Social Welfare Minister Syed Mohsin Ali yesterday regretted making derogatory remarks about journalists, saying he meant those words for only a couple of newsmen, not all.
In a statement signed by the public relations officer of his ministry, the minister yesterday stated that those two local journalists had been publishing fabricated news on him repeatedly over the last few days.
Mohsin said he had been agitated by constant verbal pinching of some of the journalists present there, as they had been constantly “making fun of the honourable prime minister and the finance minister.”
He said he could not control his wrath and fumed towards the journalists.
Mohsin, who had apologised for smoking at a programme of a school after the incident had been revealed by the media, said he sincerely regretted his words if the journalists community had been hurt. He asked journalists to consider that as an unintentional mistake.
The minister asserted that journalism was a noble profession and he had eternal respect for it.
Addressing a discussion programme in Sylhet on Saturday, Mohsin called journalists “Khobish,” a Bangla word roughly meaning disgusting and dirty.
The social welfare minister also said journalists were uneducated, non-graduate and they did not have any character.
