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As student protests swept Bangladesh earlier this year, Shahnaz Sharmeen, a veteran TV journalist, realized her daugher Ahona had stopped talking to her.
Ahona, a sophomore at Bangladesh University of Professionals, had been going out every day since the protests began. But she would not talk about what she did, or where she went, or about the movement at all.
âAs the police turned violent and began indiscriminately shooting at the students, I couldnât help but ask her, âWhy on earth arenât you talking to me?ââ Shahnaz said. âDo you know what her answer was? âWe donât trust mainstream media, nor do we trust journalists. Who knows, you might share our strategies with someone, and that person might pass them on to the law enforcement agencies.ââ
In Bangladesh, said Sheikh Manjur-E-Alam, who oversees the region for Article 19, a group that monitors freedom of expression, the media has long been an arm of the state. Most major media outlets were controlled by business interests with deep political ties, and were forced to align with the ruling partyâs narrative.
Sheikh Hasina had ensured control over the media by granting licenses to dozens of TV channels that parroted the governmentâs narrative and suppressed news that could provoke the prime minister or her administration. More chillingly, the 2018 Digital Security Act silenced dissent. Independent outlets that dared to criticize the government, like Prothom Alo and the Daily Star, paid a heavy price. Hasina denounced them publicly, barring their journalists from press conferences and restricting their circulation. According to Reporters Without Borders, Bangladesh ranks 165th out of 180 countries for press freedom.
Students like Ahona had lost faith in the mainstream press, and relied instead on social media to share their version of events. Reporters who covered the mass uprising against the authoritarian regime agreed. Their ownersâ reluctance to broadcast or print what was happening on the ground put them in danger. Inaccurate and inflammatory material soon spread alongside genuine accounts, and fueled a polarized and chaotic environment that was often hostile to reporters.
By the end of July 2024, at least two hundred reporters had been injured while covering the demonstrations, and four had lost their lives. Attacks came from all sidesâangry protesters, pro-government supporters, and law enforcement. Media buildings were vandalized.
The protests ended in August with the fall of Sheikh Hasina and an interim government led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance. But the attacks on journalism have merely changed form. Shahnaz found that she had been accused of inciting the killing of protesters in the Mirpur area of Dhaka. According to Article 19, at least 199 similar cases have been filed with courts across the country. At least five people have been imprisoned, while the future of others remains uncertain.
On August 23, Mahfuz Anam, editor of the Daily Star, condemned the attacks on journalists, and called for the rule of law to be maintained even for journalists who had supported the previous regime. âThe way to handle them is to criticize their journalism and expose their partisanship,â he wrote, âbut they cannot be jailed without specific charges of breaking the law.â
Nobody has listened. On social media, many argued that journalists who had enabled Sheikh Hasinaâs regime deserved punishment. And mainstream outlets downplayed reports of street retribution, attacks on minorities, and violent incidents involving banned Islamist groups. Even four deaths in custody went largely unnoticed.
When the New York Times put these issues to Yunus, he labeled them exaggerations. NPR confronted him with statistics, and he acknowledged the violence but downplayed its political motivations. âWhen you say the Hindu community was attacked, they were associated with her [Hasina]. So you cannot distinguish whether they were attacked because they were her followers or because they were Hindu. But they were attacked, thatâs for sure,â Yunus said.
Bangladesh has long prided itself on religious harmony, and his comments seemed to downplay the severity of the situation. The backlash intensified after Yunus spoke to Voice of America, where he suggested that the student protests had pushed a âreset button,â erasing the old political order. That was difficult for a nation that is proud of its war of independence. Bangladeshi mainstream media was eerily silent on all of these topics.
When I asked the government, it responded that it has ânot imposed any form of censorship. No news outlet has been instructed to run specific stories, nor have we requested taking down of any content. Even the intelligence agencies, which previously imposed restrictions on the media, have been directed to refrain from doing so. We are committed to fostering a flourishing media landscape and firmly believe in freedom of the press, akin to what we see in Scandinavian countries.”
In September, a group of editors met with Yunus and pledged their support for the interim government. There was no mention of challenging power. The regime has changed, but it remains an open question whether Bangladeshâs media can ever be free, or whether it will merely become a mouthpiece for power.
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