Recently, Nepali Congress general secretary Gagan Thapa revealed that his party’s president, Sher Bahadur Deuba, told Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal: “Turn the pages of Kantipur since its inception; read them and tell me if my name does not come out on top as the most reviled, the most criticised, the most hounded.”

The destinies of former PM Deuba and the country’s leading private-sector newspaper have indeed remained closely intertwined. Just shy of two years before the newspaper’s launch in 1993, Deuba had assumed public office, having been elected to Parliament during the general elections of May 1991 and appointed as Minister for Home Affairs by then PM Girija Prasad Koirala, his mentor. In its 31 years of existence, marked by unprecedented headlines ranging from democratic upheavals to the Maoist uprising to an emergency, Kantipur has found in Deuba, as it has in many other leaders, a reliable political newsmaker.

For the context here, Deuba’s comments were in reference to the arrest of Kailash Sirohiya, chairman of Kantipur Media Group (KMG), publisher of Kantipur and this very paper. On May 21, Sirohiya was arrested for allegedly misusing his citizenship certificate, an act seen as vindictive and instigated by Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane in retaliation for Kantipur's extensive coverage of his alleged involvement in cooperative frauds.

Thapa cited Deuba’s disapproval of the government controlling the media for the content they publish, regardless of how one feels about the veracity of the content. Deuba suggested there were other legitimate ways to respond. Thapa urged for a defense of press freedom, asserting that the “intimacy” between democracy and a free press is so deep as to be easily severed.

For clarification, my interest in this article is not about assigning blame in the allegations against Sirohiya or Lamichhane—the due process of law should handle that. What intrigued me as a student of news practices was Deuba’s claim about the unequivocal nature and coverage he has received in Kantipur over the years and his call to scrutinise it closely, as well as Thapa's assertion regarding the nature of the relationship between journalism and our form of body politic.

Pride and prejudice

The problem is that Dahal, himself a competing newsmaker, is not a scholar as to be able to execute such a gigantic reading project that will require a longitudinal research undertaking. Besides, he is not the right person for the job because of the potential ethical risks he may invite as well as the self-reporting biases he might bring to the study. Reviled, criticised, hounded mean different things to different people. Unfortunately, this has remained a task cut out even for independent, specialised researchers in short supply.

Politicians are often too sweeping, grandiloquent or presumptuous in their statements, and media mostly recycle them, amplifying the rhetoric by way of attributions. Our media and politicians are benign adversaries, always ready to question the other side. But Deuba and Thapa unwittingly help provoke a set of significant questions that touch on the issue of bias, the core of hostility—or even intimacy—between the media and political figures.

On professional grounds emphasising transparency or truth-seeking, media often take pride in holding those in power to account, with hard-hitting reportage, hence the saying, “Without fear or favour”. Politicians, on the other hand, are seen as often taking pride in smooth talk, control and denial. Prejudices follow.

Bias by numbers

Identifying bias, which cannot be confirmed in a single news story but requires studying the massive volume of coverage over time for a persistent pattern of favouritism, is easier said than done.

A few election monitoring reports provide the closest empirical evidence on media bias regarding individual leaders or their parties. While they provide some indications, such studies are anomalies since they don’t reflect the continuing trends on the ground. Think tanks, often donor-driven, mostly focus on development, governance, restructuring and other social issues.

There is a widespread perception that political reporting has prioritised personalities over issues and noise over sense, favouring certain figures or entities over others. Individual-focused studies in research have investigated media portrayals of characters ranging from Prashant Tamang to Yarsagunbu; however, in a country fixated on politics and politicians, figures like Deuba, Oli, or Dahal curiously do not feature anywhere in the scope of researchers.

Media journals are still emerging. Insights from Samaaj Adhyayan, the erstwhile Media Adhyayan journal, reveal a diverse range of topics have been covered, including press freedom, media regulation, political transformation, inclusion, broadcasting policies, information technology, arts and culture, language, literacy, health and environment, labour rights, digital transformation, to name a few. Since 2016, the journal has shifted focus to other societal issues, most notably education. Academic journals, such as Bodhi, have also contributed to research discourse on media, focusing more on theory, pedagogy and rhetoric and less on journalistic practices.

Many studies rely on anecdotal evidence or case studies, seldom using robust data and rigorous methods. Consequently, confirming bias allegations against political figures or entities remains elusive. The nature and extent of media bias against the monarchy, especially after years of support for a constitutional monarchy and democracy and against the Maoists during the prolonged conflict, haven’t been conclusively established.

At the moment, our politicians and even the media themselves could only wish that some independent entity or scholar of standing would help answer just how deep and wide bias runs when it comes to covering individual political figures.

It's no longer important to cry foul over media bias. Take it to the next level; examine its true nature, extent and methods. In this age of propaganda and widespread manipulation of public opinion, a meaningful reading should be based on big data from across platforms, not just Kantipur, and led by researchers, statisticians and engineers. In other words, we need to reflect on reason and rhyme—the ideal balance between rigour and creativity—to assess and guide both sides to live up to their ideals.

Would the University Grant Commission be interested in commissioning such an exciting project?