I happened to be at the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) offices that morning and a senior official I was meeting read the story aloud in surprise, and admitted he had no idea about what was going on. I quickly checked other papers to see if they also had the story and did not find one.
The story said all (three) power generation units at Kali Gandaki had been shut down for repairs on Friday. The story had appeared on a Sunday and said that an engineer had told the reporter that ‘if’ repairs were delayed then load shedding could extend to 17 hours. The story said very little on what had gone wrong – except that a ‘DC to DC’ equipment had broken down (whatever that means) – and how much time such repairs would take. Late into the story there was information from some NEA official saying that if foreign experts had to be brought for repairs, it could be required to publish another notice to extending load shedding.
The best part of it was that there was no extension to the load shedding the next day or after. But the paper did not bother to explain why what it said in the story turned out to be a farce – and the lights, they are on for longer than ever.
It was yet another example of shoddy journalism that slips past without questioning. The fact that not many took notice of the report – I myself would have been largely unaware of it had I not come across the paper at the NEA, because I don’t subscribe to it – perhaps raises questions about who reads the paper and more importantly, to how seriously the readers take the paper.
In circulation terms, the Annapurna Post claims to be second only to Kantipur, the industry leader, so the assumption is that many people might have read the story. If it was read, as assumed, and the readers were misinformed, would it have deserved an explanation? One would say yes, if only for the paper’s own credibility.
It is not that newspapers do not make mistakes, they do. Most of them are minor – misspelt names, misplaced photographs and misplaced typos. These are typical and therefore may not deserve a correction. However, when a newspaper gets a main story wrong, it does – perhaps – deserve a correction or an explanation if only for the sake of learning from the mistake and as a means to shore up its own credibility.
While most Nepali papers tend to see correcting mistakes as ‘loss of face’ there are others elsewhere that take pride in admitting what went wrong and setting the record straight. One oft cited classic correction is the The New York Times’ retraction of its 1920 editorial in which it had said that space flight was impossible a day after Apollo 11 took off for the moon. Similarly, another American paper Lexington Herald-Leader is credited for setting another unusual example in correcting mistakes. It ran a clarification in 2004 saying, “It has come to our attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the Civil Rights movement. We regret the error.”
One reason why newspapers do not publish as many corrections they should be doing is because the mistakes they make in the pressure-cooker like environment of pressing deadlines are just too many. Another possible reason, an argument of a colleague Raghu Mainali, could be the media political economy and the in-built accountability mechanisms that may be inadequate.
When a newspaper gets a main story wrong, it does – perhaps – deserve a correction or an explanation if only for the sake of learning from the mistake and as a means to shore up its own credibility.
His argument is that theoretically even though the media are there for informing the public, serving them as watchdogs, and even educating and entertaining them, at the end of the day it is not readers/audiences but the big advertisers that make their cash registers ring. Not surprisingly thus, when there is a mistake in an advert the clarification is often very prompt, while the same may not be true for news stories. The accountability to advertisers is immediate that to readers is optional.
That much on corrections and now here is one question that the media have not helped me find answers to, which – perhaps – is also explained to some extent by the political economy, particularly the linkages of the media and big business.
It has been some time since the finance secretary resigned from office. One reason he had given for stepping down was his inability to get political support to go after big businesses that were skimming the coffers with fake Value Added Tax (VAT) receipts. In other words, his political masters were not letting him investigate the tax cheats.
Personally, many journalists I know throw up names of the companies the secretary was referring to and the people behind them without hesitation. But none of the major newspapers, including this daily, have produced a comprehensive list of names, except for the names of some makers of cement and steel.
A certain category of tax-fraud suspects has not been named. The names of companies with interests in major fast moving consumer goods, household electronic and electrical appliances, housing companies, vehicle dealerships, and department stores have not appeared in any paper I read. (Some individuals behind these companies are also members of parliament.) Therefore, that they have not been named may not be just coincidence given that the said companies are also some of the biggest advertisers.
On this count, not just daily newspapers – who have shorter deadlines and more news to write about the next day – but also fortnightly magazines, including Himal Khabarpatrika, which had reported on the VAT scam seems to have had second thoughts about naming names. It was not an easy story to do given that tax information is privileged but it was definitely a story that needed to be thoroughly investigated and told.
Himal’s editor Kiran Nepal said one reason why he could not name names was difficulty in confirming them when the story was done. The story did mention a company name, and that was based on a government notice issued after the investigations began.
The remaining names of about 400 companies and 520 cases that were under investigation for assessments worth over Rs 2.5 billion – and including those with frequent advertising in most major media – remain to be published. (On that note, many of the major newspapers did not also report on a recent labor dispute at another major company with vehicle dealerships, among others, until of course it was over.) Given that the VAT investigations are still underway, maybe the media will name the suspects in the coming issues, if they do decide that the subject deserves a follow up. Let us wait to see who becomes first to call a spade a spade.
Finally, even though readers and audiences of the traditional mainstream media may still be waiting for the aforesaid information, those who have begun turning to the emerging source of decentralized, secular and diversified information – the New Media – know a little more. A CNN iReport (May 10), for example, did report on the major companies and firms that have come under VAT investigations. And even though the Web does not always have editors filtering and sanitizing content, some business sources I checked the CNN story with said the information was “fairly accurate.”
bbhattarai2006@gmail.com
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