‘Bangladesh media is going through a terrible crisis’

Ruhul Amin Ghazi, President of Bangladesh Federal Journalist Union, has commented that the media of Bangladesh is going through a terrible crisis.

He said this while addressing the chief guest at the Annual General Meeting of the Journalist Union Mymensingh at the Mymensingh Press Club Auditorium on Friday (April 26) morning.

Ruhul Amin Ghazi said that the media has been squeezed in such a way that its freedom is now completely endangered. Threats, intimidation, murder of journalists, arrests and torture are going on to strengthen the bad regime. The media is being shut down. Journalists are being jailed. The media has been tied down by creating various black laws. A culture of fear has been created in the media industry and the media is now unable to present the truth. Due to these reasons media is losing the trust of people day by day.

Highlighting the horror of torture of journalists, he said, in the history of the memory, media and media workers have never seen such suffering. Today, this great media and its workers are in a terrible situation, which has a strong history of exposing the social state’s irregularities, corruption, errors, oppression and horrors to the civil society.

Stating that 60 journalists have been killed in the last 15 years, he said, many journalists have been put in jail. Many journalists have been victims of assaults and brutal torture while reporting the truth or carrying out their professional duties. Sometimes even life has to be sacrificed.

General Secretary of Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists Quader Gani Chowdhury was the special guest at the Annual General Meeting under the chairmanship of Journalist Union Mymensingh (JUM) President Ayub Ali.

He said that the media of Bangladesh is not able to be a mass media. The media is losing people’s trust day by day due to not being able to present the truth. Which is driving the media into existential crisis. The media should always be on the side of the people. But I don’t know how, the mass media has created a distance with the people. The distance is only increasing from time to time. We don’t know if our media owners realize it or not! Our biggest crisis is the crisis of democracy. If there is no democracy, we feel that there is no freedom of media.

BFUZ organizing secretary Erfanul Haque Nahid, Abu Bakar, M Hamidul Haque Manik, Aman Ullah Akand Jahangir participated in the discussion. JUM general secretary Saiful Islam presided over the event.