Free press but fettered mediamen!

This opposition-bashing and the refrain of blaming some of the current failures on the 'mess' the erstwhile AL government had left to the BNP-led coalition government two years ago, we have paid audience to for too long. At the initial stages of the government's incumbency, say, for six months or so, people perhaps didn't mind lending their ears to the strident remarks about the AL legacy, but two years down the road very few would be prepared to listen to it. The prime minister's recounting of how former president Shahabuddin and chief adviser to the caretaker government Latifur Rahman had been approached by the then PM Sheikh Hasina for nullifying the results of the 2001's general elections is again going to the past and not speaking of the present which the occasion demanded.

The head of the government has asked her party cadres to resist the AL by forming village committees throughout the country. We regard it as a disturbing call; for, it bodes taking confrontational politics to a new low. The best way for the government to silence critics and put a lid on 'destructive activities' is to perform and deliver.

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The PM has said, "It clearly seems that there is freedom of media, but not freedom of journalists", because the latter are not free to write for fear of losing jobs. In other words, journalists are working as puppets of newspaper owners effectively missing out on good work of the government. She has also faulted the journalists for, what she termed, being jealous of the government's success like the opposition. The bracketing of the opposition and the media is unfortunate.

As a matter of fact, there is a palpable contradiction in her statement that the media is free but the journalists are not. How can there be press freedom without free journalists? Just for the attention of the prime minister we may also inform her that there are five dailies with more than one lakh circulation and a few of them sell two lakh copies a day. This would never have happened if the people had not put their trust in newspapers. And a newspaper would never enjoy credibility unless it were free and independent.