Kathmandu – The Press Council Nepal (PCN) has formed a advisory committee involving former presidents of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists and Council to make election-focused media monitoring.
The board meeting of the council held on Sunday decided to form the committee under the chairmanship of Balkrishna Basnet. As the entire media fraternity can play a big role in making the elections clean, fair and fearless, the committee will give necessary suggestions to strengthen the role and make the monitoring effective, said the statement issued by the council.
In addition, the meeting has decided to discuss and collaborate with the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) to make the issues of neutrality and code of conduct more effective during the elections. For that, it has been decided to write a letter to the federation to provide the details of the members from all over the country affiliated to the federation and to the Information and Broadcasting Department for the details of the press ID card, according to the statement issued by the council’s senior administrative officer and spokesperson Deepak Khanal.
In this election, the Council has started monitoring through both objective and subjective methods. As everyone’s interest in the House of Representatives election is high, it is stated in the statement that the work is being done in accordance with the international practice of monitoring the parties and candidates participating in the election, how much space were given to the parties and candidates by the media, what topics were raised, what was the state of compliance with the code of conduct, etc.