If No News, Send Rumors!
Many people in Nepal do not trust the sayings of
Nepali newspapers. Intellectuals say that to arrive at a judgement regarding the state of
Nepalese politics one has to read at least ten or even fifteen different newspapers and
that too of varied political leanings. I, for one, agree with the intellectual's
interpretation regarding the genuineness of the Nepalese media's coverage. The sources of
Nepalese papers rest more often than not, on wild rumors. While this divulgence might jolt
the minds of the readers but to a greater extent this is a hard fact. The interesting part
of the story is that these wild scuttlebutt's take the form of the real happenings a few
days later. This happened during the Panchayat era and the practice to honor the rumors
continues as yet. In fact heavy dependence on the rumors too appears to have become a
Nepali tradition. Needless to say, we the Nepalese honor the traditions. We are very
particular in honoring traditions.
Regarding the forbearance of the readers of the
newspapers what could be at best said that the condensed version of the state of politics
they could get only after reading several papers. For example, if one wished to get the
true conspiracy being hatched by the Girija camp one is bound to read the papers from the
other camp and vice versa. This will give a clear picture of both the camps and then you
can form your own consideration regarding the state of politics in congress. Similarly, to
understand the UML politics one is advised to go through the papers that are supposedly
close to Madhav and Woli respectively. In recent times these two leaders are talked to be
not even in talking terms. Madhav is in foreign land. Before leaving the nation, Woli
expected that the acting post of the GS would be awarded to Woli. This, however, did not
happen. Madhav opted to honor Amrit Bohra instead of Woli. This angered Woli. So to get to
know who is doing what against each other one has to read the papers of both the camps.
This applies to ML as well. Bamdev and C.P. Mainali do not wish to see each other even.
Mainali is likely to join another party so that he could free himself from the Bamdev
dominance. Here again one needs to collect various newspapers to get the truth of the two
leaders' moves and countermoves.
In a similar fashion, one must read a host of
newspapers to understand the RPP recent happenings. Though L.B.Chand has joined his former
main stream party yet the party with his name is being given new life by his former
colleague-Devkota. This forces again the readers to buy few papers from both the camps to
get to the truth.
However, understanding government politics one need
not pay money. All that one needed was patience. Tune the Radio, NTV, Gorkhapatra, and The
Rising Nepal. Not surprisingly, they speak the same language
All these put together, one comes to a conclusion
that to understand the Nepalese politics one has to be financially sound.
This notwithstanding, all the newspapers mentioned
above forcefully claim their papers to be "independent". A suggestion to the
readers: do not debate and question their independence or else prepare yourself for the
would be disasters. In what form that would come, I can't tell you.
I'm reminded of a book titled, "If no news,
send rumors" penned and donated to me by the author Stephan Bates, U.S during my trip
to the United States in 1994. The book sketches the development of American journalism in
the three centuries since Public Occurrences. The book is more like, as Walter Lippmann
once deprecatingly described the press, " a searchlight that moves restlessly about,
bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision". |
