We encourage differing comments

Of late my newspaper has become the target of my readers living abroad. I consider it to be a good omen for the weekly which I have been editing since 1982.

It is a good sign because what me and the team in the Telegraph writes every week must come under scrutiny. Our readers living outside the country possess the right to differ with our comments. After all this is the beauty of a democratic system.

I, for one, have always encouraged my colleagues housed in this weekly to encourage the comments sent to us by our readers. After all, if we do possess rights to pass on negative comments on others, it should, in my opinion, be equally the rights of the readers to differ with our comments whether the events were concerned with the domestic or even international fronts.

Some in Kathmandu consider that we the men involved in the newspaper profession possess exclusive rights to degrade others through our write-ups and hope that our stories have got to be accepted by the readers without any comments. In my opinion, this is a dictatorial policy. Our valued readers too possess the rights to pass on comments and we in the media have no right or whatsoever to brush aside the comments made by our readers. In my opinion, the readers who usually beg to differ with our comments are no less important persons and no less qualified than those who run the weekly being in Nepal.

The gist is that we in this newspaper have always encouraged our international readers to read our analyses and if they feel that our stories appear biased or prejudiced, they can fire us, albeit with strongest comments. We encourage our readers to guide us for our mistakes or at times even of blunders.

However, the other side of this story is also equally important. While we continue to value the negative comments passed onto our comments by our readers living abroad, however, we wish to politely differ with them on some respects.

For instance, we as media professionals remain better informed about the country’s ongoing politics and the various visible and invisible political maneuvering going on in the country than those who are outside the country. Similarly, by being in the country itself, we in the media certainly know the political undercurrents and the political actors playing foul or otherwise than those who, on one pretext or the other, have left the country but yet remain remarkably attached to the happenings in their own motherland. This is obvious. We salute the nationalist feelings of our compatriots who live in foreign countries but still feel pained as and when some sad events plague the country.

However, exhibiting one’s true nationalist feelings is one thing. Analysing the real issues in its true perspective by being in the country itself is entirely different. This means that we in Kathmandu and our readers not being in the capital have reasons to differ on so many counts.

In a democratic system, when one newspaper differs with the other apparently guided by their own political affiliations or for that matter the compulsions, it is only but natural that we in Nepal could differ with our readers outside the country on political perceptions.

To come to the point, one of our readers scathingly criticized our write up wherein we had maintained that the politics of the country since long has been revolving around the King and that the King must now act so that the country’s situation restored political normalcy. The King remaining silent and the political parties continuing their agitation against the King, the politics remained in a stand-still. The deadlock continues yet. The reader pointed that our newspaper had become biased and that we appear to be close to the King.

The fact is that the King still remains in the center-stage of the country’s politics. He has to act and that too very fast is what we had been writing . The fact is also that it is still the King who has to unknot the tie. This is what the political parties have been saying and the media have been writing appealing the King to act. If he doesn’t act should not mean that we in this profession should not press the King. In so doing, how come we could be considered to be close to the King?

Passing on comments is easy. However, to write stories with proper and justifiable analyses is definitely a hard job.

But then yet, we wish that our qualified readers continued to grill us and allow us to respond to their queries.

Happy Dashain to all of you dear readers!

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