BMA asks Press Council to take actions against Daily Jugantor

The Bangladesh Medical Association has asked the Pres Council to take actions against Bangla daily Jugantor for indulging in “yellow journalism”.

The national doctors’ body also asked the newspaper and its publisher Salma Islam to apologise or “face boycott” by the professionals.
 
They made the call in a statement after their “investigation” found that Jugantor was relentlessly publishing “false and fabricated” stories against Dr Nunjerul Mohsenin Meem.
 
The paper started writing against the doctor, even her personal and family life, after she reportedly misbehaved with its publisher Islam, also a Jatiya Party MP, when she went to the emergency ward to see a patient on Tuesday afternoon.
 
In a statement, BMA said, Islam breached her oath as an MP by telling lies against the doctor, and urged Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury to take action against her.
 
bdnews24.com’s Parliament Correspondent, however, says the Speaker cannot take any action for such acts of an MP, according to the house’s rules of procedure.
 

BMA said they had conducted their own investigations and found all those reports were “false, baseless, and fabricated”.

“Those had been published at the behest of Salma Islam,” the BMA statement signed by its president Prof Mahmud Hasan and Secretary General Prof Iqbal Arslan said.

They said Jugantor was defaming the profession with their “yellow journalism”, and called upon the press council to act against them.

The BMA said the MP did not follow hospital rules when she entered the emergency.

She “hampered” treatment during that time.

They categorically said that if Jugantor did not stop this reporting, and did not apologise for what they published, all professionals in Bangladesh would boycott Jamuna group’s media.

Islam is the wife of Jamuna Group’s owner Nurul Islam Babul.

She earlier told

bdnews24.com that she felt “ashamed” when she was asked why she had been sitting at the doctor’s room.

“I did not go there to sit. I was asked to sit there by the (hospital) guards. It was an empty room. I was standing at the middle of the emergency.

“Then suddenly she (the doctor) came and told me why you’re sitting here. Who told you to sit here? I felt ashamed,” she said.

She said her newspaper was “writing the truth”.

She was also not bothered about the BMA protest.

The BMA earlier announced to form human chain at the Central Shaheed Minar on Sunday to protest the newspaper's reports.