According to a report in government-controlled Kuensel online, the media foundation is being established to support the development of mass media, so that it can carry out its roles and responsibilities in the interest of democracy.

Kuensel in its online version further stated that the foundation will support the sustainability and growth of newspapers and broadcast stations, journalists associations and press clubs. It will also invest in the future readership of the print media by striving to provide subscription grants of all newspapers to the lower, middle and higher secondary schools and colleges in the country.

The Bhutanese government often claims that there is media freedom in the country; yet there are instances as mentioned above to prove that the rulers are trying to keep their hold in the media sector. Such an initiative under King’s direct influence can be read as “threat to the existence of independent media body’ in the country.

Junior Jigme with representatives of the print and broadcast media at Lingkana palace. Photo: Kuensel

The foundation is endowed with a seed grant of Nu 15 mn from the King. This is an attempt to bring the media under the King’s direct control. The investment of the ruler, whose commitment to people’s democracy in the country is yet to be seen, in media sector pose obvious doubt as to whether Bhutanese media sector would gain “independency” ever.

In a brief telephone response to the writer of the piece, Hari Prasad Adhikari, former National Assembly member of Bhutan, who is now in USA, termed the initiative as ‘King’s foundation’. “Such a foundation is nothing but one of the apex bodies to bring media under regime’s direct control.”

Terming the development in media sector in Bhutan, mainly after democratization process, as a progressive one, Ichha Poudyel, Australia-based editor of Radio Bhutan Online says “In one hand, establishment of media foundation is a good beginning at the end of the century in which media was regime-controlled. However, I doubt if it can function freely as the ball keeps rolling at King’s court.”

By now media independency in the country has been felt by emerging journalists in Bhutan. It was gradually taking its pace, for instance, citing interference by the management, the editor and the half of the entire reporters of the Bhutan’s first private newspaper, ‘Bhutan Times’ (BT) tendered resignation on October 23, 2009.

The resignation letter seems clear enough to reveal the management’s persistent anti-ethical pressure to screw-up the journalists’ pens and mouth piece the public media for the interest of an individual or a limited group. Editor of the BT, Gopi Lal Acharya, in his resignation had mentioned that to protect the independent journalism in Bhutan and keep up the professional values and principals of journalists primarily caused him and his newsroom staff to end up in resination.

There is no room to believe that the Bhutan Media Foundation would pave a way for free press in the country when already the King is aware to the fact that even the right of the public  to freedom of speech and expression in the country is at farce despite their claim that Bhutan already stepped into the  democratization process. Even now, hardly they let public to criticize government’s activities.

Announcement of ‘royal decree’ by rulers, for sure, at times have proven to be indirect endeavor to embrace strong political power on their hands. Decrees are often announced above the constitution—Bhutan being not an exception to this fact.

For Kazi Gautam, the former Chief Editor of refugee-run The Bhutan Reporter monthly, the declaration of Foundation is a diplomatic tactics to create a sense of fear and persecution among the journalists in the country deserving independence in media sector. “This is something serious to think upon by journalists working inside the country.”
The Foundation is established at a time when press in Bhutan is undergoing transition phase after the country saw the  first general election in March 2008,which the regime had termed ‘historical’. Thus, all those favoring guarantee of media freedom in Bhutan should read the initiative between the lines.

General Secretary of the Association of Press Freedom Activists (APFA-Bhutan) Vidhyapati Mishra calls upon the international media groups to see the other side of the state of media  in Bhutan. “I hope and request the concerned international media bodies that such a politically-motivated Foundation should not receive any kind of support.” Mishra also alerts journalists in Bhutan to react strongly towards such initiative of the King.

Stating that his organization would never support such a move, Teju Chouhan, the general secretary of the Bhutan Chapter of Third World Media Network (TWMN) said “In Bhutanese history, media sector has been under the regime’s control for centuries. The situation still continues. The newly announced foundation may not help our fight for true establishment of complete free press in Bhutan.

The positive expect of the foundation is that the media houses will get certain benefits and subsidies to pay their debts and can bring down the per piece cost of the newsprint. Those who disagree to be under the foundation will be sidelined. Once under the umbrella, it becomes a moral obligation of the members to respect the donors and their interests.

