The information and broadcasting ministry was willing to announce the long-awaited ninth wage board for press media but failed so far as the Newspaper Owners’ Association of Bangladesh remained indifferent on the matter, said ministry adviser Mahfuz Alam on Sunday.
Speaking as the chief guest at a dialogue organised by the Centre for Governance Studies, CGS in short at the CIRDAP auditorium in Dhaka city, Mahfuz also said that his ministry would finalise the Journalist Protection Act and Media Commission Act within the tenure of the interim government.
The adviser mentioned at the event titled ‘Dialogue on self-regulation and grievance in media: political and policy perspectives’ that he received 18 draft versions of the Journalist Protection Act and recommended presenting them to the cabinet two months ago, but the process remained stuck.
As part of media reform, the ministry initiated merging Bangladesh Television and Bangladesh Betar into one autonomous entity, but failed because complications arose due to staff coordination and stakeholder influence, he added.
He also spoke about the role of powerful nexus between civil-military bureaucracy and corporate sector—which he said was difficult to dismantle—in hindering media freedom.
Former chief of the media reform commission, Kamal Ahmed, also consulting editor at The Daily Star, recommended gathering public opinion and publishing drafts of the Journalist Protection Act 2025 and the Media Commission Act on a website.
He proposed recognising journalists as workers under labour law, wage board reforms, and merging Bangladesh Betar, BTV and Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha under a single board.
Dhaka University’s mass communication and journalism teacher Professor SM Shameem Reza recommended that political parties should include provisions in their election manifestos to ensure job security, legal and financial protection for journalists.
Senior journalist Sohrab Hassan said that the interim government failed to free the country from the corruption and irregularities of the previous administration.
He also alleged that there was hardly any progress after a relevant home ministry committee recommended that probes should be made to check the merit of the cases filed against journalists post July uprising and release those if the cases were found fake or lacked adequate grounds.
As a result of the want of progress, 16 journalists were still incarcerated, Sohrab Hassan said.
He further raised question whether it would be possible to implement media reforms if national elections were duly held in February next year.
Freelance journalist Kazi Jesin expressed concerns about tagging free thinkers with different socially and politically condemnable ideas and names, stoking intolerance in society, fearing that Bangladesh potentially faced dangers in the future if this trend continued.Â
The Daily Star journalist Zyma Islam said that journalists needed an independent media commission, as the press clubs and journalist unions paid no heed to their demands.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party media cell convener Moudud Hossain Alamgir Pavel, Jamaat-e-Islami chief of media and publicity team Ahsanul Mahboob Zubair, Gonoforum executive president Subrata Chowdhury, Bangladesh Samajtantrik Dal-Jasod general secretary Nazmul Haque Prodhan, Communist Party of Bangladesh general secretary Abdullah Kafi Ratan, Gono Odhikar Parishad general secretary Rashed Khan, and Amar Bangladesh Party joint general secretary Nasreen Sultana Mily, among others, participated in the dialogue moderated by CGS president Zillur Rahman.
