Jane Elizabeth Kirtley's view ("Journalists reduced to being government mouthpieces", #99) regarding the media in Nepal hit the bull's eye. However, the question of raising the standards of Right to Information Act is debatable. The consequences of media warfare without the platform of development can have both positive and negative results, generally more tilted towards the latter. As Kirtley says, "Freedom of information laws can also have perverse effect." and more so if the recipient mass is swayed easily. The quest of the media to sell the story to the citizens of one of the poorest nations in the world can spark pessimism quite easily. It should be the perpetual effort of the government to impart rays of hope and induce positive attitude to its people. This implies quite obviously that in order to guide the nation, considerable sacrifice by imposing a positive check on the media becomes very essential. Considering all the differences, one thing that should be borne in mind is that the line drawn is bound to be much lower in our context than that in the USA.

"A P", by email