Partisan journalism has dominated our news media scene having adverse effects on their credibility

P. Kharel, Senior journalist, Nepal

Parsuram Kharel has been in the journalism for the thirty years now. Beginning his career as a sub-editor in The Rising Nepal under founding editor Barun S. Rana, he finished his stint in the Rising Nepal as Chief Editor after which he took up a stint as media advisor at the FES.

In between, he took up journalism teaching, which he still does, and for a year posted to New Delhi, 1989-90, as the Rising Nepal's correspondent there.

Currently elected to a Nepal Press Institute post, Kharel as senior journalist is known for his opinions some of which we seek to produce here for our readers in our interview column. -Editor

TGQ1: Your readers including me appear to have been deprived of any account of your experience as a Nepali correspondent in New Delhi in the critical Nepal-India relation years of 1989-90. How are the Indian media credential systems and government-media relation as per your experience? What was your New Delhi assignment like? Your comments please!

P. Kharel: As a regular, full-time correspondent of the Gorkhapatra Corporation stationed in New Delhi in 1989-90 during the height of the Indian economic blockade, the assignment was indeed highly challenging and the experience rich, rewarding and hence satisfying. I actually did not wish to take up the assignment, given the fact that I was doing quite well here and was earning extra through part-time assignments for a number of organizations, apart from my regular work at The Rising Nepal. But my friends persuaded me to accept it as "a big challenge to prove one's credentials". The Indian External Affairs Department at Shashtri Bhawan gave a tough time, summoning me several occasions to express its "disappointment" over some of my news dispatches and comments in the "Delhi Dateline" fortnightly column that appeared in The Rising Nepal. They never gave me a permanent accreditation press card and I used to joke with Indian and other foreign correspondents that I was the senior-most foreign correspondent among those holding temporary passes. Temporary pass meant that the holder did not get enrolled in the regular correspondents' roaster and hence many agencies were not aware of the correspondent's existence unless he/she personally got acquainted with the agencies concerned. The temporary pass had to be renewed every month and I was worried that failure to get it renewed on time might invite refusal to renew it thereafter. For the tone and tenor of the officials concerned at the Information Department was such. Other foreign correspondents obtained regular press card within six months and most of them within a few days.

But the constraint by compulsion made me dig for more information and build contact the hard way. I was quite successful in this regard to the extent that I had informed my editor Shyam Bahadur K.C. as early as in September 1989 that Rajiv Gandhi's Congress party, which had more than three-fourths seats in the parliament, would be defeated in the impending general elections. My editor did not ask me to disclose the source but he seemed to have given it a serious thought. The next November, the polls saw Rajiv's party having lost more than half of its previous seats in parliament.

I returned to Kathmandu to take up the new assignment only after I made it clear to the management at Gorkhapatra Corporation that I was determined to back home. It was with much regret that the management agreed to my insistence. That a new weekly publication was also being planned also helped me secure my viewpoint.

TGQ2: Perhaps for the first time in Gorkhapatra corporation's history a publication, "Sunday Dispatch", weekly is said to have brought profits from the very day of its publication until your status as founding editor was denied. Considering that the weekly appears ultimately to have been made defunct, please recount your experience in the Corporation at that crucial juncture after which you seem to have been rehabilitated ultimately as editor of The Rising Nepal?

 P.Kharel: On completion of my New Delhi assignment, I was asked to be the editor of the soon-to-be-launched Sunday Dispatch, containing 16 pages. I had strong differences over its copy price fixed at Rs 5 and in April 1990! However, I placed special emphasis on the contents and, lo and behold! the paper sold more than 2000 copies from its very first issue. I had extracted a promise from the management that I could return to my job as the executive editor of The Rising Nepal anytime I wished after the launch of the weekly. When the atmosphere in the entire corporation proved too stifling because of loyalists divided into different political parties, I decided to return to my regular post in The Rising Nepal, which was more convenient and yet no less influential. The result was that the circulation of the weekly began declining soon thereafter till it was reduced to a few hundred sold copies a decade later. It finally folded up a few years ago, having proved to be a big drain in the finances of the corporation.

