Time to work on professionalism in Media (Nepalekhabar Special)

Kathmandu: Media is considered the fourth organ of the state for its critical role especially to monitor the wrongdoings of the other three organs of the state but while going through the recent media coverage it is time to rethink whether the Nepali media is playing the role of fourth state.

There has been immense growth of media in Nepal following the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1990 but the quality of Nepali journalism is yet to grow. In the recent few years, there has been high growth of online news portals and blog sites with some of them being involved in spreading propaganda in the society rather than informing and educating people. There is only one truth in every issue, though the presentation of media could be different, the fact is same – but when you go through some of the media the facts are different. For example, in recent unrest in the Tarai, the facts are different as some media see only Indian people blocking the border in Birgunj checkpoint, while some see it as a genuine fight of oppressed people. Similarly, the Press Council Nepal formed a team to investigate about the allegation of FM stations of Tarai disseminating biased information about the new constitution.

While talking about the media coverage, we need to discuss about four issues i.e.; state of media houses; qualification of journalists; media monitoring mechanism and professional organizations like the Federation of Nepalese Journalists.

If we talk about the state of media houses, we should not take pride on how many media are registered in Nepal. We need to talk about how the media has been running. Although, we believe that media has developed as an industry, we need to know the state of most of the media houses except some big houses. You can count in your fingers the media houses giving salary to the journalists on time, so forget about the issue of welfare of journalists. Even if some media houses are paying the remuneration regularly, they are paying very less as the journalists do not have options to find similar job in other institutions. The question is, if the media are not being able to generate money to give salary to the journalists, why are they running the media? One possible answer is simply to bargain with others and get unnecessary protection of their wrongdoings. We have time and again read the news that media houses are bargaining with entrepreneurs for covering the news and different media houses presenting different facts about the same news. Not only the media houses. our society and people are also to blame in this regard. For example, rather than filing complaint about the wrongdoings of media and exposing it to the public, we fear the media and accept whatever they write. This type of wrong tendency is giving rise to bargaining in the media sector.

Qualification of journalists: The qualification of journalists remains a much talked issue in Nepal but without conclusion. As most of the senior journalists do not have academic qualification, they do not want to listen to this debate and they even do not hesitate to say that there is no need of academic qualification for media. If so, why are many journalism universities operating across the globe? There are many ‘journalists’ who had entered this profession after they could not get jobs in other profession and are defaming the profession. The wrongdoings of some unethical journalists have also hampered the reputation of journalists. One journalist remarked that as most of the journalists are involved in unethical practices, we need to hesitate to our identity as journalists. Although the media houses do not give salaries on time for many months, how are the journalists surviving and still working in an institution that does not pay them for months? Additionally, it is also not clear whether they will get paid or not. The answer is clear for some as it is their passion, but for most it is a means of earning money in unethical ways. Some of the journalists are involved in consultancy services but many of them are involved in unethical ways and making money from different sources. Most of the journalists have been seeking consultancy work with I/NGOs and private organizations with the assurance of giving coverage to their issues, so the question is if they are involved in consultancy work of some institution, how can they be critical of the organization? This is the main reason for Nepali journalism not been able to rise above from ‘who said what journalism’. If the provision was made to take some test and licensing system was made in the journalism sector, it would help to solve various problems.

Media monitoring mechanism: The Press Council Nepal is the only media monitoring mechanism but it does not have sufficient human resources and other resources to monitor the media of the country. It has been a decade since the issue of Media Monitoring Authority was discussed but it has not materialized. As press council does not have the capacity of monitoring all the media, there is wrong tendency in media while covering news and information.  The government should either form media authority or provide necessary resources to Press Council Nepal for media monitoring, so that it would be capable of doing independent monitoring in the event of violation of the journalist code of conduct and media ethics. Press Council should be given the authority of revoking the license of media institutions if they were found involved in serious breach of code of conduct and media ethics. As social media are powerful tools, so such media monitoring mechanism should be empowered to monitor the social media as well. For example there have been many provoking posts in social media but it seems that the people involved in such acts are not booked.

Role of professional organizations: Professional organizations like the Federation of Nepalese Journalists could have played important role for professional development of the media but they are sharply divided based on political ideology. They are least bothered about the professional development of media rather they are busy visiting different countries and do politics in the name of journalists. The FNJ itself could have started the discussion about qualification of journalists and other related aspects to drive the media sector of the country in a positive direction but it is not seen anywhere in the horizon. In recent days, the FNJ delegation were seen visiting the Prime Minister and President and spending their productive time in unnecessary works, rather they should have concentrated on bringing the positive change in the media sector. Gone are the days when we used to get satisfied counting the number of newspapers, this is the time for professional growth of media and time for quality control. FNJ should lobby for setting qualification of journalists and also adopt necessary measures for quality of media. Rather than being involved in the politics, FNJ should be the common platform of all journalists and should take the lead to guide journalism in an ethical way. FNJ should develop some mechanism for providing on the job training to journalists which will help to boost their confidence.

Although, the advertisement market of Nepal is very limited, we do expect that it will grow with political stability but the major question is to guide the media in an ethical way so that it will guide Nepali society towards the right track rather than misleading people in the wrong way.

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