The PCN's monitoring also found that materials including articles likely to cause harm to the candidate of a particular party were disseminated by the media.
It is found the media selected for the monitoring were disseminating news and articles stating that a particular candidate has 'high chances' of election victory in a certain constituency and they also 'boosted up' in the social sites news related to a certain candidate. A trend of the media presenting a candidate of a particular party as 'weak' while exaggerating another candidate was also found in course of the monitoring. PCN has taken action against 28 media on the basis of the seriousness of the violation of the code by them and based on the facts and data collected in course of monitoring. The Press Council has sought clarification from a radio, a television, a newspaper and seven online news portals in this connection. The PCN has also banned two online portals from publishing and broadcasting within Nepal. Likewise, it has called attention of five online portals, reprimanded five online, a television and two newspapers and directed two online news portals to abide by the journalists’ code of ethics and the election code of conduct, PCN's Information Officer Ram Sharan Bohara said. PCN had selected a total 225 sample media including 68 newspapers, 88 online portals, 37 radio and 12 televisions for the purpose of the monitoring. It carried out monitoring on the media trend as well.