TGQ3: You are now the Secretary at the Nepal Press Institute and your teaching experience at the Tribhuban University is said to give you credence for a likely Professorship in Journalism, the first ever in Nepali history. As a working and a teaching journalist, how do you rate the Nepali media? Your opinions please!

P.Kharel: I joined The Rising Nepal as sub-editor in 1973 soon after my graduation but I also held the job of a lecturer at Patan Campus and later at Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus in Kathmandu Valley since March 1980. Since B.A. classes were held at first in the evening (at Patan campus) and, later, in the morning (at Ratna Rajya), I could combine my teaching assignment with my regular work at the English daily. The academic life broadened my horizon considerably and thus I was able to acquire theoretical knowledge, under journalism principles and practice as a professional journalist. This all combined to enrich my understanding of mass media functioning in Nepal and elsewhere. This also encouraged me to be involved as editor/co-author of a dozen books on different aspects of mass media, apart from writing over 2,500 articles for different newspapers. My commitment now is to devote much more time and attention to my academic career than I have been able to contribute in the course of the past 25 years of this aspect of my life. I think I have a lot to share with journalism and mass communications students at Bachelor and degree levels.

TGQ4: You have now emerged as a seasoned commentator of Nepali politics and International relations. How do you see the current phase of Nepali politics? Where are we heading? Your remarks please.

P.Kharel: Partisan journalism has dominated our news media scene, thus having adverse effects on their credibility. There is a need for freeing opinion pages from personal prejudices. This does not, however, mean that individual writers cannot differ from the views of others. In fact, diverse views are expected to grace the editorial and opinion pages of the media. What needs is to be avoided is a regular forum for propaganda serving the narrow interests of a certain group or individual interests in the valued space of the fourth estate. On the international relations front, there is very little written on such issues, especially vis-a-vis Nepal against the background of developments in the rest of the world. I have no hesitation in singling out M.R. Josse as the best hand in producing regular, in-depth and perceptive pieces on international relations. I leave to others to judge my own contribution on this score while I cannot easily name anyone else writing regularly on such issues. Former diplomats and individuals described as "experts" in this field seem to be enthusiastic only in granting interviews or in being quoted rather than taking the trouble of actually putting into pen their opinion. For writing is not an easy profession. It demands time, thinking and energy accompanied by a commitment to write and constantly update one's store of information and knowledge.

 I have not written as regularly as I would have liked to on national issues in the last three years or so. I am now planning to write regularly on current national issues and events soon. For I have vast contacts that supply me with plenty of information which I can analyze for drawing conclusions of my own to share with my readers. It is perhaps due to this strength of mine that I am regularly bombarded with queries by quite a few people as to why I have not resumed writing also on national issues.

The Nepali media is heading toward a very vulnerable phase, despite big investments having been made by some business houses in both the print and broadcast sectors. Undue influence is being exercised to extract undue advantages; journalism is, even if subtly, being misused for the cause of political masters; and foreign interests threaten to invade our national interests. On the positive side, however, media outside Kathmandu Valley have been making major gains. There are about two scores of daily papers, for example, coming out from the districts, some of them listed in A and B categories of the Press Council's list. FM radio stations are mushrooming but they need to define their role for more effective professionalism in serving local interests and their declared target group.

TGQ5: As a media expert at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, FES, you seem to have been in a position to gauze foreign interests in the Nepali media and the media nexus with Nepali politics. Is it possible to glean your experience on these? Your exclusive comments please.

P.Kharel: Although I am no longer associated with FES, the German INGO, my 7-year role as its media advisor, also helping in its Asia-Pacific Media Project, gave me ample scope for reading mountains of materials on media practices and trends worldwide. It was an opportunity I grabbed eagerly to update myself--an experience that comes handy in my academic life in particular.

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