Media Diversity in Nepal: A Conduct Level Media Performance Analysis

Media diversity has become an attraction of scholarly work for assessing the performance of the Nepalese media sector since the 1990 restoration of multiparty democracy in the country. This study aims to provide an overview of media diversity, while the media has transformed from the time of ‘press censorship’ to ‘no censorship’ in the constitutionally guaranteed press freedom. Desk research was carried out to review the performance characteristics of the Nepali press. The purpose of the exploration is twofold: first, to know the media’s performance on diversity at the conduct level; and second, to identify how the Nepali press’s growing weak market condition has influenced the constitutionally protected press freedom in Nepal. The characteristics of the media were explored based on democratic principles of equality. The result, however, fails to ‘meet all criteria’, showing a moderate level of media performance on diversity in the period. The indicators that ‘met some criteria’ were: the use of diverse formats in the coverage, the practice of the Code of Ethics at the national level, and allowing citizen to participate on their online portals. The Nepali press is still unable to maintain professional independence, escaping from the owners in national and regional-level media houses. Still, they seem reluctant to ‘meet some criteria’ in encouraging the use of content monitoring instruments, self-regulation, and promoting alternative media addressing minorities’ issues properly. They give less priority to exercise internal pluralism, and provide newspapers to all citizens at an affordable cost. The descriptive analysis interprets the findings, indicating that a weakly formed media market was associated with inadequately performed conduct level media diversity in the Nepali press.