We are ready to act as a facilitator in Government-Maoists talks

-Tara Nath Dahal, President, Federation of Nepalese Journalists

It should have been roughly two decades plus that I am in the journalism sector.

I began my vocation as a journalist by reporting in the then weeklies such as Nepali Awaz and the Chalphal. Most importantly, I worked for the Samaj Daily, a daily that was then run under the editorship of Mani Raj Upadhyaya, a celebrated member of the Nepali press in his own right.

Later, I worked for the Jan Manch as Chief correspondent to be followed by Kantipur Daily as sub-editor at the night desk. I recall, I could have written more than five hundred plus editorials for the Kantipur daily during my tenure there. This should be a record in itself.

Later I decided to play an energetic role in the Nepalese media sector and thus got involved in the Journalist association and became a Councilor-the one who could cast his or her votes at time of the elections. This should have been around 1992-two years after the reinstatement of the order now in place..

Later I was elevated to the ranks of the General Secretary of the Federation of the Nepalese Journalists, FNJ, during the President ship of Suresh Acharya around the year 1999.

As the providence would have it, friends in the media sector selected me for the post of the presidency and I am steering the FNJ since 2002 and will be in this post until May 2005.

As regards the problems and the issues that our FNJ is confronting today are basically, sorry to tell you, is the financial crunch. With the inadequate money we are supposed to do Himalayan works and thanks to the active cooperation of the members of the Federation that the FNJ is moving ahead though the financial pain is always there.

Other issues that we need to address are that we lack competent and skilled manpower. We need a well-equipped office secretariat in order to effectively run seventy-six branches that we have scattered around the country. Add to this we have nine associate members. The building is there but yet we lack so many things so that the office of the FNJ is worth its name. We need to train our staffs and concurrently need some support to run the Umbrella Organization of the Nepalese Journalists. For your record, we have around five thousand members at the moment and the number is increasing every year.

Not amazing therefore that most of the office bearers of the FNJ work on a volunteer basis. We are not totally dependent on the support of the establishment. It is as meager as any thing.

But then yet last year we completed projects related with the media to the tune of 32 lakhs and we intend to expand our activities, which might touch the ceiling of rupees fifty lakhs.

Talking on the problems being faced by the journalists, those are many. However, those problems in a nut shell could be documented as the protection of press freedom; protection of the journalists; coping to the challenge on how to develop professionalism; guaranteeing the right to information; formulation of a standard advertisement policy and the multifaceted problems of working journalists.

There has been now talk of working journalists' being denied their editorial freedom by their employers. This is a complex issue. Add to this the issue of foreign investment in media. Similarly, FM radio stations, I am told, are not allowed to work in a free and fair manner. So the problems are many and we at the FNJ been struggling with the government to secure our rights and genuine demands.

Talking of Nepali establishment let me give you one glaring example, which will prove as to how much languid and apathetic is our government on certain serious matters. Take for example, in Delhi, India, some enthusiasts are running a Television channel that bears a Nepali name-Nepal One. How can alien nationals use the country's name? Shame on us.

Well I have some thing to tell to the donor community as well. I beg to differ with their style of funding in the media sector in Nepal. Generally what has been seen is that the donors prefer to pour in their money to such media institutions, and NGOs who have no public base or standing. Their endowment should have gone to those institutions which have been working for the growth of professionalism, skill development and for the media mobilization and etc. Those whose credentials are held suspect are the ones who have been playing with the donors' money. The result is that the money thus poured has so far made no impact worth mentioning.

We at the FNJ have been suggesting the government to come up with a clear policy on foreign investment; advertisement and so many others by reviewing the existing policies and bring about certain reforms so that the nation has a clear cut policies on media.

Most importantly, we in the media have become the target of both, the Maoists and the State forces. Several instances are there which tells the sorry tale of the Nepali media men who are if hit by the Security forces during the day then in the night, it is the Maoists who pounce on us in remote districts.

FNJ at the moment is working in a mission in order to set free some journalists who have recently been kidnapped by the Maoists. Equally, we are also working to free those media men who are supposedly under the control of the state forces.

It is a threat to the mainstream press. State is also not that press-friendly. Thus the challenge to the media men comes from both the warring rivals.

As a responsible sector of the society, we have also decided to proceed in our own way that brings the state and the rebels to the negotiating table. If the state and the Maoists so feel that the FNJ can act like a good facilitator, we are ready to serve the country.

The FNJ proudly announces that we have now become a media institution, which has succeeded in securing full membership of the International Federation of Journalists, IFJ. The other remarkable achievement has been that FNJ now enjoys the status of an institution that has been accepted by the State as an organization that does not need yearly renewal of its registration to continue its job. We have now been registered in the government office under the National Directives Act, which allows us to claim a society of the professionals.

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