BANGLADESH Television, a state-owned national TV network that has already been suffering from a trust deficit for acting as a mouthpiece for governments that came into power, has been implementing a government decision that undermines principles of media freedom. In a meeting on May 26, the parliamentary standing committee on information and broadcasting directed the BTV to prioritise lawmakers’ recommendations when recruiting district correspondents. The committee earlier made similar directives to the ministry apparently to ensure objective reporting and avoid circulation of fake news. At least eight recruitments have already been made where the police verification report was a priority consideration. The existing recruitment policy, however, suggests that a candidate’s skills, work experience, and reputation be valued, and police verification will be part of the secondary screening process. In what follows, such a recommendation and recruitment itself are deviations from the existing policy. More importantly, the prioritisation of a lawmaker’s recommendation in a journalist’s recruitment is an attempt at maintaining partisan control over news production and compromises principles of media freedom.

The BTV, which began its journey in 1964 with the mandate to ensure the equitable dissemination of information to the mass and contribute to the nation’s socioeconomic development, has been losing its viewers and audience largely because of its failure to maintain its institutional autonomy. The parliamentary standing committee’s recommendation is one of many examples of the ways the Awami League-led government has tried to influence the reporting process. The Press Council Act was recently amended without consulting the journalist’s community. Earlier this month, the Bangladesh Bank imposed restrictions on journalists’ entrance to its premises. In October 2022, the government announced 29 agencies and institutions as ‘critical information infrastructure’, officially declaring certain access to their information as a punishable offence under the Digital Security Act (repealed in August 2023). The list of critical information infrastructures includes many public agencies and state-owned businesses, such as Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant Project, Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited, Bangladesh Power Development Board, Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, and Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited. Such restrictions on access to information by public agencies are an obstacle to their accountability. In an implicit way, this tendency to restrict access to information is an attack on media freedom, as seeking information related to many public services now carries a risk of legal harassment.

In the name of ensuring objective reporting for the national television network or protecting data related to public safety and national security, what the government has been doing is restricting media freedom and controlling public access to information. It is time that the government recognised its undemocratic and repressive approach to media governance and reviewed not only the recommendation of the parliamentary standing committee on the recruitment of BTV correspondents but also recently enacted laws that hinder the flow of information and criminalise public demand for information.