However, the Council on Monday called the operators of online news portal for the first time to determine the number of portals currently accessible.
“Press Council has realized that immediate documentation of online news portal is necessary so that the victims can also register complaints rather than going to the police,” said Jagdish Poudel, senior administrative officer at the Council.[break]
He added that the news portal operators were called for an interaction to discuss the best possible ways to regulate the new media. Around 25 news portals´ representatives participated in the program.
The council would form a committee this week to classify the news portals in three categories on the basis of their contents, Poudel said.
In 2007, the Council had prepared a work plan to monitor online news portals as directed by the then Minister for Information and Communications Krishna Bahadur Mahara. But the work plan is yet to come into effect, said Poudel.
The Electronic Transactions Act was introduced in 2008. But the act has not covered journalism aspect and focuses on cyber crimes and ecommerce.
The MoIC last month had formed a five-member committee led by the Spokesperson Narayan Prasad Sinjel to document the overall statistics of the new media.
However, the ministry has not coordinated with the Council which would be authorized to analyze the errors in the news portals.
The council has been under pressure to classify the new media following the arrest of three online journalists for posting questionable contents about the Dillibazar-based Kanya Campus. Campus Chief Bhola Pokhrel had filed a case at the Metropolitan Police Range, Hanuman Dhoka seeking action against the trio journalists Sushil Panta, Santosh Bhattarai of nepaliheadlines.com and Pushkar Kandel of extrakhabar.com.
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