Nepali media and media experts

Nepalese population has formed a habit of living in terrorized conditions. Perhaps they have no alternative to that. The past decade, especially after the advent of this new well-accepted order, the Nepalese population has been subjected to various types of terror that some time emanates from unexpected quarters. The Nepalese people get terrified these days from the governments' price hike orders; Bamdev's "say no to pay the bills" ; the Maoists chopping off the heads of innocent civilians and those of the police officials; the Police force who have made it a point to kill innocent civilians in the name of the suspected Maoists'; the ministers who speak only the untruth; minister KC's adventure in rampaging the house of a married lady; the politicians who summarily have been cheating their voters at the grass roots; the congress whose credentials have come to an open criticism and the majority of the population have started dubbing them as the real villains of the silent majority for obvious reasons; the UML whose credentials remain dubious simply because they have not yet erased their avowed final goal as Republicanism from their original manifesto; the RPPs double standards of splitting and uniting even in an unhealthy manner; NSPs penchant with the Indian immigrants and the recent sudden trips made by King Birendra to various military camps in the country and  etc. All these taken together are perhaps sufficient to terrorize the population for a long time to come.

However, a permanent terror emanates from the so-called Nepal's media authorities. These experts could be seen occupying chairs in various media organizations in Kathmandu. These experts could be found travelling abroad wherein they inevitably make lectures or present papers deriding the government's media policy. Mind it that a sizeable chunk of these media experts got themselves trained during the erstwhile regime. Mind it that it was this lot which benefited immensely from the last regime. They had the salaried chair. They were close to the powers that be then. They were considered as strong pillars of the now collapsed regime. During the Royal trips abroad, it was this lot which enjoyed the most. They used to defend the system through their pen. Like ordinary journalists, they never wished even to know how an ordinary media man in Nepal has to struggle for existence. They did not know how newsprint is collected from National Trading Limited; how the money had to be arranged for printing the newspaper; how advertisements were denied to common reporters; how the distribution of the printed newspapers were being managed by the organization and etc. This lot never cared for an ordinary media man's day to day problems. Subdued and submissive writers of the Panchayat days now have become vocal. It is this lot that criticizes the last system more vocally than the present day democrats. Guilty conscience perhaps.

The system changed, the pillars of the last system have now become democrats. Many have become media experts. No body knows who made them media experts. How could a person who remained on the salaried chair at the mercy of the Panchayati stalwarts for years and years and wrote every time in favor of an existing system be regarded as media expert? Copying several paragraphs from various books and compiling them does not make a man expert. At least I, for one, not ready to accept them as experts. In fact, in the Nepali context, a media expert is one who has faced all the troubles mentioned above. There are some media experts, I'm told, who have never written a single article on media situation in Nepal. Surprisingly, some of these headed very powerful media houses during the last system. The real tragedy is that people in Nepal including the donor community here honor them and fund their media institutions. 

There is also a tendency in Nepal to call a media man who is closer to the establishment as "senior journalist". A senior journalist is the one who has spent decades and decades in the profession but not the one who is close to the establishment. This phenomenon was prevalent in the last system and continues yet.

An ordinary journalist till the other day instantly becomes a senior journalist when the government nominates him. It is altogether a different matter that he is a duffer.

Well, I've nothing against the so-called media experts. But they must begin soul searching and ask themselves a question: Who made them media experts? This question goes to those also who in the recent years have proclaimed themselves as media experts.

# One media expert recently was found enjoying sex with a prostitute in Nepalganj. He was sent there to conduct a survey as to why teenage girls of the area jump into the profession. The researcher, the media expert, perhaps felt that his survey would remain incomplete if he did not enjoy the free sex provided by the respondent prostitute. However, before his survey findings could be released, one weekly printed his photographs with the prostitute.

My write up is not directed towards those sincere media men who have been really doing good jobs. However, I differ with those who claim themselves as media experts but their contributions to the media sector is tentatively nil.

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