Nepalese Journalists ' Democracy Building Roles and News Coverage Practices

Abstract

This is a case study of Nepalese journalists' perceived democracy building roles and their news coverage practices. The content of two national daily newspapers, Kantipur and Nagarik, was selected to analyse to know the consequences whether Nepalese journalists’ news coverage practice reveals their perceived democracy building roles. Existing literature reveals that Nepalese journalists perceive their roles for democracy building as disseminator, populist mobiliazer, interpreter, and adversarial, respectively. The findings of this study suggest that Nepalese journalists give more importance to provide accurate and timely information, and interpretation of complex problems in terms of Constituent Assembly (CA) related issues in their coverage. They give less importance to investigating statements and claims made by the governments or political parties, as well as provide ordinary people a chance to express views to public affairs in news coverage for enhancement of democracy. It is noted that changing Nepalese political situation from less democratic authoritarian ruler to republican democratic system and increasing number of media landscape might be the influenting factor of changing journalists' perceived democracy building roles reflection in their coverage.