It may, however, be too early to say how the Foundation would be beneficial to independent media growth in Bhutan. Yet, predictions can be made—such Foundation will never let free media to nurture well in the country. If it is a  plan to gain more power than they have, it shall be an unfortunate step for the royals.

(Associated with Bhutan News Service, Mishra, who currently lives in USA, blogs www.tpmishra.com and can be commented at: twmnbhutan@gmail.com)

It seems the beginning of the New Year also doesn’t seem very bright for the country’s first private paper with BT having its first board meeting of the year yesterday and a senior board member saying he was not invited.

“I am shocked I was not invited,” said Chheki Wangchuk, also a relative of the former managing director Tenzin Rigden. Talking to Business Bhutan over phone from Galing in Trashigang, Chheki Wangchuck said he was waiting for the meeting to be called as he wanted to raise some issues regarding the paper’s functioning.

Sources close to the development told this paper that the board member was not invited because he was related to the former managing director.

But the chief executive officer and editorial advisor of BT, Wangcha Sangay said Chheki Wangchuk had resigned from the board and that was why he was not informed about the meeting. Chheki Wangchuk says it is not true.

He said he has not resigned and it was he who wanted to call an extra ordinary board meeting.

He stated that after he had made repeated requests to have an extra ordinary board meeting, the management never bothered to reply.

But Wangcha Sangay told Business Bhutan that Chheki Wangchuk wanted to resign from the board and propose another person to take his position. Chheki Wangchuk had not attended the previous meeting, said the BT ceo.

“I pleaded with him to come for the previous meeting,” said Wangcha Sangay. According to the ceo, on September 15, Chheki Wangchuk informally told the ceo about his resignation, to which Wangcha Sangay said the matter could be raised only during the Annual General Meeting (AGM).

“But I never resigned,” said Chheki Wangchuk. According to him, the present MD refused to take his resignation though it was informally presented. He was waiting for the AGM so that he could resign formally.

BICMA ultimatum to BT
Meanwhile, the regulatory authority, Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority (BICMA) had sent a letter to Bhutan Times on December 26 asking the paper to submit details of the new editorial team.

The letter basically dealt with three main issues: to submit details of the editorial team following the resignation of the former editor and six scribes who have started the new  newspaper, The Journalist;  a bond signed by a professional editor; and the management’s stand on editorial independence.

BICMA Director, Kinley T. Wangchuk, said the authority had to make sure that there is no management interference in the news section.

The letter has asked BT to reply before January 15. If the BT reply is not satisfactory, BICMA may suspend the paper’s license for a period of time; revoke the license; or levy a fine on the paper.

But talking to Business Bhutan, Wangcha Sangay denied receiving a letter from BICMA regarding the editorial team.

“Yes, we received a letter but it had nothing to do with the team,” he said.

Troubles in BT began after Tenzin Rigden resigned. The company declared a loss of Nu 5.39m in the first half of last year.  Then, Wangcha Sangey, the chairman of the BT board of directors took over as the MD. He adopted cost-cutting measures including stopping free tea and said he is determined to “pull the company from a deep tunnel.”

Meanwhile an informed source told Business Bhutan that yesterday’s meeting did not discuss any financial matters. Asked about the BICMA letter, the source said Wangcha Sangay informed the board that there was a letter from the authority and did not elaborate.

“It was just a formality meeting,” Wangcha Sangay told Business Bhutan.

(From Business Bhutan, January 03, 2010)

The BICMA has hinted that it will make interrogations with K4 Media, another private company which is now taking up Bhutan Times’ editorial department.

The BICMA further hinted at suspending the license of the paper.

The matter ensued after BIMCA sent a letter to BT on October 23 titled “regarding the editorial team of Bhutan Times” asking the details of the editorial team who will take out the next issue of BT. It asked for a reply on or before the noon of October 30.

The dispute turned nasty when the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of paper Wangcha Sangey, who is also the chairman of the paper’s board of directors, published a letter addressed to the director of BICMA in the October 25 issue of his paper blaming the director for attempting to kill the paper. Sangey said BICMA is a ruthless and dictator.

