The Prime Minister, Tshering Tobgay, said there is a need to relook carefully on whether the purpose of advertisement is to finance the media houses. He was responding to one of the queries put by a Journalist, during Meet the Press session, this afternoon.
“In terms of media, advertisement is primarily to get the messages across and we need to relook at the whole thing very carefully as to whether the purpose of the advertisement is to finance the media houses.” He said there must be more elegant ways of doing it but this needs to be relooked at. “What the policies of the advertisement are. We have not looked at it.”
Lyonchhen also clarified that he has not issued circular to the Ministry of Information and Communications to minimize advertising to the media houses.
“I haven’t sent circular. It may come from the Ministry of Finance if there was one. And if there was one, the reason was austerity, it probably meant there was not enough money but I can’t answer it because I don’t know about it.”
Lyonchhoen said, besides formulating rules and regulations, he is not too sure how else the government could help in the development of media.
“I don’t know to what extent the government should be involved in the development of the media besides making rules and regulations and doing our best to ensure a label-playing field. Otherwise I don’t know what the government should do.”
The Prime Minister said he knows that if the media is in deep trouble, they need to intervene. “But on the other hand excessive intervention is not healthy especially in the realm of media.”
But Lyonchhoen reiterated that time will come when the government really needs to consider whether to intervene or not.
