Bangladesh observes World Press Freedom Day today with professionals and rights bodies noting that the room for independent journalism in the country has shrunk because of increasing harassment, persecution and prosecution of journalists under the Digital Security Act.
According to them, the domination of political and corporate power on journalism is gradually increasing while the Digital Security Act has become a serious barrier to practising journalism freely.
Editors’ Council president and The Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam told New Age that ensuring press freedom was a must for the authorities as the news media was a place for common people to express their views enabling the government to know what people were thinking about the government.
He said that the Digital Security Act was a major barrier to expressing people’s thought in the media.
Former Dhaka University vice-chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique said, ‘A law like the Digital Security Act is needed to prevent offences taking place in cyberspace, but when the law is frequently used to harass journalists it becomes repressive.’
He also said that a section of publishers and editors compromised the basic ethics of journalism in favour of investors, governments and other powerful quarters.
Dhaka Union of Journalists general secretary Sajjad Alam Khan said that journalists were facing obstacles in various ways as corporate groups, governments and other powerful quarters were always trying to influence the media in their way.
Dhaka Reporters Unity general secretary Mosiur Rahman Khan said that journalism was going through a bad time as various pressures were forcing journalists or media houses to keep away from the expectation of the mass people.
He said that a huge number of journalists had lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Transparency International Bangladesh in a statement on Sunday said that the political and business affiliations and repression under the DSA made it harder to practise journalism independently and professionally.
The media houses opened in political consideration and to protect corporate interests are setting examples of professional and livelihood insecurity for journalists as such media houses start with weak institutional and financial capacities, the TIB statement said.
The Covid-19 situation has increased the professional and financial risks for journalists, it said, adding that as a result many journalists have been forced to change professions as they were victims of large job cuts.
Rights organisation Odhikar in a statement on the day said that due to the lack of freedom of the press, journalists were being attacked and harassed in different ways, including lodging false cases against them.
According to Odhikar data, a total of 16 journalists were reportedly killed, 1,100 injured, 346 assaulted, 386 threatened while cases were filed against 318 journalists between January 1, 2009 to March 31, 2021 while performing their professional duty.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Bangladesh has ranked 152nd among 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index 2021 while its position was 151st in 2020.
The 2021 WPF Index shows that journalism, the ‘main vaccine against disinformation’, is completely or partly blocked in 73 per cent of the 180 countries ranked by the organisation.
The index is calculated based on many indicators, but the one that relatively carries more weight is ‘abuse’, which measures the level of abuses and violence against journalists.
In a statement last week Article 19 expressed deep concern over the widespread filing of cases against and arrests of journalists under the DSA across Bangladesh for publishing news on various types of corruption and posting opinions on social media.
The freedom of expression is crushed due to this controversial law and without the freedom of expression the freedom of thought dies, it observed.
Article 19, a UK-based human rights organisation, regularly collects information on Digital Security Act-related cases in Bangladesh from the media and its own sources.
A total of 38 cases were filed between January 2021 and March 2021 under the law and among the accused five were journalists, said the organisation.
About the government promise to check journalist harassment using the DSA, the law minister in the past week told the media that the government was working to prevent misuse of the law.
The government, he said, is planning to make inquiry a must before filing a case and investigation a must before arresting any people under the law.
He said that the move would soon be visible.
In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly declared May 3 as World Press Freedom Day to raise awareness on the importance of the freedom of press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to the freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day ‘Information as a Public Good’ underlines the indisputable importance of verified and reliable information.
‘It calls attention to the essential role of free and professional journalists in producing and disseminating this information, by tackling misinformation and other harmful content,’ said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.
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