The Media Reform Commission has recommended lifting the ban on broadcasting news bulletins on IPTV and online portals as stipulated in the online policy.
The commission submitted its report to Chief Adviser Professor Dr Muhammad Yunus on Saturday afternoon. The report includes seven recommendations regarding online portals.
According to the report, while online portals encourage individuals, small and medium enterprises, and large organizations to launch news-based platforms, their uncontrolled and disorderly expansion has also led to issues such as yellow journalism, unethical blackmailing, public harassment, and violations of personal privacy.
This unregulated growth has also created significant challenges for ethical and objective journalism. The previous government’s online policy failed to establish effective discipline in this regard, making it necessary to review and refine the policy to make it more practical and effective.
The report mentioned that although the High Court had issued an order to shut down unregistered portals, the directive had not been effectively implemented. It emphasized the need for clear criteria to determine when an online portal should be recognized as a media outlet.
Without setting editorial qualifications and standards similar to those required for newspapers or broadcast media, as well as ensuring equivalent financial investment, this disorder is likely to persist.
The report also said that under the previous government’s online policy, the responsibility of defining these criteria was supposed to be assigned to the proposed Broadcast Commission.
However, instead of forming the commission, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued registrations at its discretion, prioritizing political considerations.
The commission put forward the following seven recommendations:
- The policy for registering online portals should be updated, and as the previous government had entrusted the proposed Broadcast Commission with this responsibility, it should now be assigned to the independent Media Commission proposed by the Media Reform Commission.
- Since online registrations over the past decade were not conducted under a transparent and specific policy but rather through the arbitrary exercise of government power, they should be reviewed. The independent Media Commission should be responsible for this review.
- The current system requiring multiple security agencies to conduct investigations for online portal registration should be abolished. The existing police verification process used for newspaper declarations should be sufficient.
- The annual renewal process for online portal registrations should be discontinued.
- The ban on broadcasting news bulletins on IPTV and online portals should be lifted.
- Government advertisements for online portals should be allocated transparently and fairly based on a well-defined policy.
- The trade licence fee for online portals is several times higher than that of a general trade licence, which discourages media operations. This policy should be abolished.
Earlier, on November 18, the interim government issued a gazette notification forming an 11-member Media Reform Commission to make the media sector more independent, robust, and objective. Senior journalist Kamal Ahmed was appointed as the commission’s head.
