Increasing Distrust in Mainstream Media and the State of the Online and Social Media in Nepal

Even before the reestablishment of democracy in Nepal in 1991, some media outlets, some at the government level and some through private and informal means, were launched.At the time of the Rana Regime , then-Prime Minister Dev Shamsher took the initiative to launch the first government-owned newspaper, Gorkhapatra, in 1901.During the autocratic Rana period, some literature-based people informally published magazines and tried to make people aware.With the fall of the Rana Regime in 1951, democracy was established for the first time in Nepali history.The Nepali government had formally established the first radio station in February 1951.Between 1951 and 1960, progress was made in terms of media development; a number of newspapers, magazines, and news agencies were established.When King Mahendra took power in 1961, the democratic system was derailed and the autocratic Panchayat era began.It had been gone for 30 years.It hampered hampered the fast leap of media development.During the Panchayat era, though there was no political freedom and no rights to the press, some efforts were made to launch print media, mostly from social and political groups and a few from governmental efforts.Nepal Television, was formally launched in 1984; it was a momentous event in media development.Definitely, with the reestablishment of democracy in 1990, people got complete political freedom, and the media sector has a tangible environment for flourishing qualitatively and quantitatively.Today's major newspapers, like Kantipur, Annapurna, Nagarik, Naya Patrika, and major television networks and online media are all the product of the 1990s political, economic, and social reforms.The new constitutional provisions and related laws became the foundation for the media's development, even though they were not enough.When we see data from the Press Council Nepal, just in