Freedom Forum is concerned over news and posts critical to Editor-In-Chief at Karnalipatra daily Suryamani Gautam being published on few online news portals and social media pages on June 11.
The posts are reportedly published following news entitled- Speaker of poor province in a car worth two crores- published on Karnalipatra daily on May 20.
According to FF's representative at Karnali Province Laxmi Bhandari, Gautam had reported the news exposing Province speaker Raj Bahadur Shahi's involvement in irregularities on spending province budget.
Talking to representative Bhandari, Gautam shared that the news and posts are published in an attempt to his character assassination which has badly affected him mentally and socially.
Recently, Gautam has also been receiving calls from different unknown numbers on which he suspects the activity is directed by Speaker Shahi.
FF condemns such harassment against journalists which is sheer violation of press freedom and right to information. Journalists exposing irregularities are always under threat of intimidation and such activities may aggravate the situation leading to censorship. Being a responsible local authority, the Speaker would have resorted legitimate ways for any dissatisfaction over news contents instead of harassing a journalist online. Hence, FF strongly urges the concerned authority to fairly investigate upon the case and ensure safety of the working journalists thus, protecting citizen's right to information.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np