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Free Press & Economy
The issue of press freedom is no more limited to the demand of lifting the censorship. Though His Majesty the King has repeatedly made it clear that the restrictions on the press will be gradually lifted, which means there will be no censorship at all in the near future, the government ministers who are supposed to implement the wishes of His Majesty are going in a totally opposite direction. The recent announcement by the Minister of Information and Communication stopping government advertisements to the private sector media has unequivocally made it clear that the government is going ahead with a well conceived plan to obliterate the free press.
But this step is childish at its best.
While it will encourage more unity among the media houses against the government, it is going to cause more harm to the state-owned enterprises (other than the state-owned media) than compared to the private sector media. For many private sector media such as New Business Age, the government ads constitute only a small fraction of their total revenue. Therefore, even if this dole out is withdrawn, the private sector media are not going to die. This move is opposed more for its underlying malintentions than for the direct harm it may cause to the media sector.
But if the state-owned enterprises are barred from using this more effective vehicle to reach the larger masses of consumers, these enterprises will surely die. Most severely affected will be the state-owned banks, which are undergoing a costly exercise by hiring international consultants to turn them around from the brink of collapse. The other affected will be the RNAC and Nepal Telecom. Even a moron can guess what would happen if they are not able to match the communication efforts of their private sector competitors, who can use all the available media and always gain a better mileage. It is general knowledge that the state-owned media (barring the radio) lag far behind the private sector media in their reach.
Since these facts are well known also to the government officials, they are unlikely to stop at this. The next whimsical step would be to stop even the private sector business firms from advertising in the private sector media. But will they stop the government officials from flying airlines other than RNAC or sending their children to schools other than the government run ones?
One argument which the Minister offered to justify this anti-private sector step is that he expects it to stop the corrupt government officials from buying the media and covering up their corrupt practices. But this is a lame pretext. The shrewd government officials know that the advertisement dole out to stop the press from exposing corrupt activities, can work only in the case of mediocre newspapers which cannot influence public opinion. Therefore, they will not be giving any advertisements to such media even without this restriction. The better quality media never tie the advertisement with the news stories they carry.
Rather, there is a strong argument in favour of stopping government grants to the state-owned media. Such grants are provided out of the money paid by the taxpayers. Logically, such money should be spent on headings that the taxpayers like the most. Clearly, the taxpayers’ vote is in favour of the private media as vouchsafed by their circulation figures.
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