Status of indigenous issues coverage in state-owned media

Abstract

Voices on the neglect of indigenous people often go unheard, be it in the media or in government decision-making processes. The deprivation of rights faced by indigenous people deserves attention as a matter of discussion and the media should cover all the issues affecting indigenous people. This is necessary for their empowerment in terms of social and economic milieu.

A state-owned or government media refers to any media outlet that runs under government ownership and has state investment, either fully or partially. Gorkhapatra, Radio Nepal, Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS) and Nepal Television are the state owned media outlets of Nepal. Gorkhapatra particularly contributes significant taxes of its income to the government. There is a general understanding that the news content published or broadcasted by the outlet should cover the interests of all castes, communities, and classes. However, upon analysing the news content in Gorkhapatra, it was discovered that the coverage of indigenous communities is unsatisfactory.

The purpose of this study is to observe and analyze how indigenous news content is covered in state-owned media outlets, with main focus on the numerical status of news. When observing the status of published news content in three different government media outlets, it becomes evident that government media outlets publish much better quality of content when it comes to other topics, but the content quality is significantly low on matters of tribal issues. The study concludes that these media should cover issues of all communities effectively in order to raise awareness and initiate empowerment among them