KATHMANDU, JULY 31

Media professionals and researchers have said that organisations gathering data on press freedom violations should limit their monitoring to any act of violence, threat and intimidation.

Media professionals said at an interaction organized by Digital Rights Nepal said that media monitors assigned to gather data on press freedom violations could serve the interests well if they identify violence, threat and intimidation due to the content's media professionals produce or about to produce. Researcher Binod Bhattarai said that the column created to gather data should not be overly broad as that could lead to overlapping of the issues.

Executive Chief of Freedom Forum Taranath Dahal said that the monitoring of press freedom violations should be based on the contents of the news for which media professionals, employees and management of media houses are targeted by those that object to those news contents.

Another researcher Raghu Mainali said any constraints created by the government agencies against media houses that create hurdles in the smooth functioning of media houses should also be listed as press freedom violation incidents. Executive Director of Digital Rights Nepal Santosh Sigdel said that as the number of online media outlets were increasing day by day, vested interests were using online space to harass media professionals by trolling them or news source for a particular news content or by creating obstruction in the dissemination of news. He said agencies involved in gathering press freedom violations should also take these things into account.