The Prime Minister, during the Annual Journalism Award last evening, committed the government’s support to train Bhutanese journalists. The Prime Minister called for all the media houses to submit proposals on what needs to be changed to improve the country’s press freedom index which dropped to 147 this year from 90 last year.
In his keynote address at the award ceremony, the Prime Minister said that falling 57 places in a year is a huge matter of concern for all the media houses.
The Prime Minister expressed his appreciations to all the journalists for dedicating themselves to inform the nation despite the many constraints.
“There is a lot to do; we will make funds available for training. We will roll out the short trainings per your request and we will provide support for long term training, particularly at the master’s level. You let me know what needs to be done.”
The country’s media professionals who attended the event said that this is good news for the media professionals.
“We have new young people with potential now joining the media. So, what is missing is the professional training, that’s what he meant. We have people with potential without experience and without training. I think that’s the good news because our media are playing it by ear. For journalists, we really need basic trainings,” said Dasho Kinley Dorji.
“The other is, access to information should be improved for our journalists because it has become so difficult especially the last couple of years to get information and I think because of that our press freedom ranking has also suffered on account of that,” said Tenzin Lamsang, Editor with The Bhutanese.
The press freedom index is studied based on five indicators. Bhutan ranked 154 in political interference, 152 in economic interference, 165 in legislative interference, 169 in social interference and 97 in security. Bhutan has dropped in all the indicators compared to last year.
The Prime Minister in his closing note said that we need to put efforts in order to push our ranks and celebrate next year.
Bhutan was ranked 33 in 2022.
Namgay Dema
Edited by Phub Gyem
