Analysis – Journalist Code of Conduct 2003 (2060)

I had raised the issue of ethics and code of conduct of Nepali journalists more than once. As promised previously, I went through the Nepali Journalis’ Federation (FNJ) website, in the quest of journalist code of ethics and conduct.

According to FNJ website, apart from the National Broadcasting Act, 1993 there is no legal provision to define the journalism practice in Nepal. FNJ has posted a very crude Code of Conduct in the same page.

The Code of Conduct doesn’t talk about copyright (oh my!), has a lot of obvious mistakes, and is in English (not in Nepali).

This code of conduct is made for Nepali journalists so it would have been better if it were drafted in Nepali language. I know, there are many Nepali journalists who don’t understand English properly, some can’t even read it. I can write a little bit but, I still feel comfortable reading in Nepali. Code of Conduct is an important document and it should have been in a easy language without much complications.

I have yet to read the document in detail. While skimming the document the spelling errors were the first I noticed. If the the creators of the code is not serious while formulating the code who will seriously implement it? Following are the spelling error I found. There might be more.

List of words used in the Code with spelling errorsspelling-errors

Please go to this page to read the code and please write your thoughts in the comment.

Update: Press Council has a better website and it has the revised Code of Conduct which can be downloaded by clicking here. It has both Nepali and English versions of the code, making it easier for everybody to understand it.

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