Increased remuneration of journalists: Will it make any change to working journalists?

Kathmandu: The minimum remuneration fixation committee has decided to raise the pay of working journalists by two fold but the decision has raised questions if it will really be implemented or if it is just a publicity stunt of the committee.

Although development of the media sector is very encouraging following the political movement of 1990, most of the media are just running on ad-hoc basis. As there is no proper monitoring mechanism, most of the media are running for collecting seasonal advertisements or to benefit from the advertisements provided by the Department of Information. The growth of media is very high as compared to the advertisement market of Nepal.

The new wave of Nepali Journalism started firstly with a political mission as its main agenda, but unfortunately has failed to fully come out of it, notwithstanding some efforts for professional development of the media sector. Now-a-days, it is also guided by a business mission. A company does not need to give advertisement to the media to publicize its product, rather it just calls a press conference and all media houses publish their advertisement in the form of news. These days it is very difficult to distinguish whether the media content are news or advertisement of different companies. Similarly, another very dangerous tendency of the Nepali media is ‘bargaining’ with the news source. Many entrepreneurs have informed during private conversations that they were forced to pay regular money to some journalists for not publishing negative news. The tendency is quite high outside Kathmandu valley.

Apart from a couple of media houses, most of them have not been paying regular salary to journalists. Journalists have to wait for months to get their salary. Except for a few journalists, many journalists have many months of salary due from the media houses they are working in. Similarly, most of the journalists, particularly those working in FM stations and weekly media, have been getting much less remuneration than the minimum fixed by the committee. In this context, the increment in the pay of journalists has raised question about whether working journalists will really benefit from the new provision.

There are many incidents where the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ), the umbrella organization of working journalists, has had to organize sit-in protest program in media houses demanding the payment of remuneration to working journalists. Similarly, in many incidents, the FNJ was blamed for not advocating for the rights of working journalists under the influence of media owners. Media houses have already made it clear that they will not be able to abide by the decision, so, it seems less likely that the decision will be implemented. In many media houses, editors and senior level employees have been receiving remuneration and junior employees have not been getting remuneration. In this context, the increment in the remuneration of working journalists has raised suspicion over working journalists receiving remuneration regularly. “The increment in the remuneration of working journalists does mean anything to me, I wish to get my remuneration regularly whether it is more or less,” says a working journalist, who has been waiting for his remuneration for the last four months. As the market determines the remuneration, the first and foremost thing is that the FNJ and other professional media bodies should initiate clean-up campaign in the journalism sector. They should lobby for closing the media institutions that are not able to run as per the people’s need and are just spreading baseless news and rumors in the society. There should be environment where we should feel proud for having a strong media, which can effectively play the role of watchdog; rather than just counting the number of media outlets. Let’s take an example of online news portals, as per the record of Press Council Nepal 300online news portals have been registered but the reality is that most of the online portals have been creating rumors in the society rather than providing news. Similar is the case with most of the weeklies and many newspapers, which are being published from mofussil.

The Press Council Nepal should play an effective role in monitoring the media institutions and it should do the classification of media institutions based on the research and monitoring carried out either by the council itself or from independent research institutions. Otherwise, the provision of welfare advertisement will continue to be misused and genuine media institutions will have to suffer. There is also a real need of professional training of working journalists to enhance their quality. Although they have been in journalism for many years, the quality of journalism is not very satisfactory and it is limited to who said what journalism. Although various factors are responsible for it including the remuneration, training to journalists on investigative reporting is also essential. The FNJ should work to enhance the quality of journalists rather than just acting as a fraternal organization for any political party. The FNJ should lobby against wrong trends in journalism and act as an institution to bring positive change in the media sector.

Without making media institutions professional and sustainable, the increased remuneration means nothing to working journalists as there is no research on how many journalists have been getting the minimum remuneration and how many of them are getting paid regularly. The minimum remuneration fixation committee has become a place for giving employment to some persons of ruling parties as there is no scientific base for announcing this minimum remuneration. They also do not have any alternative plans if the media institutions cannot afford to pay the remuneration announced by them. Similarly, they have not done any research on the regularity in the payment of remuneration and providing the remuneration fixed by them. So, the time now is for concentrating more on professionalism in media and creating a win-win situation for both media institutions and journalists rather than just making some impractical decisions for the sake of cheap popularity.

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