By Harsha Man Mahrajan
Once my friend told me that business community is mainly responsible for the present mismanagement in Nepal. And media are silent on this issue. Yes it is this community which supported royal regime, and all political parties depend on them as economic source. Their money is never made transparent. So my friend liked Manoj Bhandarkar’s film Page Three for showing the negative impact of advertisers in media.
On 19 March 2007 The Kathmandu Post daily published an news about hotelier Hari Shrestha being abducted and beaten by the Maoists for supporting king. On the same day Nepali day Kantipur wrote that the Maoists did this for he denied to provide donation of 20,00,000.00 Nepali rupee. The news also informed the Maoist forced him to do written commitment to provide Rs 1,00,000,00.00 and provide 10 rooms for CPN(Maoist) free of cost and not to inform about this to police. The news was placed on the first page with a photo of Shrestha with his bruised face. Both news were one-sided. Neither of them had voices of the Maoists. Today it is easy to know their voice.
Owing to this and other incidents of Maoist action, the business community declared the band for indefinite period from 19 March 2007. What a job of the Kantipur Publication, its Nepali broadsheet daily published an appeal on 20 March 2007 of business community to do bandh and participate in the rally taking place in Basantapur on the same day. Definitely this is advertisement. Is it not against the ethics of journalism?
On Samaya Sandarbha, a talk program aired by Nepal FM on 20 March, Badri Bajgai of trade union affiliated to the Maoists told that the action against Shrestha was due to wrong activities of Shrestha. Bajgai accused Shrestha of exploiting his workers, rape and murder.
I was curious to knbow about this so I called my friend at Gefont. According to him, Gefont also fought with him from Panchayat period and every time he remained scotch free due to Royal protection.
Why did Kantipur hide this issue? Isn’t its duty to inform readers about this? No doubt, the Maoists’ action is wrong. No one should take laws in her/his hand. They must abide with rule of law. They must learn about this.
2 comments:
I agree that the media monopoly has been doing more harm than good to our people.
Today- I read the newspaper- Kantipur- and I was shocked to find only view points of Maoists regarding the Gaur massacres. No MPRF tone- in stead of contacting with the MPRF- they felt as if Maoists bytes alone can represent the true story. The news in kantipur publications are often incomplete and sometimes totally opposite to other local dailies.
In Nepal, everyone is right. And, big and powerful can never be wrong! So, it makes us wrong.
I've written about the Kantipur publications- and similar write ups. Hope you'll review my write ups.
I was even amazed when the Nepal1 and Kantipur TV broadcasted the mass meeting live!
About Shrestha, I feel that, maybe Maoists are true but they can't handle the case themselves. It would have been better if they had reported police with proofs. If everyone started thinking they are the punishing body, then there will be problems.
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