There has been quite a few discussions regarding DCNEPAL in sajha lately and vice versa. Few well wishers of sajha have taken the pains to contact me personally to urge me to shed some light as to the perceived discontent towards sajha and sajha admin.
This discontent specifically deals with the misunderstanding of some general things that lot of us may take for granted but a little difficult for others to understand or may be just having a hard time understanding the way things work in the internet.
To put things into perspective, sajha is a discussion forum where people discuss about various things related to or regarding Nepal and Nepalese. As a personal website, I strive to keep personal matters separate from public matters here in sajha. That is why, personal details of private matters are not acceptable in sajha. I make it a point to delete/remove things which infringe upon an individuals right to privacy with the help of other sajha users who notify of these issues when they seem to be intrusive upon someone's privacy or for explicit content. The reason I started running this site is for the sole purpose of giving a cyberspace for Nepalis to express their opinions and to discuss things and ideas relating to Nepal in an as much fair grounds as possible. Here are a few things that are basic to the sajha foundations:
- sajha does not have any political or personal agenda
- sajha is not here to defraud you
- sajha is not here to defame anyone
- sajha is not here to compete with anyone**
- sajha admin has respect towards everyone as a fellow Nepali and a fellow human being, without any reservations unless proven otherwise
** For me sajha is a personal hobby which I enjoy working on. I am not competing with anyone when I try to do my best on something I enjoy doing. I enjoy, like any other sajha user, the end product of sajha which is a result of the contributions of thousands of posters who have decided to share interesting ideas or issues to the rest of the visitors.
As I had briefly mentioned before, there is a distinction between private and public matters and whenever I am notified of any postings infringing upon privacy issues, I am more than happy to take it out quickly within 24-48 hours of notification.
Having said all this, I want to get into the details.
Before this incident, I had contact with dcnepal owner in 2006 regarding posting of a nepali girls video in compromised situations in xnepali. com . Some sajha users had blamed him for being the owner of xnepali .com site and he had initiated contact with me to deny that and to delete the thread. I had conveyed to him that when you are a public figure of sorts you can be discussed in public places/sites. That was it back then.
Coming back to the current issue here is a general timeline:
[date unknown] - DC Nepal posts video 'love in nepali park' in which dcnepal's crew of cameraman and commentator (Samjhana Gaire) takes video of unsuspecting lovers engaged in lovey dovey activity with each other unaware of prying eyes of the dcnepal video cam upon them at their private moments zooming upon them with judgmental comments against their public activity.
2/3/2009: one of the sajha users, sees that video and posts in sajha kurakani.
- viewers of that thread who see the video comment negatively on the video. Terming it yellow journalism and questioning the video and the journalist involved ie. Samjhana Gaire whose voice was heard and dcnepal which was the producer of the video
2/4/2009: DCNepal owner sends sajha admin email threatening to report to cyber crime division and to domain name registrar if the thread is not removed. After few hours of sending the email, DCNepal admin goes on to report sajha.com to domain name registrar - which sends email to sajha admin saying
"We have received a complaint that your domain has false Whois information or is sending out SPAM emails or is being used in a fraudulent manner."
"Dear Sir or Madam,
We see that you are hosting this domain www.sajha.com This web site is posting a thread against an innocent girl whos name is Samjhana Gaire a journalist and totally innocent, using vulger words and charecter assasination. Also copying our video contents from www.dcnepal .com illigally without our permission and posting on his web site. This must be stopped right a way. We sent him an email to delete the thread but he is not doing it. Now I am on the process of leagal action against this web site. Please Help us.
This is the link for that thread
http://sajha.com/sajha/html/openThread.cfm?forum=2&threadid=68380
Regards,
(Name removed)
DCnepal. com
Chief Editor"
The complaint doesn't make any sense as far as the issue at hand. In any event sajha admin replies back to the registrar explaining what is going on here and never hears back from them so assumes they are ok with it.
2/6/2009: a sajha user posts a link to nepalipress.net which is another news site run by the owner of dcnepal. http://www.nepalipress.net/topic/topic_main.php?id=71
In this link, there is a seemingly growing dissent towards sajha.com with comments blaming the sajha admin for everything in general citing examples of threads which may be construed as being of controversial nature. Sajha users are quick to note that lot of the emails used in the postings in dcnepal are fake hence it seems like one person's campaign against sajha. This was originated by the dcnepal site owner.
My view on this issue:
If a news site like CNN publishes controversial and morally/ethically dubious articles, then who is questioned? Obviously the writer is questioned and the credibility of CNN is questioned. There are hundreds of website where consumers post their dissatisfaction towards news anchors, news companies and even the president of the US. In the issue we are dealing here, DCNepal published the controversial video as a newsworthy item. Samjhana Gaire was the commentator in the video, hence naturally general people who consume the news questioned Ms. Gaire's journalistic abilities and dcnepal's credibility for posting a such video news. The general public used sajha to express their dissatisfaction towards dcnepal's news.
I don't think the news reporter should take it personally if there is general criticism and neither should the news company take it personally if the news consumers seem to have criticism about them. If I was the owner of the news website that happened to publish such content and my viewers had negative criticism about my site, I wouldn't be abusing my news site to try to attack the people who didn't like my content, let alone attacking the site they used to express their discontent at.
It's really a no brainer to ignore an issue like this. But thanks to sajha well wishers for prompting me to hopefully clear this up.
As it stands, I do not harbor anything against DCnepal owner or Ms. Samjhana Gaire. One has to learn to be able to take criticisms in if one decides on a public profession such as journalism. Sajha is far from journalism and nothing but a venue for Nepalese to share personal opinions or criticisms regarding public things that are worthy of discussion. Personally, I would learn from criticism or contest the criticism with my opinions and explanations, and not indulge in a propaganda of hate because noone benefits from it.
Addendum:
I would like to request sajha visitors to refrain from making abusive personal comments against Ms. Gaire and DCnepal owner. Comments towards the video has already been made and I certainly hope it's taken in good strides. But, any ontoward personal attack or abusive comments should not be continued.
Thanks,
San
Last edited: 11-Feb-09 12:13 PM
