The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Bhutan saw the advent of electoral democracy in 2008 with all the state institutions like Parliament and Constitutional bodies.
However, a big question for Bhutanese democracy was what would it mean for people beyond voting every five years, how would check and balance really work, will democratic culture take root and what example would be set by the first elected government headed by the pre-democracy old guard with a brute majority.
The first five years of Bhutanese democracy was the most vulnerable we would ever be as everything was new, and whatever happened in those first five years would set the precedent for everything to come.
It must be said that the private media played a stellar role during this period with bold investigations that checked and exposed various kinds of corruption and abuses of power.
The powerful that were impacted also hit back hard politically and otherwise to the point of banning advertisements to this paper through a confidential circular in April 2012.
This period also coincided with a decline in government advertisements, especially from 2010 onwards that hit the private media especially hard.
A major blunder happened when the then Ministry of Information and Communication floated an inaccurate annual advertisement figure of Nu 300 mn a year to all the media when the actual figure was less than half of that. The state owned media and many in the private media took this inaccurate Nu 300 mn to be the truth without questioning it. This would cost us all.
With a 35% pay hike in 2009 and another 20% hike in 2010 the then Pay Commissions and the Finance Ministry was looking to cut costs and a soft target was this fictional Nu 300 mn figure.
Until 2010 the situation for the private media was stable even with around 10 newspapers and two magazines.
However, the cutting started from 2010 onwards, and private media would never recover from this.
The Finance Ministry took care to protect the two state owned media outlets owned by it in the form of the national broadcaster and the national paper.
The national broadcaster got direct funding that covered almost all its costs and was even encouraged to compete for advertisements further shrinking the market.
In the same 2010 a leaked finance ministry circular betrayed the government mindset at the time when all government agencies were encouraged to advertise with the state- owned media. A MoF circular at the time said, “Advertisement meant for nationwide coverage should be given to a newspaper with wide circulation for e.g. Kuensel.” The MoF also recommended that advertisements not be given to private magazines.
The MoF recently clarified that government agencies are free to choose whom to advertise with, and there is no mandate or instruction to advertise with only state owned media, but the clarification comes too late by more than a decade and the damage has been done.
The 2012 Rupee Crisis further led to more cuts and made the situation even more dire.
By 2013 when the tenure of the first government ended, democracy has taken firm roots as no future government would attempt the same brazenness or make the same mistakes in large part due the private media’s investigations and check and balance along with Constitutional bodies, like the ACC doing its job.
However, the private media’s health and size had declined rapidly, mainly due to the advertisement cuts, and in the case of this paper due to persecution too in response to our investigative stories.
During this period, the State Owned Media came out even stronger or remained stable either getting direct funding and more advertisement revenue like the national broadcaster, or the national paper making profits every year since 2008 and declaring dividends (as mentioned in the 2015 Private Newspapers Sustainability Report by Department of Information and Media.)
The advertisement pie also shrunk due to e-procurement taking governments advertisements online affecting everybody.
Despite its shrunken size and high attrition rate the private media continued to play an important national role in the following years fighting corruption, checking abuse of power, exposing injustice, deepening democratic culture and even saving the nation a lot of money at times.
For example, investigative stories by this paper in the time of the third government on high fuel prices charged to Bhutan for decades led to Indian Fuel companies drastically reducing prices which saves Bhutan Nu 2 to Nu 3 billion every year since 2023.
Despite the many contributions of the private media through two decades, it has always been treated as a step child and the occasional and minimal support given is scrutinized and criticized even though most countries in the world give far better support to their private media.
This is not to discount the contribution of the state owned media who have also done their bit.
However, if the private media continues to decline then one day there will either only be state owned media left, or a more likely scenario of state owned media with a completely weakened and negligible private media.
This is dangerous, as despite all their size and presence, the state owned media is owned by the state and a ‘wrong government’ can easily take over and control the content. At that time, there will either be no private media or no viable private media to provide the check and balance role.
The sustainability issue has also affected the media ranking of Bhutan in the last few years with dramatic falls, which has had everyone worried as press rankings also impacts other rankings and is not a good look for the image of Bhutan.
People may assume that the advertisement issue and need for a level playing field is a petty issue being raised by the private media, but the larger question now for the country is whether it wants to have an effective private media or a private media at all in the country.
The private media has made many deep contributions to the Bhutanese state, democracy, society, diplomacy and even economy, and it has helped lay the foundations of what modern Bhutan is today.
The loss of an effective private media and a return to a pre-2006 situation of only two state owned media will have far reaching impacts and be a major step backwards for the country.
“A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society.”–Walter Lippmann