Commerce Minister and senior Awami League leader, Tofail Ahmed yesterday categorically said that newspaper owners did not require to have clean image, but politicians do.
“Newspaper owners have negative sides; if their circulation is 100 copies, they claim 20,000 to get the newspaper allocation and ultimately sell them at Nayabazar,” the minister told querying reporters at the Secretariat.
“Newspaper owners have excessive wealth too, but are not compelled to declare it like the politicians. The government will monitor influential persons on corruption allegations,” he said adding that out of 160m people in the country, only 1.6m pay taxes.
“You [journalists] write reports and we keep silent because politicians are unable to write like you. Journalists publish reports on corruption but they do not mention that the people’s purchasing power has gradually increased.”
Regarding the government issuing more licences to the print and electronic media, Tofail said it was done so that the media writes more stories against the present government. “But it is alleged that unscrupulous media owners sell their licences after receiving them from the Information Ministry,” he added.
