obvious. In the course of detailing the general trend of postmodernity Baudrillard had described the communications landscape where it would be difficult to differentiate real one from the simulation.
Today, in many instances, facts are sidelined and so-called alternative facts are being presented. Thus, his idea has been proved to be instrumental in analysing the media portrayals. He had indicated the phenomena of fake news and creation of post-truth reports before the advent of new media and its offspring – social media. In 1908, Mahatma Gandhi explained the role of the media on his own. His idea was expressed in Gujrati and later translated into English in 1921 in a booklet entitled Hind Swaraj (Indian Self-Rule).
His viewpoint on the role of journalism surfaced in the same period when Scott and Lippman were struggling to establish that the first duty of a newspaper is to articulate truth. Though he had adopted journalism for the cause the independence movement, his idea is still relevant today. He had highlighted three functions of newspapers – to understand popular feelings and give expression to it; to arouse certain desirable sentiments among people and to fearlessly expose popular defects.

Fake news
Fake news is not only a frequent topic over the years. It is so pervasive in every society of the world. It has been cited as the phenomena in regard to political or domestic affairs as well as in international politics. It is generally anticipated that the media needs to abide by professional standards. However, the state of national as well as international practice and affairs influence the communication practice. It is assumed that the media verify and cross-verify the facts. Because, in principle, such practices belong to their social responsibility to separate the facts from rumours. It is also assumed that the mass media outlets edit contents by applying professional standers and media logics. But, there are social media that provides a platform for every individual to express freely at one’s convenience. Here, every individual needs to be responsible and keep self-restraint.
When a society anticipates a good practice from one of its subsystem, other subsystems need to be equally reviewed. Social media influencers are powerful actors in an environment created by technological advancement. Institutional mass media are also found to be involved in cooking fake news in some instances. But in most cases, they are disseminators rather than producers. There are many sources of fake news in Nepali society. The general public has every right to expect from the Nepali media that they need to abide by the professional process of news gathering, processing and disseminating. It is the foremost prerequisite to stop the manufacturing of fake news and disinformation.
Against this backdrop, appointing a fact-checker editor as in the case of The Washington Post would be the best example. From the USA to Nepal, the general public has been misled and fed up with fabricated information. Thus, the fact-checker can serve as an antidote to the fake news in the age of post-truth marked by explosion of information and political chaos.

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

February 24, coronation 1975 was the biggest media event for foreign journalists. More than 50 heads of state and government, princes, princesses, ministers and special representatives attended the spectacle. Educated, well-travelled and duly trained in her field of specialisation, Teeka RL Laxmi Simha was a woman with a vision. At a time when colour films rolls had to be sent abroad for processing and printing, colour photography was a rarity. Credit goes to Simha for taking the plunge in introducing a colour lab in the country. This changed the country’s landscape of colour photography.
The array of colour labs today would do well to pay the lady with camera and colour lab rich tributes for the path she paved for them to build on. Simha’s enthusiasm fuelled her desire to capture, chronicle conditions and action in motion with deft skill required for creative lens work. Her personal touch infused in the work of creativity was appreciated by her peers. She chronicled the motion and significance of the moment, conditions and context with meticulous care and the right selection of the tune and tenor of an unfolding action or event.
She took to professional photography with a passion that enabled her to venture into colour photography — a pioneering undertaking in the country. Gopal Chitrakar, Nepal’s first full-time press photographer, working for the Gorkhapatra publishing house, nods in approval of her talent and knowledge.
Major functions in Nepal attracted large congregations from within and lured many foreign press correspondents as well. The 1956 royal coronation, the national referendum announcement in 1980, the 1990 political change and such other sweeping events were such events. Born in 1936, Simha by 1956 had emerged as a professional camera wielder in such events especially in the 1970s and after. She established herself as an enterprising woman of proven credentials.

Exclusive honour
Simha was named one of the few photographers for Crown Prince Birendra wedding in 1970. Needless to say, she was the only woman photographer. In appreciation of her proven records, on the occasion of King Birendra’s coronation ceremony in 1975, she was accorded space at the exclusive enclosure allocated for a select few camerapersons at Hanumandhoka, built by King Pratap Malla more than 250 years before that event.
Simha’s professional recognition attracted attention from the august audience among the foreign dignitaries representing their governments. Unless someone else comes forward to prove otherwise, Simha’s distinction stands as the first Nepali to obtain formal photography training from a university. That her passion was more than that of an amateur was amply stamped by the manner in which she took up the challenge of setting up the first colour processing laboratory, Coloroma. Passion was behind her power of photography. Imagination and innovative ideas led her to ground-breaking entrepreneurship. The endeavour produced telling demonstration effects.
Behind the camera and beyond it, Simha’s portrait catalogues an inspiring personality. After struggling for nine years with cancer, she breathed her last at but the age of 57 years in 1993. In the world of photography, however, she made her mark picture perfect as an innovative mind and a person of action.

