Kathmandu, September 3, 2017: Youth-related issues are insignificantly and insufficiently covered in mainstream print media of Nepal, says an annual evaluation by Yuwalaya, a youth-led organization working for and with youth.
In a bid to analyze how much attention youth issues and activities have gained from mainstream print media of Nepal, Yuwalaya had launched a one-year media monitoring project from July 2016 to June 2017, that studied 10 most influential daily newspapers (6 Nepali language, and 4 English language).
The report released today in Kathmandu, attempts to analyze media contents on some specific issues that are affecting the lives of Nepali youth. It seeks to assess, from the youth perspective, media coverage on issues of youth, to represent the density of discussions and discourses of the age group currently undergoing in Nepal.
The media monitoring aimed to analyze happenings on six different themes from the perspectives of youth: youth’s involvement in issues of gender empowerment and social inclusion, young people’s participation, sexual and reproductive health rights, youth and livelihood, disaster risk reduction and climate change and child marriage.
The analysis shows that among selected six categories, gender empowerment and social inclusion is on the top in most of the newspapers. Of total news stories studied, 19% of the stories are about child marriage. The topics like involvement of youth in entrepreneurship, foreign employment or any other income-generating activities have been covered. Few inspiring and motivating news articles relating to entrepreneurship were also found.
“Newsrooms of major media houses in Kathmandu have a number of youth journalists and reporters, so one can expect a significant coverage of youth-related issues in the newspapers. But, the reality is disappointing as most of the youth issues go uncovered,” the report expresses dissatisfaction on Nepali media’s least coverage and concern for youth.
