mediaharsha

By Harsha Man Maharjan On 11 June 2007, I was surprised to see Nepali daily Kantipur in eight pages only. Its sisterly paper The Kathmandu Post, was in black & white. The kantipur publication shrouded a big incident in the publication in the name of technical problem. Next both newspapers had news on their management letting All Nepal Communication, Press and Publications Workers' Association (ANCPPWA) to open its unit in the publication. Actually slim Kantipur and B/W The Kathmandu Post are the result of ANCPPWA's pressure to let them open it's unit in the publication. Now similar issue has cropped on in the Kamana Prakashan. This prakashan out sources Customers Solution Pvt Limited to hawk its publications. Now these hawkers affialiated to ANCPPWA wants to open a unit in the Kamana Prakashan. Pushkar Lal of the Kamana Prakashan denied their rights and closed the publication for few days. He blames the agitating hawkers for doing politics in the Prakashan and diluting ...

By Harsha Man Maharjan My friends at college today were discussing about the return of Sushil Kharel. He left Masters class of Journalism and mass communication to work in Nepal 1 tv channel. I search for this issue in google. I came upon a blog: Solidarity with Nepal1 fight: It has two postings: 1. Nalini's Torture Forced Eight Journalists Displaced from Delhi 2. Get Up Stand Up ...Stand Up for your Right About the blog, it says this: "This blog has been created to express solidarity with all the Nepal One staffs who have dared to stand up and fight against the tyrrany and atrocities of Nepal One management...the struggle initiated by the nepal one staffs was exemplerary and a milestone in protecting the fundamental rights of television journalists ...Kudos to all the Nepal one staffs..." According to the blog, Nepal 1 forced eights jopurnalists: Rajendra khanal, Chiranjivi Devkota, Divyajoyti Misra, Pradip Giri, Sushil Kharel, Lily Bhaidya, Madhu Bhattarai and Aarati KC...

By Harsha Man Maharjan I was amazed to a book name Arresting God in Nepal in the yesterday's news in Kantipur Television. It was the second time. It named this way in previous news few days before too. Actually the name of the book is Arresting God in Kathmandu. How did those mistakes take place? The news even informed that 11th Book fair lasted for 10 days. It is 8 days only.

By Harsha Man Maharjan At last on 5 June 2007 Minister of Communication and Information, Krishna Bahadur Mahara has has done two political appointments: Om Sharma as executive chairman of the Gorkhapatra Corporation and Rishi Raj Baral as chairman of the Nepal Television Corporation. It shows that the CPN (Maoist) want to toe the line of other political parties. Even in past political parties misused government owned media when they were in power and demanded for autonomy when they were in opposition. I can only hope that Mohara will not regret for what he did today when he will be in opposition. It would have been better if chairpersons are from the same corporations who know all activities of the corporation. We should not forget the appointment in NTV of writer Benju Sharma. Many staffs in NTV experienced hardship in dealing with her.

By Harsha Man Maharjan We have a phrase: stale as yesterday's news. It seems that Gorkhaptra, government owned Nepali newspaper does not know this. On June 3, 2007 it has published news with the headline 'Kukur Biralo' in Market on second page. Kukur Biralo is an audio cassette produced by Subash Regmi. The news only has information on the producer and singers. It has no extra information . Actually this is the cassette singer Badri Pangeni and his colleagues are lobbying with government to ban. They think it demean the folk singers. But news says nothing about this. The news appears to be a public relations materials. How could journalist who did that news forget this kind of important aspects? This incident helps to know the process of news making. Generally there must be personal contacts to get coverage in media. It definitely shows laziness of some reporters in Gorkhapatra.

By Harsha Man Maharjan I usually contact Dhurba Hari Adhikary, journalist to know more about some media issues. He is a member in the task force to restructure government media. This task force has not presented its report. I call him to know about the present state of the task force. He requested me to call Kiran Shrestha of Ministry of Information and communications. Earlier Raghu Mainali told me that the task force is not working and government is not in position to stop meddling in these media. Few weeks before Kantipur daily made a news related to new recruitment of the CPN (Maoist) supporting journalists in Radio Nepal and TV. Tej Prakash Pandit of Gorkhpatra Corporation has stopped visiting Gorkhaptra and there is information that the CPN (Maoist) has proposed Rishiraj Baral in place of Benju Sharma in NTV. But Kiran Shrestha informed that they are preparing draft of the report. Hope this time, government will pave a way to make these media really autonomous.