Speech at bdnews24.com 2nd Anniversary Dinner

Text of statement by chief editor Toufique Imrose Khalidi, delivered at the Radisson Hotel dinner on 13 November 2008.

Honourable Members of the Cabinet

Judges

Excellencies/Ambassadors and High Commissioners

Editors

Leaders of Business

Civil Servants, Generals

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentelemen,

Tonight we were supposed to have been joined by two of our most prominent and most popular political leaders of our time.

The two former prime ministers, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, both have sent us their good wishes, to us at bdnews24.com and to you all.

BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia has just sent us a message .... and I quote:

"I am aware that there are so many users of your unique service in Bangladesh and also in many countries of the world. They are getting fast and reliable news of Bangladesh from you."

"I know over the last two years the number of users of bdnews24.com has increased at a phenomenal rate. Your organisation has achieved this popularity due to your able leadership and also due to hard work of all journalists and staff concerned," the former prime minister said in a letter handed to me minutes ago.

A similar message came from another former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. She's wished us well, commended our way of doing journalism. "You are changing the face of journalism in this country," Sheikh Hasina said.

These are the two leaders who have between them led this nation for the past 18 years. And in the preceding decade, in the 1980s, these two extra-ordinary individuals together led a campaign that gave us democracy.

For the past two years, they have not been in power. But they have been our leaders.

They have supported us thoughout these two years, never saying 'no' when my colleagues approached them for quotes or comment. I am sure, you all remember Khaleda Zia gave us an exclusive interview to my colleague Sumon Mahmud before she was taken away by the law-enforcers. Sheikh Hasina was on the phone talking to my colleague Sumon Mahbub minutes before she was arrested last year.

And we take this opportunity to say to them a big thank-you on behalf of the bdnews24.com family.

The Chief Adviser, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, who is now abroad attending a regional summit, has sent us a message.

"I hope that bdnews24.com will continue to enlighten, entertain and empower new and emerging audiences in the digital age with reliable information," the head of the interim government said.

I thank the chief adviser for this.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

As we celebrate bdnews24.com, we celebrate the power of the Internet. When we celebrate the power of the Internet, we actually celebrate people power. Internet is free and accessible to all, rich and poor, weak and mighty.

And when top leaders of Bangladesh's 150 million people—leaders from all different fields—join us in this celebration, we get truly excited.

Speaking before such an audience—an audience comprised of our top newsmakers— is a huge honour for me personally. They are those that give us news.

Every day, literally every day, 24/7, 365 days a year, we tell our readers your stories.

Tonight, may I dare say, we would like to tell you our story.

I often come across this question: How many people in this country have the knowledge of the Internet? Or how many people have access to Internet?

I shoot back my question: How many people read newspapers in this country? How many copies do all the newspapers in Bangladesh get sold every day?

About a million? Some say it's not even that … some say, maybe the number is a little higher than that …

I asked our Technology Correspondent Maruf Mallick to get the latest data on internet users in Bangladesh:

GrameenPhone, the largest mobile phone operator, is also the largest internet service provider, with a total of 4.5 million mobile internet subscribers as of today.

AKTEL has 1.5 million; Banglalink has 200,000 subscribers.

CityCell couldn't give us the figures today.

Warid says it has 150,000.

ISPs have over a million subscribers in all categories.

BTCL boasts 30,000 dialup connections.

That brings the total to about eight million. If we can reach 20 percent of them—and we are hoping to reach that figure very soon— which is about 1.6 million people, we not only become the single largest news provider in the country (newspapers in Bangladesh sell about a million copies) we surpass the total circulation figures for all newspapers in Bangladesh.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

As I have just mentioned, the mobile internet has provided connectivity to millions of people. bdnews24.com has tapped into that, being the first in this country to launch mobile and WAP news sites. Thousands of corporate executives and others with interest in news read bdnews24.com content using their PDAs or Personal Digital Assistants.

Being bilingual, we reach an audience unmatched by any other media outlet.

As we celebrate, we'd like to share with you some data that do us really proud.

Everyday, we reach one hundred thousand unique readers. Unique, meaning if your one computer serves 20 readers you are still our one unique reader.

I have no reliable data to determine how many people on average go to a one-computer internet café in remote corners of rural Bangladesh or in the alleyways of Dhaka or Chittagong cities. Thanks to mobile internet, people in villages can now experience the power of the Internet. But not everyone is so fortunate. The number is still tiny, given the size of the total population.

And yet, that number is huge, given the number of newspaper copies that get sold in this country every day. You all know the figures, which could be embarrassing for many. I myself come from the print media, and most of my clients are from the print media when we sell content as a news agency. (media.bdnews24.com)

Voice Updates with most mobile phones on 2324

Tens of thousands of people are registered for our breaking news service delivered in English through mobile phones.

Tens of thousands of people listen to our as-it-happens updates in voice through the mobile phones. And it's done in both languages with most operators.

Why not type N on your mobile phone and send it to 2324 as a message and see what happens!

That's another of our many services.

With nearly 90 million hits a month, we are one of the top news sites in this part of the world.

With 12 million pages viewed every month, we are surely smaller than the BBC Online. With 40 odd languages, plus English, the BBC Online is bigger.

According to our registration data, the people who visit our sites regularly are mostly those that run and shape the present and future of this country.

So, are we really privileging a tiny number? Are we elitist?

If anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, people in remote upazilas throng their version of internet cafe to read our Bangla content. The cafe, if you want it called so, has just one computer connected through GPRS. Even if 20 people have read it—our server is not intelligent enough to record how many eyes were glued to our site from just one computer—you can imagine the number. So then, we are not just serving the so-called elite of the society.

That's the accusation labelled against us when my colleagues were putting up a projector to display our Website at the Ekushey Book Fair last February. The little magazine marketers were terribly wrong.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It's been a tremendous two years for us.

The past two years have been full of events media in Bangladesh has not seen in a generation. News has never been so easy to come by, but never before has it been so difficult to report.

Difficult, because no one would confirm a story such as arrest of a top politician or a billionaire businessman. But we knew they had been detained. We could not report in many cases because of lack of evidence and attribution to a credible source.

We don't run gossips, speculative stories.

For some media outlets it was easy, as always. They kept reporting, citing unnamed sources.

We were caught in a quagmire, because we just would not release stories without attribution to credible, named sources. Because we believe the public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability. After all, unnamed sources sound dubious in most cases.

It is very easy to speculate, dish out opinions or even write analysis based on facts already known. But reporting facts is not an easy task in a country whose government lacks efficient communication channels, where private sector has little or no understanding of how to professionally handle the media and where there have been no dearth of attempts to stifle access to information.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility— the bulwark against unfair practices in journalism. Our strength is: my colleagues, even those who have left us, share a dedication to ethical behaviour, and follow a code of conduct that upholds the highest principles and standards of journalism.

Ethical journalists—and I refer to the SPJ code of conduct—treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving respect.

We believe journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

And yes, journalists have to be able to act independently; but they have to be accountable too.

Other than the public's right to know, journalists must be free of obligation to any interest.

We must learn how to avoid conflicts of interest, "real or perceived", remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility, and disclose unavoidable conflicts.

Unfortunately, such compromises as free travel courtesy of vested commercial interests and secondary employment are commonplace in this country.

Many of you here tonight know very well that my colleagues have always resisted such temptations.

Accountability

Journalists must be accountable; to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

We must clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.

I would like to announce tonight that bdnews24.com will organise and host a national convention on media accountability next year, when, hopefully, we will have a popularly-elected accountable government in our country.

We must encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.

We must admit mistakes and correct them before the public confidence erodes in the media's credibility. Please do point out when we have not done that.

And, very important but something very difficult in this country, we must expose unethical practices of journalists and the news organisations.

Our experience hasn't been very comfortable, when it comes to dealing with unethical practices of fellow media organisations.

Worse is when we confront corporate corruption. We have been threatened time and again. We have been punished in various forms. My colleagues have been taken off the list of invitees to media briefings by some companies.

It's very sad but true that big spenders in market communication can dictate news agenda in this country.

Rarely do we find friends when we try to fight such behaviour from some companies.

A big story on a 250-crore taka fine for rogue operations by a big company failed to find space on the front page of some top-selling newspapers!! The story ended up among lesser items in the business section of a top newspaper!

We are the only news organisation in the country that doesn't get any advertisement from this big company. I am not complaining, I am trying to illustrate my point.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Let me take you through another aspect of cyber journalism. A bottom-up, self-organised form of uploading has emerged: blogging.

A blog is your own personal soapbox where you can get up every morning and upload what you think about a subject or an issue.

Bloggers have created an army of online commons with no barriers to entry.

Blogging has its pitfalls, I must say.

Blogging means information sloshes around with total freedom. Bloggers post wild allegations and rumours on their sites because nobody is in charge, really.

As we formally launch two blog sites today, I promise we'll be cautious as we have been with our news sites. Our moderators will ensure no one crosses the limits.

Blogging can create as much energy, buzz and hard news as traditional journalism. Our blogs will promote and patronise citizen journalism.

A new blog is created every second. There are about 70 million weblogs in the world. Every day 120,000 weblogs are created.

In the last Malaysian national elections, eight bloggers became MPs. The mainstream media, allegedly, sided with the ruling coalition, forcing the opposition to turn to the Internet. Much of the campaign was played out online.

Look at the facebook.com phenomenon, an online social directory that is spreading virally in students of colleges and universities. Millions of people—mostly young—have a platform to tell their own stories.

Barack Obama used facebook to raise funds and rewrite record books.

But it is still not clear how it will affect traditional journalism.

Traditional news organisations around the world are taking more blended approaches. It is impossible to imagine how it is going to be like in 10 years from now.

bdnews24.com will keep track of developments.

This is a country, ladies and gentlemen, where tens of thousands of children have to choose between being hungry and going to school.

Thanks to mobile phones these days, we do not even notice the abject poverty lined up along the path our pajeros or nissan petrols drive so majestically.

Now that we see so much light at the end of a long, tortuous tunnel, let's hope that our two great leaders will now guide us to peace, and then, some prosperity that the poor in this delta so richly deserve.

Only yesterday, they both announced that they were ready and willing to sit together and discuss the nation's problems. That's really showing us light.

May I borrow and adapt from Barack Obama's newly-appointed chief of staff:

"Now is a time for unity, and, Honourable former prime ministers, we'll do everything in our power to help you stitch together the frayed fabric of our politics, and help summon supporters of both parties to unite in common purpose."

I am sure my colleagues from the media, all editors who are here tonight will agree with me in promising that kind of support to you both.

I thank you all.

November 13 2008.