STAFF CORRESPONDENT

The business interests of media owners pose one of the greatest threats to editorial independence in Bangladesh, speakers said at a conference yesterday.

AK Azad, managing director of Times Media Limited, a concern of Ha-Meem Group, which owns Channel 24 and The Daily Samakal, said that, as an owner, his businesses are always under pressure from the factions his journalists write against.

He made the remarks at the Bangladesh Journalism Conference 2026, organised by Management and Resources Development Initiative, at the Radisson Blu Water Garden in Dhaka.

Azad acknowledged his obligation to the 75,000 workers employed across his non-media businesses and admitted that he is sometimes compelled to obstruct publication to protect them.

He spoke about how his commitment to independent journalism and his journalist employees is sometimes tested by his responsibility to employees in his other business concerns.

Responding to a proposal made by Kamal Ahmed, who was the chief of the now-defunct media reform commission, to convert media organisations into trusts or public limited companies to separate them from owners’ other businesses, Azad said, “I want to turn either Samakal or Channel 24 into a trust, provided people like you [the panellists] take responsibility,” he told a panel discussion titled “Media Self-Regulation in Bangladesh: Professional Oversight, Accountability and Grievance Redressal.”

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