The letter was not sent to BICMA office as demanded by the authority. However another letter the paper sent to BICMA on November 4 mentioned, “BT has not complied with the deadline and we need to have a closer look on the content of the letter they printed.”

The seven journalists who resigned from the paper have applied for a new newspaper license with the BICMA.

In a statement, the global trade union of working journalists, said ownership of Bhutan’s first privately owned newspaper changed hands early in October, after the company ran up accumulated losses of about USD 116,000. Wancha Sangey, the new chief executive, has since been seeking to impose his will on the editorial staff, reportedly causing serious demoralization within the ranks.

It further said, among the journalists who have resigned is the editor, Gopilal Acharya, who has reportedly said he was quitting to “protect the professional values and principles of independent journalism in Bhutan”.

Sangey is credited with the view that freedom of speech is very important, though not at the cost of forgetting Bhutanese identity. “You can slur a ministry if it is wrong, but not Bhutan as a nation,” he is reported to have said.

Since taking charge, Sangey has reportedly sat in on editorial meetings and publicly upbraided reporters and editorial writers. He has directed administrative staff to mark all internal and external communications to him, even when these concern editorial matters. And he has issued an advertisement in the newspaper asking that public comments on content be sent directly to his email address or phoned in on his mobile number.

“The IFJ wishes the Bhutan Times well and would greatly appreciate any strategy that helps it overcome its current financial difficulties and establish it as a viable news platform working in the public interest,” IFJ Asia-Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said.

“But we are deeply concerned that the new chief executive of the newspaper is following an entirely wrong tack in seeking to turn around the newspaper.

“No successful newspaper can be run by assaulting the professional morale of journalists and questioning the basic premises on which they conduct their daily tasks.”

Similarly, Association of Press Freedom Activists (APFA)  Bhutan has also expressed its concern regarding mass resignation of the journalists. It called on the management to ensure no intervention into the editorial room and return the journalists to their job.

October 10, 2009: As the financial crisis deepens in the first private newspaper of the country, Bhutan Times, its managing director and deputy managing directors have resigned from the post last week.

The first private newspaper of the country struggles to sustain

Giving farewell to MD Tenzin Rigden, the publication house has received Wangcha Sangey as new MD. The chairman of the board of directors of the company, Sangey comes from legal background. The new MD said he will soon initiate an internal audit to find out the real financial situation of the company and check management flaws.

Rigden had submitted a six-month leave last month but an emergency board meeting relieved him from the job on October 1.On October 4, the board of directors published an announcement in BT stating the dire financial position of the Nu 40m worth company, which floated shares in 2007.

The company has suffered a loss of Nu 5.39m in the first half of 2009 and its current liability is more than Nu 5m including an overdraft bank loan of Nu 3m. The DPT owes Nu 1.579m and PDP owes Nu 1.74m to the paper. the notice published by the company said, three organizers of the Citizens Initiative for Coronation and Centenary Celebrations (CICCC), Tenzin Rigden, Dorji Wangchuk and Tshering Gyeltshen, have not paid it Nu 4.53m “after they made full and liberal use of all the resources of BT including bank overdraft facility, establishment facilities, manpower, transport, materials and printing resources.”

When company’s management didn’t have the half-yearly accounts ready for a board meeting in June, the management was asked to call an extra-ordinary meeting in July to present the accounts.

The company still has an uncollected amount of about Nu 15m while the total payable is about Nu 7m to 8m. Interestingly, the company had declared a dividend of 20 percent worth a total of Nu 8m in 2008. After the distribution of dividend, the company failed to create a working capital and started operating on overdraft facilities. BT had 288 shareholders as of 2008 end. Major shareholders hold 82.26% of shares and individual investors the remaining 17.74%. The latest trading was in February this year with 300 shares traded at Nu 105 a share.

Sangey said he has already convinced four other board members for additional money and three of them have given Nu 500,000 each.

