| Hari |
Posted
on 24-Jul-01 12:20 AM
News is hardly "reported" in Nepali newspapers but laced with opinions. It is one thing for news-magazines to do so, as they are governed by certain agendas. It is also okay for newspapers to do so, as long as those opinionated pieces appear in such sections as "editorials" and "opinions". Reporters, while writing as "a post reporter" (shunning individual responsibility) often have numerous opinions within their "reported" news.
In this regard, I would like to follow up to GPji's assertion that nepalnews.com (not neccesarily Kantipur) is manipulating the polls. Yes, I do believe that they were being less than fair in that news report.
While I don't disagree that polls are hardly scientific (anyone with access to a large university computer lab can easily change those poll numbers in a matter of minutes, EVEN if the polls use IP traceback), nepalnews.com should have used some discretion in "reporting" the news of that poll. When you "report" news based on such polls, you better give out the whole story.
For the first day that the poll question appeared, there was very little support for the use of the army, but the number of respondents were also very low. For the next few days, there was an overwhelming majority that supported the use of the army and the numbers of respondents had also gone up. This opinion was stable for a few days. However, in the day before that news story was reported in nepalnews.com, the support for the use of army had dwindled and the naysayers had taken over.
Had nepalnews.com decided in advance to "report" that poll news after a certain timespan, or were they just waiting to get the right outcome to report (which would be clear manipulation, and would not constitute "reportable" news)? Did they put their own people to work to get that outcome? We'll never know. But, at the very least, they should have left the poll alone, and let individuals log in, look at the results and make their "news" themselves. If they ABSOLUTELY needed to report it, then they should have reported the WHOLE TRUTH, especially when the poll was fluctuating so wildly day-to-day; and, above all, they should have added the disclaimer that their poll was NOT scientific and was prone to manipulation.
Nepalnews.com has made several such "reporting" mistakes in the past that is unacceptable for a newspaper/news-site. On the morning after the royal massacre, they had a news-report that mentioned that Shanti Singh had died in the hospital of a heart attack (which was then removed, and replaced with the massacre news). More recently, they've also had news of large casualty on the maoist side (80, they had claimed) from the army deployment. This was also removed shortly thereafter. It seems that their rush to put the "news" up takes priority over news-verification.
I hope the nepalnews.com staff heed this as a learning experience and not make such mistakes in the future.
Dui Paise Musings,
Hari
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| Hari |
Posted
on 24-Jul-01 12:56 AM
It seems that I too have succumbed to fast posting of messages without fact-checking. Thank god I'm not "reporting" this in any newspaper:
It was indeed, Kantipur online, and NOT nepalnews.com, that "reported" the poll news. The other two mishaps, however, were on nepalnews.com
Hari
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