Government media and spinning in Nepal

Nepal is politically unstable. In the last ten years Nepalese have seen all forms of government, from Constitutional monarchy to absolute monarchy, and from absolute monarchy to federal republic.

Whatever forms of government were practised in Nepal, government media remained the same. Gorkhapatra,a newspaper serving Nepalese government from the last 100 years,Nepal television , a government broadcast medium and radio Nepal, which served the government regardless who came into power. And each government made a good use of these media for spinning their messages across the people.

Privatization in Media is a new concept in Nepal, so people relied on government media for information. This benefited government by giving it a monopoly in terms of media spinning. And although most of the world had democratic governments during the early 90's , Nepal still had absolute monarchy. People were fed with the spinned messages during those days that helped the kings government remain in power. But arrival of private print media during 1990, made people more aware about their rights, eventually leading to the fall of absolute monarchy and establishment of multi party constitutional monarchy. Nepal saw massive development in media after that. With a guaranteed press freedom and right to information, investment in media became safe. This lead to sprouting of Private FM stations, private TV channels and private print media. Though government's spinning still continued.

Situation was different when the king took all executive power in his hands shacking elected prime minister .Right to press freedom and right to information were banned, private media had to suffer censorship. Government media tried to create support on king's move. Most of the news during those days revolved around the king. Coverage like , kings visit to remote areas, patriotic songs written by the king, and news that showed concern of the king for the nation were heavily published and broadcast. This was the extreme time for government spinning in Nepal.

Although there were censorship, some private media heavily criticised the king's move. They helped in the formation of public opinion and created an angry mass of people against the king. Then the revolution started, the king overthrown and the Maoists came into power through election.

BUT things remained the same,though the Maoist claimed that they would guarantee press freedom and peoples right to information, there are incidence of killing journalists and vandalizing media office for writing news against them. And as usual government media is acting like a loyal dog and spinning these events and justifying every breach of fundamental right of people as legal phenomenon .