FIFTH COLUMN

Monopoly

By C K Lal

Martin Chautari is an interesting place. It’s an informal discussion forum where people gather to listen to an opinion and then extend it further by their questions, comments, objections or agreements. While the presentations usually follow a format, discussions are mostly open and unstructured. It allows for a lot of room to dwell upon one’s own area of interest and try to relate it to topic at hand.

Last Tuesday, one of the speakers was Dr. Stephen Bezruchka. He is a trained physician, has written a popular trekking guide on Nepal and he keeps visiting the country as often as one can. A thoroughly likable fellow, whether one agrees him or not.

He chose to spoke about the Battle of Seattle where sanity won a temporary respite as the millennium rounds of the WTO were successfully scuttled by a group of protesters nun Bering more than thirty thousand from all over the globe. Interesting story, even though we got to wait to find out whether it turns out to be a tragedy, a comedy or the usual farce played upon poor countries by the rich ones.

However, what attracted my attention in his presentation was a brief mention about how a newspaper editor frankly admitted to him that nothing against Boeing could ever be printed in Seattle. Dr. Bezruchka himself wrote an article that was denied publication. Sherlock Holmes would have called it a dog that didn’t bite. It’s not necessary for the paper to curry favor by indulging in panegyrics, merely keeping mum is enough.

That’s what happens when huge corporations wield enormous advertising power. It gets much worse when there is no competition and the advertiser himself happens to have sizable interests.

Considering all that, perhaps the Sahujees of Kantipur Publications have done a fairly credible job so far, despite Kishor Nepal’s implied allegation that mainstream daily news papers these days play more politics than the weekly tabloids. Its publications peddle mainstream bahunistic views, news-coverage is often biased, but they still score fairly well on both readability as well as reliability scales. However, the way they are consolidating their hold over the media and creating a kind of monopoly on news and views does have its dangers.

In a bid to extend their empire, they have hired controversial media-person Vijay Kumar to captain their as yet unnamed news-weekly that is perhaps planned to be pitted straight against the current market leader in that segment-Himal. Fortnightly Newsmagazine. As a possible contributor, I should be happy at the expansion of the market. But concentration of power; regardless of whether it is in the hands of the government, the donor, the NGOs or the private sector; always gives me jitters.

Despite all that, happy sailing Vijay. And hope you give us a product as lively as your reputation.