Close up
Awarded a string of several medals from Nepali and foreign governments, including Britain, Denmark and Finland, she proved her mettle as an industrious woman with the feel for time and sense of the market when she started the Colorama studio in 1968 in the capital city. That was shortly after she returned from London with a three-year Diploma in Photography obtained from Ealing Technical College in the British capital.
To her glowing credit, she rightly decided to take advantage of being in London when her husband Bharat Kesher who served as the military attaché at the Nepali embassy, and pursued the college course for formal academic study in her favourite field.
Simha’s knowledge added to her presence at the Riyal Nepal Film Corporation’s board of directors, rubbing shoulders with literary luminaries like Balkrishna Sama and Madhav Prasad Ghimire. The other two members who shared space with them were Executive Chairman Yadav Kharel, the first Nepali to obtain a diploma in film direction from London University, and Sridhar Khanal, known for introducing crime thriller writing in Nepali literature and was among the early hands in Nepali cinema by way of story writing, screenplay, assistant directorship and some acting.
With such credentials under her belt, Simha’s appointment as executive chair of RNFC was no surprise. Her stint as the corporation’s chief enabled her to attend international film festivals such as Cannes, Montreal and Tashkent. These were occasion when efforts were made at promoting Nepali films in the international arena.
From 1954 to 1958, she was Deputy Secretary at Women’s Volunteer Service (WVS) from 1954 before being appointed secretary to the Vice-President of the Nepalese parliament (Upper House) till 1960. From 1964-1967, she was in the United Kingdom when her husband Bharat Kesher Simha served as military attaché at the Royal Nepali Embassy in London. Since early childhood, she developed keen interest in photography, as she was engaged quite seriously in taking photos of her family members. This developed into a life-long passion. She installed a processing room in this connection.
After obtaining School Leaving Certificate (SLC), the future pioneer in Nepal’s colour photo processing got enrolled in New Delhi’s Lady Irwin College in New Delhi (1952-1954) for a Diploma in Home Sciences. She was literally among a handful of women motor vehicle drivers in the 1950s. In a glowing tribute to the country’s remarkably enterprising figure of the photography business, the then Royal Photographer Sallyani Raja Gopendra Bahadur Shah aptly put it: “She achieved this mighty success only because she happened to be the example of a Profile in Courage and thus she knew how to love and what to love for!”
Indeed, Simha’s innovative ideas and spirit of entrepreneurship, put into practice, gets extolled for what was and she did at a time when Nepal’s photography was basically a budding sector. It is disappointing to find that the scores of camera wielders and numerous colour photo processing studios dotting across the country today are oblivious of one the pioneer woman who did so much at a time when women were basically confined to domestic life.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication. 

Even as Western academics and political analysts discuss a decline in public trust in democracy, hardly anything much is debated on any likely link with the news media for the disturbing trend. Within weeks after taking office, the United States President Joe Biden described as “fragile” the existing status of American democracy. News media outlets are expected to carry contents contributing to a lesson-laden past, testing the present and visualising the future. Democracy ruptures when the news media get captured in the battle ground of crass commercial interests, clandestine strategies or other dubious considerations.
In these times of instant information ridden with facts and frequently riddled with fake content and nasty news, audience discernment of communication in action is a valued determinant in understanding the quality, quantity and utility of the volumes of information thus disseminated. When the press no longer serves as a professional public platform for mass trust but a party press, the valued expectations from the vulnerable are dashed. The press becomes a villain and the vulnerable sections of the public its victim. For paid information carrying propaganda aimed at partisan purposes, the need is to scratch the surface of media content beneath and beyond the obvious.

