UML is threatened by press freedom

Raghuji Panta is a known feltist politician of Nepal. He belongs to a party called CPN-UML (which partially supported the king when he started his coup move against democracy). He even won a seat of parliament some eight years ago.

Surprisingly, on Wednesday, the 17th of October, he charged Nepali press of overdoing journalism and enjoying too much of press freedom. He said that Nepali press is given too much of press freedom and they are not at all responsible to the readers. He was addressing an interaction on constitutional crisis and press freedom. He spoke a lot about politics, ie, critised the Maoists (this is what they do, to coverup their plan to avoid the election of constituent assembly) in the programme organised by Nepal Press Institute at Hotel Himalaya.

He also chraged that Nepali Press does mistakes and character assassination every day and opined that they should be penalised. "The law against media in Nepal is very weak. In other countries, many of the newspapers get bankrupted just because they failed to pay compensation against the crime they do to others," he said.

But he failed to name a single crime done by the media and also he did not remember when he or his party filed case against the media and what punishment the court annouced for the media.

In fact, what I know is that, Nepali media are the cheapest parrots to the polticians and they never venture to criticise the leaders. They just make news out of the bullshit bhashan they make here and there. Many of the reporters are just in pockets of the leaders and they do what the leaders want. Some are given political promotion for what they write supporting the impotent and unethical leaders.

Still, the UML leader is not happy with the media. What could be the reason? I guess, he is being appointed as a communication minister. Excactly, the king's communication miniser Shreesh Samshre used to say like that.

I know Raghuji since the time when he was living in a a rented toom at Pulchowk.

In this context, it is to be noted that Nepal surges 20 places in World Press Freedom index. Nepal has surged more than 20 places to be placed at 137th position in the ranking of the world press freedom index owing to revival of basic freedoms after the end of war, according to a report published by Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers Tuesday (www.nepalnws.com).