Information and Broadcasting Minister Zahir Uddin Swapan has said the media needs to be brought within a regulatory framework, not controlled, so that the fair rights of every stakeholder are ensured.
He said that without good governance and effective regulation, there could in some cases be a tendency to use the media as a tool for business interests or bargaining. He called this tendency harmful to the media’s freedom and credibility.
The information minister made the remarks as special guest at a seminar titled “The Role of the Media in Sustainable Democracy,” organised by the Television Editors Council (TEC) at a hotel in the capital on Friday.
Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was chief guest at the seminar.
The information minister said the government wanted to build a media ecosystem in which a balance would be struck among the interests of media owners, journalists, advertisers, the state and the public, and in which journalists could carry out their professional duties freely while their fair dignity and economic security were ensured.
Calling democracy and the media complementary to each other, he said that just as a free and responsible media was essential for establishing sustainable democracy, so too democracy grew stronger through the establishment of a free and responsible media.
The minister called on all concerned to regard the media not merely as a business but as one of the most important foundations of the state and society.
He said the media acknowledged there was no control of any kind over it; rather, journalists, owners and the government were working jointly to build a free, responsible and economically sustainable media system.
The minister said journalism and this industry were different from any other field — an unofficial but indispensable fourth pillar of the state and society. So ensuring journalists’ professional freedom, dignity and safety was an important duty of the state, he said, but achieving that goal also required strengthening the economic foundation of the media industry.
Swapan said the media industry would not be sustainable if owners did not get a fair business environment and reasonable profit, and that the product-advertising market would not expand without a strong private production economy.
He said that in the present time, digital platforms, global technology firms and artificial intelligence had joined conventional media, making the media ecosystem more complex. Taking this changed reality into account, the information minister stressed framing forward-looking policy and institutional reform.
He called on all to work together to seize, in the media sector too, the new opportunity for reform of the state and institutions that had emerged under Tareque Rahman’s leadership after the July uprising and the last national election.
The keynote at the seminar was presented by Independent Television chief news editor Mostafa Akmal. The seminar, chaired by TEC convener and Banglavision chief editor Dr Abdul Hai Siddique, was also addressed by principal information officer Syed Abdal Ahmad, Dhaka University vice-chancellor Professor ABM Obaidul Islam, Protidiner Bangladesh editor Maruf Kamal Khan, National Press Club president Hasan Hafiz, Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists secretary general Kader Gani Chowdhury and Daily Wada editor Shafiqul Alam. TEC member-secretary and Somoy Television CEO Zubair Babu gave the welcome address.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report