Equal Access, in conjunction with its partner WATCH for Social Justice, organized a program to publicize the Media Monitoring Report in Lalitpur on May 16, 2011.
Media monitoring was carried out from February 16 - 22, 2011 found to be dominated by male sources. Monitoring was done based on four basic media indicators: balance, reliability, priority, and accuracy. The report findings indicate that media contents are comparatively balanced. It also highlights the predominance of political news. Again, most of the news were found to have ignored the diversity of society and were gender-insensitive. The report also highlighted that reports thus broadcast had neglected the facts and mistakes were committed by the media, which definitely bring about distrust within the media community.
On the occasion, discussion was also held about the plight of bloggers and whether bloggers fall under the jurisdiction of Nepal Press Council. Rajendra Dahal, Press Advisor to the President of Nepal, Narayan Sharma, Chair of Nepal Press Council and Shiva Gaule, newly elected Chair of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists pointed out the need of the timely promulgation of the code of conduct of new media/online media as so far it does not have any policy or code of conduct that the online journalists or bloggers are entitled to.
The interaction program also stressed on the importance of regulatory mechanisms needed for free and responsible press in Nepal. Participating journalists and bloggers also emphasized on the essence to introduce new law for online media in Nepal.
