Lalu Yadav’s Tweets Uncover Nepali Media’s biased

On November 30, Lalu Prasad Yadav, an astute politician from Bihar, India posted three tweets referring to Nepal’s current affairs within an hour from 6:23 am to 7:34 am. The three tweets of Lalu consists of  two in Hindi and one in English.

Based on Lalu Yadav’s tweets for Nepal and Nepali media reporting, I make an attempt to uncover Nepali Media’s biasedness in this post. This is  the second time we caught Nepali media red-handed  practicing unfair journalism. Also read our first post, UN OHCHR Statement Vs Nepali Media Reporting

Although Lalu’s three tweets posted in an hour were equally concerned on Nepal’s situation, Nepali Mainstream Media interestingly published their news based on just two tweets of Lalu. They were in Hindi.  

Let’s look at the Nepali Media coverage:

National Newspapers in Nepali language write:

 

National Newspapers in English write:

 

 

Most Read Online News Portals from Nepal

 

Lalu’s third tweet was in English. Here it goes:

Nepali Media ignored his third tweet because it was in English. Is it because Nepali journalists did not understand English? They should not have understood Hindi because Hindi is not in our curriculum.

Nepali Media has been biased against the Madhes movement. This is evident from the fact that Nepali media showed indifference to Lalu’s third tweet which was in favor of Madhes movement unlike his first and second tweets.

In the lack of evidence and the habit of cherry-picking, I will consider this as a willful ignorance. By the time, Nepali media wrote the news and published, the third tweet had already appeared on twitter.

The tweets mentioned in the news were newsworthy, sensational and salable, but ignoring the whole context and cherry-picking falls under the category of yellow-journalism. When Lalu criticizes Modi, it provides content for Nepali media since that can be catered to many anti-Madhesi sentiments.

However, when Lalu asks the Indian government to intervene and support the Madhes movement in Nepal, it does not make any sense to Nepali media. As a reader from Madhes, Lalu’s third tweet is equally important to me and should be given space in the media.

Such cherry picking to pander a certain faction of the society puts a question mark on the journalists’ sincerity  in public discourse. This is a very old school tactic of selective reporting. In the new world-order of social media, the way people consume news is fundamentally changing, if not already changed. The access to information by netizen is easy and they can see through this type of selective reporting to support a particular narrative.

I would like to urge the valued readers to have your say about Nepali Media reporting Lalu’s tweet through  comments below.