Kuensel’s reporter Phuntsho Choden won award for best investigative reporting award. Though the budding media industry and journalism beginners are yet to get better at reporting beat and soft news, it is unclear on what basis the government categorized reports as investigative reporting.

Choden’s reporting on the short supply and poor quality of school textbooks was termed the best investigative reporting.

Kuensel won three more awards: The Dark Side of Night Hunting, a feature by Tashi Dema, recognized as the most prominent social issue and Tenzin Dorji was given the best photographer.

For opinion pieces, all three papers (since Bhutan today daily was not included in the contest) were awarded. Kuensel’s deputy editor Kencho Wangdi’s Making Our Religion Relevant, Bhutan Times’ sub-editor Mitra Raj’s First Breach, and Bhutan Observer’s reporter Needrup Zangpo’s Demolish the Wall.

Observer’s Dzongkha editorial team won the best Dzongkha edition of the year beside  its cartoonist Chimmi R Namgyel receiving best newspaper cartoon award for Zero Tolerance.

Bhutan Times  got three more awards, including the Best Newspaper design. Its editor Gopilal Acharya was awarded for best business report for his article, Heartbreak House. Karma Singye Dorji from the same paper, who happened to be one of the three judges, received best political report for his article One Year of Democracy.

Radio Valley (RV)’s Suja Show, by Ugyen Wangmo, was declared the most entertaining program while Mang Ghi Damkha or Music on Demand’s Pema Wangchuk was the best radio host of the year.

Two other radio stations, Centennial Radio and Kuzoo FM knocked out of the scene.

Government owned Bhutan Broadcasting Service (BBS) took three: Dawa as the best TV anchor and Damcho Wangchuk as most informative radio program for his coverage of the police-youth partnership program. And Neten Dorjee’s documentary on King Jigme Wangchuck was awarded the best television program of the year.

Temzing Lamsang, who was more critical of the government policies and corruptions in public offices, was given not a single award despite his few well written articles.

Two other judges were secretary of the ministry of information and communications and former Kuensel editor Kinley Dorji Kay Kirby Dorji, a former journalist with Los Angeles Times.

In his presentation made at the regional conference in Kathmandu organized jointly by Panos South Asia, UNESCO and Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) marking the international press freedom day, reporter or Bhutan Observer Nedrup Zangpo also outlined the difficulties Bhutanese media have been facing for sustenance.

Lack of advertisement, low rate of circulation and lack of adequate media professionals are some of the hurdles he pointed out of the Bhutanese media. He said, the government promoted its mouthpiece Kuensel as daily paper recently and most advertisement from the government are given only to Kuensel. The private companies rarely come up for advertisement, leading to collateral hindrances for sustainability to budding media industry of this youngest democracy.

In his presentation entitled ‘A scenario of media law in Bhutan’, he further said all journalists working with Bhutanese media inside the country have very little or no information about professional journalism and its ethics.
Zangpo also said the politicians and bureaucracy have not changed their behavior with media though political system has changed which he cited as lack of knowledge on them regarding the importance of media for national development.  He said they have been questioned ‘why’, whenever journalists write opinion pieces in newspapers. “Bureaucrats are not used to in accepting critical stories,” he said. 

He criticized the code conduct prepared by the government, saying it has been imposed without consent of the journalists. The code was prepared by the previous non-democratic government and has not been reviewed since then.

However, Zongpo mention that with the change in politics and emergence of Bhutan Observer and Bhutan Times, two dailies, Bhutanese media have been doing good on their part despite hurdles and challenges.

Zangpo quoted politicians during the recent discussion between media and parliamentarians in the initiative of Center for Media and Democracy, saying “We need happy stories as we say Gross National Happiness”.

Two papers of Bhutanese media are scheduled to be presented at the conference from Bhutan by T. P. Mishra (editor) and Vidhyapati Mishra (manager) of Bhutan News Service and APFAnews.com.

The directors, mostly the business entrepreneurs, were dissatisfied for ignorance of the paper for covering the business they are attached to. It had undermined the editorial independence of the paper.

Facing pressure from the board, Rigden had resigned as CEO. The dispute began when the management decided without consent from the board to increase the frequency of the paper from weekly to bi-weekly, terminating 15 employees and then closing the book publication wing.

