Binaya Ghimire

I never thought online media will take the world by storm until I read that certain American News Magazine shut down its print publication and limited itself to online version due to the drop in the readers of the print version. Over the years, online media has grown tremendously. Not only the print publications, radio stations and TV channels have their online versions, but also a huge number of online newspapers and magazines exist. Even in Nepal, there are a lot of online newspapers/magazines that have a huge reader base. These online newspapers/magazines are operated as websites or mobile apps.
The main benefit of online media is it delivers news quickly. The moment something happens the online media starts publishing the story. News circulates pretty fast and it uses the power of social sites and mobile apps to reach huge audience.
The main disadvantage of online media is the authenticity of news story. They create news from rumours. Once published, everything remains in black and white in print publication, therefore, the print publication cannot take the chance of publishing unverified news. However, online media has the leverage of delete option. Therefore, when the story is dragged into controversy, or proved to be fake, online news portals can easily delete the news, and show themselves clean. Likewise, radio and TV also cannot air unverified news just like online media. They cannot take the risk because there is a huge investment and operational cost at stake.
Just like the traditional media, online media also generates income through advertising. The primary way to attracting advertisers is through the number of visitors to the websites of these online media or users of the app. The higher the number of daily visitors, the better the advertising income.
I do not watch TV, listen to the radio or read newspaper. Online news portals are my major source of news. Based on my consumption of online news portals I can say that a lot of online news websites are doing yellow journalism. They not only sensationalise news, but also publish fake news, even sponsored ones.
Many online news sites are even faking their daily visits to their websites in order to attract advertisers. They are not only using popup/popunder advertising networks to drive traffic to their websites but also using bots/automated software to manipulate views on their websites. The online news portals are also publishing sponsored news. They deliver news in the interest of certain persons or business.
A lot of online news portals are also blatantly copying news and stories from other sources. Instead of using first hand source, they are creating news from second, or even third and fourth hand sources. Since online media are established with a little investment, they cannot afford to have reporters in various places. Therefore, they are republishing stories already published by other publications.
Even though Nepal government has made it mandatory for online media to register with the local administration and follow journalism ethics, a lot of online news portals are unregistered and do not follow journalistic code of conduct. Sadly, there is no way to control and regulate these portals unless they do this by themselves.