It is outrageous how these so called budding news outlets have to rely on sensationalizing every news without even taking the moral responsibility to validate, justify or find credibility in their news.

As it has stood for over 7 years, sajha.com stands for what it is ie. an internet forum where people post and discuss a variety of thing benefitting a lot of people most of the times. As with any internet forum sometimes there will be postings which may be offensive, deceptive, inaccurate or inappropriate.

In order to protect individuals from being defamed using the popularity of sajha.com I keep a lookout for notification of malicious postings that are intended to defame or slander individuals. In most cases I take out the post within 24 to 48 hours, which I think is a pretty good turnaround time.

As far as this issue is concerned, a user had made this posting on Saturday Oct 18th afternoon. I was notified of this yesterday Oct 20th, around 3 pm. In fact the email requested me to reveal the IP address of the poster.

I replied right away saying that I am not at liberty to supply any private information unless requested by a legal entity since sajha.com values user privacy. I supplied the requestor with the ISP information which was Verizon, and wrote to the requestor that I could remove the postings if desired. I didn't hear back but I decided to go ahead and remove the posting anyways around 4 pm since there were many personal allegations in the posting.

This morning I was surprised to see this posting in sajha where this issue has been sensationalized as newsworthy and to discredit the sajha website operator by accusing collaboration with such perpetrators who abuse the freely available resources of sajha to indulge in defaming and malicious activities.

Essentially the viewership of sajha is very low during the weekend, and I had acted upon the request right away. Yet, the news states "पटक पटक समाजका प्रतिष्ठित ब्यक्तिहरुको, ब्यापार ब्यवसायको तथा महिलाहरुको चरित्र हत्या हुनेगरी नक्कली नाम र नक्कली ईमेल राखेर अत्यन्त गलत कपोल्कल्पित्, झुठा कुराको प्रचार प्रसार हुने वेव संचालक तथा झुठा कुरा पोस्टिङ् गर्नेका विरुद्द आवश्यक कानुनी कार्वाइ ..."

If this news agency is committed in bringing credible news to public, then they need to identify and investigate their news before accusing someone of collaborating in unethical behavior. This kind of news only reveals their unprofessional journalistic endeavour and a sheer ignorance of what a public discussion forum is.

I stand by my decision to remove the defamatory posting from sajha, but I will be happy to post it in a completely public unmoderated forum like soc.culture.nepal which is a completely unmoderated discussion group in the internet, in case there is a formal investigation since sajha visitors deserve to know the details behind this allegation by a news media.

As we all know there are many other unmoderated websites where postings cannot be removed, and someone with malicious intent can very well go to these sites and post such defamatory postings. It is unfortunate that this issue was actually deemed newsworthy and a means to question my personal credibility when I have had shown good intention by deleting the post within an hour of notification.

Anyways the saga continues. We're live here in sajha.