Nepalese Weeklies Still Have Space

By Harsha Man Maharjan

Yes. These newspapers still have niece in Nepalese life. Media scholar Pratyoush Onta, Journalists Kunda Dixit and Dr. Dharma Adhikari are right. Their influence is waning. But daily newspapers could not replace weeklies from our life. Why is so?
The occasion was regular media discussion at Martin Chautari on 24 April 2008. Pundit or main speaker was Dr. Dharma Adhikari. The topic was The Essence of Journalism: Some Thoughts on Nepali and US Perspectives and Practices on the Craft.
The pundit and others presented their views on the subject.

Dr. Dharma Adhkari introduced weeklies as opinion-based journalism. Yes its news contains opinion and most of them are aligned to different parties and fraction of these parties. These weeklies cover the gap created by ‘Valadmi Journalism’ (Innocuous Journalism ) of dailies. According to Kunda Dixit, ‘Valadmi Journalism’ only presents superficial fact. It whets our appetite for more news. Then we have to bank on weeklies.

But weeklies’s news is amalgamation of fact and fiction. We have to decide which is fact and which is fiction.

Weeklies still have place in Nepalese Journalism field due to growing corporate censorship. Professionalism and commercialism are present trends in Nepal. There are internal and external pressures inside newsroom. And ‘Innocuous Journalism’ is the result of these pressures.

Weeklies too have these pressures but as they are in ‘Mission Journalism’, degree and manifestation of these pressures are different from that of dailies’.

link to Dharma Adhikari
http://dharmaadhikari.com/
http://journalism.missouri.edu/alumni/dharma-adhikari-04.html

UML's CA Manisfesto Mum on Restructuring of State Media in Nepal

It is habit of UML to keep all option open in every issue.

It says nothing about restructuring of state media in its CA Manifesto. It is not suitable for main political parties of Nepal to do this. They must have clear vision on the issue.

Government must stop meddling with these media institutions.

links

http://www.cpnuml.org/