Inside story
In January, British royalty turned furious with a 1969 BBC documentary, deemed not so seemly, found its way to YouTube. Five decades ago, the ostensibly “ceremonial” monarch directed the BBC authorities not to air the documentary, Royal Family, as it “cheapens” the royal folks. Queen Elizabeth’s consort Prince Philip’s use of the F-word met with the chopping block but the detail the Buckingham Palace thought mundane was retained. Even if the BBC is supposed to have placed the embarrassing documentary under lock, it got leaked to YouTube viewers, reiterating that royalty has frailties as human as any other man or woman on Planet Earth.
History is hard to be arrived at as a clear and comprehensive description and conclusion pertaining to events and actions. Individual and, at times, collective perceptions might differ but to deliberately make false claims and present distorted projections is an intellectual perfidy. Democracy demands congenial conditions for free voice channelled through effectively independent choice of public platforms that seek to democratise discussions. If enslaved by prejudices and partisanship, news media lose their professional integrity and public credibility. They do a disturbing disservice by deliberately disseminating information compromising accuracy.
Bias creates a fog in the way of unalloyed information. Party press is a rigged press just as biased press is an unprofessional press. Deliberative democracy means participatory process whose transparent purpose and enduring influence depend upon how informed the discussants are. Political leaders, celebrities, socialites and others with mega ego and misplaced sense of pride want their names and faces on front pages of newspapers and television broadcast news bulletin headlines — and in “positive” light. They can be very thin-skinned and wearing overly big boots. Donald Trump last winter imperiously ordered a reporter who confronted him with a nagging question about his election claims: “Don’t ever talk to the president that way.”
Information in itself is not necessarily always adequate. The quality is in the content’s accuracy and dogged determination to dig, deliberate and draw conclusions without any personal axe to grind except to share unalloyed view for the public’s critical reception in its various aspects. While content’s meaning does count and the existing context determines its strength of immediate significance, its value rests also on the longevity of the relevance.
A section of society always supports censorship of what they see as sordid detail of personal nature or that of gory description. The cycle of long memories revolves. Censorship is the certainty of compromising any inclination of conveying messages inconvenient to the big bosses or defying the establishment. The proactively independent and free speech lover find censorship chilling and constrictive, thanks to enforced media capture. In the name of censorship, however, free voice gets stifled and creativity stunted. For instance, encounter with the censors can become a harrowing experience to cinema banners. A movie maker will have to bridle his full potential for creativity on account of the risks involved. They are the victims of conviction.
Media dictating to the public what they should think about, how and why is a grey area in vis-à-vis the disparate audience’s right to be informed accurately enabling them to make decisions and form opinions on their own. Partisan media discourage, condemn, boycott and confine someone with opposing views to enforced isolation. As American media critic Walter Lippmann, in the 1920s, reminded a journalist to “remain clear and free of his irrational, his unexamined, his unacknowledged prejudgments in observing, understanding and presenting the news”.
Debating on media coverage style, Wesley Lowery, a working for a major American TV channel, CBS News, was quoted saying: “Objectivity-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment.” However, the Columbia Journalism Review warns: “What comes after we get rid of objectivity in journalism?” Unhappy with the manner in which the issue of race was covered in their paper, more than 150 Wall Street Journal employees protested against their employers. They found “the way we cover race to be problematic”. Another 500 staff members at the Washington Post, too, called for “combating racism and discrimination” at their publication.

Partisan-prone
In 1963, McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor to the US President John F. Kennedy, commended a White House staff regarding statement released at the time of the deposed and subsequently assassinated pro-American Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963: “Excellent prose. No surprises. A communique should say nothing in such a way as to feed the press without deceiving.” When Trump, donning the presidential hat, ordered a quartet of non-white congresswomen to “go back” to the “crime-infested places” they came from, the Wall Street Journal interpreted the “racially charged” the uttering. The New York Times termed it “racially infused”. But, what words would these two American dailies have picked to describe Russian President Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping if they borrowed Trump’s words to address minorities in their own countries?
When opinions differ, the final arbiter in the passage of time is a comprehensive filtration hailed as the test of history and by no means the sector that claims no more than being the first draft of history. Party press and political activists are prone to passing, inserting and disseminating bias-filled content as free and fair information, which in no way rhymes with the letter and spirit of a democracy constitutionally pledged to free access to information proclaiming a lofty status to the press. Society risks the media being captured and subjected to deep misuse by individuals and institutions. After all, the media constitute the first port of call seeking unvarnished news and views, based upon facts upon more facts, are of vital importance in divided times.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.) 

The year 2020 was unprecedented. The coronavirus pandemic severely affected all walks of life, including the media and journalism. Nepal was no exception and experienced the same predicament owing to the lockdown and mobility restrictions. Consequently, the media and journalists were sternly constrained from upholding their watchdog role by accessing information, gathering news in the field and working in the newsroom. In such a dismal situation, no public policy or programme was introduced to rescue the Nepali media and normalise the everyday performance of journalists. Instead, the government’s hostile actions further weakened the media.

