Four months after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh, the country’s media is navigating a fragile, new-found freedom. This week, the offices of two daily newspapers, Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, in several cities, came under attack from protestors, who branded them as supporters of India and the former prime minister.
Yet the two newspapers and other media outlets had played a pivotal role in the uprising that led to Hasina’s fall. Despite a government crackdown and internet blackout in July, they provided accurate information to readers in Bangladesh and abroad.
They were able to do so because, over the last 15 years, most had worked hard to retain a partial freedom, often the product of subtle negotiations with dispensations. But today, the free press faces threats not from the government, but from sections of the public.
Bangladeshis are voracious consumers of media, and the country, at present, has more than 50 daily newspapers. The largest, Prothom Alo, has around 250,000 daily readers in print and more than six million online. Consequently, media outlets remained influential under the previous government, despite the challenges.
But, under Hasina, journalists were often co-opted, harassed, or intimidated by a government keen to control the narrative. Reporters from Prothom Alo and The Daily Star were detained by security forces, while their editors were tied down by cases filed in distant districts. Muktadir Rashid Romeo, who worked until this year for the outspoken English-language daily, New Age, says he was called to intelligence headquarters in 2019 and told, “We know your family…why do you take so many risks?”
Some were physically attacked: another New Age reporter, Ahmmad Fayad, was hospitalised in 2011 after an attack by members of the ruling party’s youth wing, the Chhatra League.
The administration employed softer methods too. Powerful officials would phone editors asking to quash stories. Gentle warnings came through journalists known for their close ties to the government, delivered “politely” or “in an avuncular mode”, recalls senior journalist Faisal Mahmud, who found it prudent to leave the country temporarily during the 2018 election, after a “chilling” string of disappearances. There were also rewards on offer for those who toed the line, such as foreign trips or access to the government.
Newspapers also self-censored; stories deemed risky were often suppressed or minimised by editors, who had to walk a fine line, holding the government to account without attracting its ire. Reaz Ahmad, executive editor of The Dhaka Tribune, recalls, “We tried not to suppress anything but it’s true that we gave less emphasis to certain stories”.
And since Bangladesh mostly follows a traditional model of journalism, with editors and publishers enabled by big business interests, media owners can play an important role in shaping coverage. As Ahmad says, “Anyone who got a licence to open a newspaper or television channel in Bangladesh did it through political connections.”
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By July 2024, Bangladeshi journalists had fallen into a mood of resignation, believing that the situation would never improve. “Ultimately, I had to self-censor, because I knew what I could and couldn’t do,” says Romeo. Those working inside the country resigned themselves to an involuntary decision to continue despite adverse conditions.
That perseverance reaped rewards during the July protests. Some newspapers were still staffed by independent-spirited journalists, who did not necessarily support the government. Consequently, they were able to produce full, accurate reporting during a momentous summer that shaped the history of Bangladesh.
As quota reform protests ballooned into widespread anger against the Hasina government, the latter cracked down, often with cruelty. Bangladeshi media was instrumental in providing the outside world with a picture of this.
Through it all, the measure of statutory protection it retained, despite the constraints, came to use. So, when a curfew was imposed on July 18, journalists were issued with curfew passes, enabling them to report from trouble spots.
Although press markings sometimes afforded protection, journalists were also directly targeted, in at least two instances by the police, and more often by the Chhatra League.
Five journalists were killed during the July protests, and more than 250 injured, including Romeo, who was covering clashes between students and the Chhatra League in Dhaka’s Mirpur area on July 18. “Police were allowing the Chhatra League to open fire on students,” he says. He concealed his press pass inside his flak jacket, since “there was a risk if I wore clear markings, the ruling party would attack me.” After being shot with rubber pellets in both arms, he travelled to a local hospital amidst what he calls a “war-like situation.”
Dozens of protestors were killed that day, out of more than 700 during the movement. “Our reporters were traumatised,” says Partha Shankar Sinha, an assistant editor of Prothom Alo.
News reporting got a lot more difficult on the night of July 18 when the government took the unprecedented step of turning off the internet completely. Although wireless internet and social media had been restricted since July 14, the country of 180 million people now lost all internet connectivity. There was limited mobile-phone signal, however, which allowed reporters to phone in stories. But they still faced challenges, notably in collecting accurate daily deaths tolls; access to hospitals was blocked to journalists as well as injured protestors.
Inside print newsrooms, stories were written on different computers before being transferred to a single device, on which the layout was made up. This was transferred to printing presses by pen-drive, wired connection, or Bluetooth. The papers were then printed and distributed around the country at night by “Hawkers’ Unions”, delivery organisations working for several newspapers at once.
International and online outlets were particularly affected by the internet black-out. But they too were able to circumvent the restrictions. Shafiqul Alam, the AFP bureau chief in Dhaka, had a secret, emergency internet line to four devices in his office. “We had a deal with one of the major internet service providers,” he explains to The Wire. “If there was any shut down, they would give us a backup line. But until July we never tested it.” Alam, now the government’s Press Secretary, still won’t name his service provider, but describes this period as his “finest hour.” As other journalists got to know of AFP’s wired connection, “some 40 people were working in our small office. I had to ration them.”
Alam knew he was taking a risk; he says he received threats from government ministers via journalist colleagues. But AFP played a crucial role in alerting the world to violence which the Bangladeshi government tried hard to hide.
During the blackout, Mahmud would reach the AFP office by rickshaw to send reports for Al Jazeera. Celebrated photojournalist Shahidul Alam sent widely shared reports, while AFP facilitated international coverage of a statement made in Dhaka by Mohammad Yunus, then an opponent of the government, and now its “Chief Advisor”.
Since the government fell on August 5, the media has been subject to intimidation amidst volatility on the streets; this week’s attacks on Prothom Alo and Daily Star are just the latest example.
More than a hundred journalists seen as supportive of the old regime have been named in cases filed by members of the public, a legalistic form of mob justice. As with the violence, the interim government has struggled to stop this.
More worryingly, the police have arrested at least six journalists, possibly for similar reasons. The government itself has revoked the accreditation of 29 journalists, despite its commitment to civil liberties.
Meanwhile, self-censorship and political manoeuvring reportedly continue inside the country’s media houses. Politicisation continues as outlets close to the former ruling party reposition themselves with the former opposition; moreover, some owners are in jail, leaving their organisations in uncertain control.
And with a public empowered as well as fractured in the wake of the July uprising, independent journalism in Bangladesh remains at risk.
Cyrus Naji is a writer and researcher, currently working in Bangladesh.