The paper has around Nu 23-25 million in unpaid dues. About Nu 6-8 million of this was the result of the newspaper management investing in the citizen’s initiative for coronation and centenary celebrations (CICCC), of which the board members’ approval was also not sought. An investment close to Nu 3.5 million was also made in the publications but only about Nu 0.3 million worth of books were sold.

The board has now appointed Phub Zam of Yarkey group of companies to look after the business management area of the newspaper.

The media is a watering hole for all the stakeholders in society. Of late, there have been genuine concerns of the negative effects of unbridled mass media, especially on our youth: TV is drenched with graphic scenes of expertly choreographed brutality and uncensored adult content, radio is spewing a whole new youth sub-culture of un-mindful hedonism and colloquial English slang, et al. There is a growing tide of changing societal values.

The only way to arrest such unconscious trends is with a conscious policy. Hence, a Bhutanese Media Model is the ‘higher’ mandate of our policy makers. The truth is that we have negotiated Media Laws without instituting a Media Policy. This is like booking a good travel agency, only to go nowhere. So, in the ensuing melee, the media, government and public are all at each other’s throats.

A Bhutanese Media Model will uphold and transmit our national ethos. The ontology underlying our national identity is a homogeneous entity, unified by a singular ideology (GNH) and built on a sense of ‘collective agency’ (Democracy). Even with a progressive agenda, we remain fundamentally a holistic nation. A Bhutanese Media Model is the good mechanism to infuse our national ethos into mainstream society, via the omnipresent free media.

The media must not suffer the unsavoury fate of some aspects of our education system. Let us get honest now. Today, the exploration of our kingdom, in its entire expanse, is being led by the outside world. Be it on GNH conferences, Buddhist researches and translation projects, organic farming like hazel nut cultivation, et al. Our modern education has bred a generation with no capacity or disposition to synergize our traditional value systems into a modern era.

So, the Bhutanese Media Model must define conscious roles for our media. No entity in a holistic society is treated in abstract isolation. As a cohesive part of the ‘bigger picture’, the media must play its part responsibly. The kind of media content must be dictated by the ‘needs’ of our national objectives and not by the ‘wants’ of narrow interests.

Also, without a conscious Media Policy, the tourism policy of ‘High Value, Low Volume’ will fly out of the window of every living room with DISH TV – where the ‘foreign’ invasion will be mounted, on a daily basis.

The Bhutanese Media Model would not encroach on the independence of free media. The space for ‘persuasion by dint of rational argument,’ and contradictions is valued in our dialectical systems and encapsulated in our ‘Lozey’ traditions. This stance is based on the dictum of the Middle Path philosophy that ‘all truth is relative’. It is a philosophy that goes against all extreme positions and values nuanced resolutions.

The Bhutanese Media Model must also address the sustainability of the free media in the interest of democracy. Bhutanese media, unlike most other countries, is almost totally dependent on the government. It is a test of media integrity to maintain an independent socio-political stance in the face of such constraints. Most often, the net result is to pander to the ‘lowest common denominator’ of crass commercialization, sensationalism and lack of objectivity. When such compromises happen, it is like chopping off our feet when we want shoes.

The good news is that a Bhutanese Media Model is possible. The only question is – Is the government a conscious and benevolent ‘Big Brother’?

(From Bhutan Observer weekly, March 27, 2009)

Failing to get any return from its publication unit, which used to produce books on various issues, the management has also decided to suspend the unit. The publication, which brings out Bhutan Times bi-weekly newspaper in English and Dzongkha, said this was done reluctantly in order to reduce the overhead cost, thereby enabling the company to survive in the market. They said increasing media has posed threat to their survival. The country has only four newspapers including one daily. 

The management said employees were given a month’s notice about their termination. However, the decision to recruit two new employees has irked the terminated workers. 

The management further said those who could not perform well during their one-year evaluation were terminated from the job. 

“It is purely unethical of the company to carry out such thing. The company could have rather transferred us internally rather than asking us to leave and recruiting new ones in our place,” one terminated employee told local media.