Most of the businesses that provided advertisements to various media outlets were shut due to the pandemic. The Advertising Association of Nepal estimated that approximately 80 percent of the revenue was lost in print media, 70 percent in radio and television, and 45 percent in online news portals. For the first time since 1990, the Nepali media struggled to survive due to the advertisement loss.

To cope with this extraordinary situation, many media houses suspended or closed their media outlets and downsized their employee numbers. At least 18 broadsheet newspapers published from the capital city suspended their print publications and resumed after weeks and months with limited coverage and circulation. Some shifted to a digital-only format, adjourning their print publications, and some others were closed forever. Several radio and television channels slashed their productions and broadcasting owing to the increased restrictions on the mobility of journalists and a hostile working environment in the newsroom.

A situation assessment report of Freedom Forum Nepal revealed that at least 3,190 journalists across the country lost their jobs, and thousands of others worked at a lower wage or without pay. The condition of journalists affiliated to various local and regional media houses in different districts was even worse. Many of these victim journalists organised protest programmes against their media houses for their rights as per the Working Journalists Act, but their endeavours were mostly unsuccessful. The Federation of Nepali Journalists and other media stakeholders urged media houses to stop job cuts, work without pay or underpayment, and requested governments to provide special relief packages to journalists and media houses. The government, however, turned down such requests since officials were aggressive and intimidating towards the media and journalists for their critical coverage relating to corruption and mishandling of the Covid-19 crises.

Silencing criticism

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and some of his Cabinet ministers constantly attacked the media and journalists for their critical reporting against the government’s inadequate efforts in handling the coronavirus-related crisis in the country. There were several reports published against the government’s involvement in corruption when purchasing medical aids or disregarding people stranded on the Indo-Nepal border for months without basic support. After one such report about stranded workers walking for up to 15 hours a day to reach home, Oli blamed journalists and the news media for orchestrating the news content to defame the government mechanism because he had not received such information from local government agencies. Oli further warned his party leadersto maintain their distance from media persons for ‘not leaking sensitive information’ and maintaining the confidentiality of government activities and strategies.

Journalists across the country were threatened and intimidated on different dates during the lockdown for giving unpleasant and critical coverage of the government’s involvement in financial and policy corruption, and failure to handle the consequences of the stay-home order. One of the severe intimidations against the free press was observed when a published article of the Kathmandupress.com was removed on April 2 by an alleged involvement of the prime minister’s IT advisor. The removed article was about the involvement of senior government officials in purchasing expensive medical equipment for coronavirus treatment from China.

Prior to this incident, Kosmos Biswokarma, editor of the news portal, had received multiple phone calls from different sources requesting him to remove the article because of immense pressure from ‘above’. The Federation of Nepali Journalists and editors of different news media condemned the unauthorised removal of the published article as a very serious incident against the free press guaranteed by the constitution. The article was eventually reinstated after two days, but no serious inquiry from any government agency was made to stop this sort of future interference in media content.

During this period, the role of Press Council Nepal was debated for its supposed involvement in silencing government criticism on digital platforms. Following the council’s recommendations on different dates, at least 121 online news portals were either closed or blocked in Nepal for their supposed role in promoting misinformation and fake news about the coronavirus and government efforts. Media stakeholders, including Freedom Forum Nepal, criticised the council’s role in obstructing online portals as an intervention against constitutional guarantee in the name of making the press accountable.

The government also mobilised various pro-government political factions and actors to run hundreds of bogus social media accounts for attacking or harassing journalists for their critical coverage about government performance. Some social media actors were rewarded with high-level governmentappointments merely for defending the government’s inabilities and inactions. Using all these tactics, the government tried to stop or minimise media criticism of official agencies and leaders of the ruling party by threatening and spreading fear among journalists.

Watchdog role

From the press freedom perspective, the year witnessed the devastating impact on the media and journalism, gravely weakening their watchdog function to make the government accountable to the public. While the consequences of Covid-19 severely limited journalistic practices and undertakings of press freedom, the government’s aggressive and hostile activities to silence media criticism against its responses in handling the pandemic was ubiquitous. The government, rather, seemed willing to see the media and journalism section become weaker and less able to uphold its watchdog roles.

Furthermore, media houses were not found accountable for implementing the Working Journalists Act (2007) nor showing empathy to journalists and their families on humanitarian grounds during such an unprecedented time. The pandemic helped us comprehend that the Nepali media was more fragile financially, professionally and institutionally than it was assumed to be as one of the robust industries thriving since 1990 in terms of quantity, variety and coverage.