The Bhutanese Leading the way.
In recent years, various government agencies have built a significant following on their social media handles and particularly on Facebook.
This trend, which accelerated during and after the pandemic, was part of a larger trend of government agencies trying to communicate directly with the public on various issues.
These pages soon started publishing press releases, announcements and even advertisements about themselves, often bypassing the formal media.
Government agencies, in short, had formed their own media houses.
Soon, some of these agencies also felt that their pages could also be used to counter media narratives or be their agency mouthpiece.
When this paper first broke the story about the brain death and later death of Biren Kafley under police custody, we gave ample opportunity to the RBP to respond before publishing the story.
However, the RBP chose not to respond and answer our questions or give the details.
The RBP waited for The Bhutanese story to come out and only after that put up its response on its Facebook page. This backfired badly as the people did not believe the RBP’s explanation and the matter blew up.
A lot of the controversy could have been avoided if the RBP answered our questions in the first place.
The second instance is to do with the ACC’s investigation of the 4 ESP cases. Instead of holding a press conference the ACC released its findings on its Facebook page.
Again, like in the RBP case, it led to more questions and controversy than anything else.
If the ACC had allowed the media access, then perhaps it could have explained in detail why the three cases did not qualify as corruption cases as well as answer questions on the details of its investigation.
This paper tried its best to follow up with ACC on the various questions from the public and around the cases, but there was no response. This lack of additional information and clarification of doubts only fueled the fire on social media.
It is hoped that government agencies learn their lessons from the two above cases and improve their method of sharing information which cannot be a one way street, especially on controversial issues.
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw