"It is hard to feel neutral"

What does a journalist do when young protesters are shot in front of her? Does she do her job and stay neutral? Can you stay neutral? 

As protests engulfed Kathmandu, Nepal's journalists found themselves reporting a story that was personal. While doing their job, some of them were even targeted by mobs. 

Dart Asia Pacific Fellow Arun Karki visited their newsrooms and spoke with his colleagues on their experience of reporting the GenZ protests that erupted on 8 September. These are the first-hand accounts of journalists who witnessed the turmoil in the city they call home.

Sunita Karki was at a workshop in a hotel on 8 September. She saw the first waves of protests through hotel windows. Curfew alerts flooded her phone, a vehicle belonging to a human rights group sat burning across the road, young boys were taking their wounded friends on motorbikes to the Everest Hospital, and police were beating a teenager with hands raised up. 

“I cried a lot,” she said, but the tears were not out of fear -- they were because she felt guilt. “I couldn’t write the news. We were witnessing these scenes from a five-star hotel.” By evening, the death toll had reached 19. On 9 September at about 3:35 p.m.  her outlet, the Annapurna Post's office in Tinkune, Kathmandu, was set on fire. Staff had to leave the building as parts of the newsroom burnt down.

When she knew her office was burning, she anxiously told her husband that she would resign from the job: "If we have to hide our identification cards in every protest, what kind of journalist am I?" she asked herself.

She filed a story the next day, but her emotions kept bouncing between that of a journalist’s duty and shock. She said that in moments like this, it’s hard to feel truly neutral.

After watching the police beat people, she felt a strong urge to step in, not just stand back and report. The first real calm came later, when people came to the street and lit small candles together. “This was a sort of victory procession. I felt some relief after brutal days,” she said.

Angad Dhakal a photojournalist who works at Kantipur National Daily, was standing outside his office building when protesters stormed in and set parts of it on fire. He had already been informed that protesters were planning to torch his office building and  rushed to his office hoping to save his hard drives containing ten years of photography work. He failed.

He raised his camera and "forcefully" pressed the shutter - more to document the scene than out of "professional enthusiasm or duty". 

“My office was burning. What should I photograph?” he recalled. A few moments later, a protester noticed the “PHOTO” label on his yellow Press jacket. Dhakal deflected it by saying he was an early career freelancer and YouTuber. So that protesters wouldn't find out, he went to one corner and took his jacket off.

When it comes to covering street protests,  Angad usually stands near the police because it feels safer. But on 8 September, fire and gunshots made even that area unsafe. A rubber bullet hit his friend Dipendra Dhungana that badly injured him. 

He thought, “Where do we go now? If we stay here, we’ll be hit.” After witnessing two days of protests, violence, and killings, and seeing his own office burning, he couldn't sleep for days.

The same afternoon that government buildings burned and Kantipur was attacked, a message in a protest Discord forum talked openly of 'attacking Kantipur'. 

Rumours spread to other outlets. Outside OnlineKhabar's office, where Gaurav Pokharel works, the newsroom manager saw “very suspicious people were walking around”. They lowered blinds, avoided windows, locked the front gate and dispersed staff to other places across the city. The outlet was threatened and effectively locked down, but not torched.

Pokharel hid his press ID. “ I never showed the ID card. Sometimes I had to enter the crowd shouting slogans, just to blend in among the protesters,” he said. He watched people fall under gunfire, he helped pull one surrounded journalist out of a hostile crowd. 

As a freelancer, Gaurav also contributed articles for international outlets. Later, while transcribing an interview of a young protest organiser, he wrote to his editor at an international outlet : “This was very hard to write. I cried many times while doing it.” He had been working at a stretch for days battling bouts of exhaustion and low blood pressure. 

Protesters vandalised and set fire within the Singha Darbar complex housing Nepal Television and Radio Nepal. They tried to disrupt public broadcasting. 

Surendra Paudyal began the day with his press ID hanging on his neck, thinking it would let him move freely. But when he reached Singha Darbar around 3:30PM, the situation felt dangerous. 

He put the ID in his pocket. When asked what mattered most, he answered without pause: life comes first. In that moment, he felt real fear and a strong duty to protect his team. 

His focus narrowed to basic things: stay calm, find exits, get everyone out safely. Later, they were able to keep the 8 pm news on air through a regional link. He felt mixed emotions and a sense of relief that the broadcast continued, but also sadness and anger that their own studio had come under attack.

Reprinted with permission from the Dart Centre Asia Pacific, a regional hub that provides trauma-informed support and advice to journalists.