“The first online newspaper, bdnews24.com, faced political pressure from a former ruling party member of parliament (MP) demanding removal of old reports on cases against him and his family,” said the report published on Tuesday.
“The MP, through a friend, tried to file a two billion-taka ($23.3 million) defamation suit against four senior editors of the newspaper, but a court in Barishal rejected the petition,” it added in a subsection on censorship or content restrictions under the section on freedom of expression for members of the press and other media, including online media.
bdnews24.com came under intense pressure in early 2021 to remove the reports on court proceedings and orders in cases against former MP and Premier Group Chairman HBM Iqbal and his family.
The reports were not based on bdnews24.com’s own investigation, but they objectively reflected the court proceedings and orders. As such, bdnews24.com did not see any reason to revoke or correct those reports.
As it refused to bow down to the unfounded pressure, a person named Kazi Nasir Uddin Babul, identifying himself as a friend of Iqbal, sent a legal notice to the four editors of bdnews24.com from Barishal towards the end of January 2021, claiming that the reports were “false and baseless”.
Babul threatened bdnews24.com with defamation suit and case under the Digital Security Act if the reports were not “deleted”.
bdnews24.com published a report after receiving the notice. In keeping with the ethics and standards of good journalism, its correspondent spoke to the lawyer who sent the notice as well as Iqbal. It also responded to the legal notice through a lawyer.
After the publication of the report, bdnews24.com received more than three dozen legal notices from different districts. The language, statements and demands in the notices, sent under different names, are identical. A lawyer also warned of “adverse consequences” for the news publisher.
As bdnews24.com started replying to the legal notices, pleas were submitted seeking to file cases against its Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi and three other senior editors in Barishal, Barguna and Khulna.
Courts tossed out the petitions filed in Barguna and Barishal. A judge in Khulna ordered a police investigation into the allegations brought against bdnews24.com.
The judge dismissed the case after the Police Bureau of Investigation concluded that it did not find any evidence to prove the charges brought by the plaintiff.
Editor-in-Chief Khalidi on Feb 17, 2021 spoke extensively at a press conference on the “bizarre” attempts to muffle journalism by influential people. bdnews24.com will never bow down to undue pressure, he said.