FROM PAGE 12

Speaking at the conference, Kamal Ahmed, also the consulting editor of The Daily Star, said the roots of the problem lie partly in how media houses came into existence. Under Bangladesh’s Printing Presses and Publications (Declaration and Registration) Act, 1973, the barrier to entry for setting up a media outlet is just Tk 5 lakh -- a threshold so low, he argued, that it has allowed anyone with political connections to obtain a licence and then find an industrialist to bankroll the operation.

He also called for mandatory voluntary disclosures from corporate-owned media outlets. “If a corporate house has stakes in a particular industry and its newsroom covers that industry, there should be a public disclosure of that conflict of interest,” he said, adding that without such transparency, readers have no way of knowing whose interests a news organisation is serving.

Kamal proposed appointing a “readers’ editor” in every newsroom to protect audience interests.

International media law expert Joan Barata added that Bangladesh’s licensing regime is itself an anomaly. “In most countries, there is no requirement to license a newspaper at all -- only technical licences for frequency allocation are necessary for broadcast media.”

The existence of such barriers, he argued, creates the conditions for political and business interests to control who enters the media landscape from the outset.

He said licensing is entirely separate from regulation -- and regulation has nothing to do with the state.

“Self-regulation is about ethics; and the European Court of Human Rights has said that defining ethical and professional standards is not something states can do. It is something journalists should do…. It is based on moral authority, not legal authority.”

Joan also criticised the Bangladesh Press Council, saying it cannot genuinely be called self-regulation.

In a separate session, Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, said press freedom is inseparable from fundamental rights, freedom of speech, and accountability within the broader governance system.

“A ‘winner-takes-all’ or zero-sum game has been going on in Bangladesh’s politics for a long time. The politics of money, muscle power, and partisanisation are controlling the entire governance system,” he said, adding, “Every state institution has been subjected to extreme politicisation.”

He observed that dissent and the disclosure of information are often treated as threats to monopoly power, negatively affecting the media.

Speaking about the growing influence of business interests in politics, Iftekharuzzaman said the proportion of MPs primarily involved in business rose from 17.5 percent in the country’s first parliament to 60.9 percent in the current 13th Jatiya Sangsad.

He also said Bangladesh’s performance in indexes related to democracy, rule of law, good governance, political stability, voice and accountability, civic space, and corruption remains “deeply embarrassing”.

Kamal Ahmed said, “The media is a part of society. If there is no democracy in society, it is difficult to expect it in the media.”