‘Imposing restrictions on the press or an individual's free speech is a fairly popular idea in Bangladesh’ 

This year, Bangladesh dropped ten notches in the World Press Freedom Index, published on 3 May 2022 by Reporters Without Borders (also known as Reporters sans frontières (RSF)). While Bangladesh ranked 152nd last year, the country has slipped down 10 positions to 162nd, out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom. 

The yearly press freedom index has been published since 2002 and is based on a survey of media professionals, lawyers and sociologists, conducted by Reporters Without Borders. Shafquat Rabbee, a Bangladeshi-American geo-political columnist and academic, shared his thoughts with The Business Standard in a recent interview.

TBS Sketch of Shafquat Rabbee

According to a recent report by Reporters Without Border Bangladesh has slipped ten notches in the press freedom index. What is your take on this report? Do you think the index illustrates the reality of press freedom in Bangladesh?

Reporters Without Border updated their scoring methodology for the latest Press Freedom Index in 2022. The update may have worsened Bangladesh's score and ranking in 2022. I am not going to focus on the exact position of Bangladesh on the ranking table though. 

A few notches up or down year over the course of one year may be interesting to note, but the real story about Bangladesh emerges when you see which other countries share similar positions on the index along with Bangladesh.

RSF provides a colour coded world map, where countries with lighter orange indicate a "problematic" situation with press freedom, deeper orange shows a "difficult" condition, and red indicates a "very serious" situation of press freedom. Bangladesh with its score of 36 (rank of 162 out of 180 countries) falls in the worst bucket – the red zone. 

Almost all of the other red zone countries are either one-party states, monarchies or dictatorships. In that sense, Bangladesh finds itself in the league of North Korea, Myanmar, Syria, China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela.

Now comes the question, does this ranking reflect the actual Press Freedom in Bangladesh? Any such ranking is subjective and influenced by the specific methodology, weights and survey questions. 

Bangladesh's ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has been consistently dropping. And now the country holds 162nd position out of 180 countries. The Business Standard spoke to Shafquat Rabbee, a Bangladeshi-American geo-political columnist and academic, to delve into the issue

RSF defines press freedom as the press' ability to produce news without political, economic, legal or social interference. And all of that without the threat to physical and mental safety. I communicate regularly with several well known journalists from Bangladesh. I am not aware of any of them who are not worried about their physical and/or mental safety while going about their job. This includes journalists working for government friendly outlets and even those who are the least critical of the government.

Is Bangladesh's press freedom really worse than Afghanistan or Pakistan or Venezuela or Russia – all countries belonging to the Red Zone, with a slightly higher ranking than Bangladesh? I would like to know the answer. 

However, based on what we gather from the international media about those countries' press freedom and propaganda, Bangladesh's situation does not appear to be different from Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Venezuela's. That is why you need to focus on the country groupings, not the exact ranking.

In the country profile, the organisation pointed out and criticised political violence, digital surveillance, and big businesses running private media as some of the underlying problems. Do you agree with RSF? And what are the other reasons?

Quantifiable and verified reports of violence against journalists, frivolous lawsuits, arrests and law enforcement actions against the press play a critical role in RSF's ranking methodology. 

Outside of that, there is a 100 question survey that RSF sends to a list of global experts in which the political context of a country has 33 questions, the legal framework has 25, the economic context of the press has 25, the sociocultural context has 22 and safety of the journalist has 12 questions. 

This framework clearly puts a lot of weight on the political and legal situation within a country around its media and the press.

Interestingly, in the country profile, RSF has mentioned several key findings regarding Bangladesh's political and legal context, some of which may not be carried by any Bangladeshi media, even if I were to simply quote RSF.

In their report, they referred to the Digital Security Act as one of the world's "worst" legal frameworks against the press.  Media ownership in the hands of a select group of pro-government businessmen and their overt and covert control of these media houses are a well established impediment to a free press in Bangladesh. 

I personally know several instances where journalists lost their jobs after reporting on the wrongdoings of powerful, private businesses with strong government ties. RSF probably gathered similar stories through their private outreach to its media experts.  

Bangladesh already has the Digital Security Act and a few more laws are in the offing. The government is also mulling over regulations for digital, social media and OTT platforms. How do you assess this development?

The world of media, and therefore, press freedom is in total chaos at the moment. Trust in the mainstream media is currently at its lowest. The business survival for any serious news outlet is extremely difficult, if not impossible. This is true not just in Bangladesh, but around the world. Then you have the problem of viral misinformation which has emerged as a successful business model for distributing content pretending to be genuine "news". 

Governments across the globe are trying to control this spread of fake news and misinformation. Some aspects of these attempts are serious, necessary and noble. However, the problem with governments like Bangladesh, with their poor track record on press freedom, is that when they genuinely try to solve the problem of misinformation, external observers remain doubtful. 

When we see fake news and misinformation mushroom on YouTube or Facebook from Bangladesh, while genuine journalists and even their relatives are officially harassed, arrested and sent to jail – we find validations of our doubts regarding the government's true objectives. 

On top of that, Bangladeshi content moderation laws use languages that are overly vague, broad and punitive. Anyone conversant with international standards will find the legal texts used in the DSA or the new OTT law draconian, even when we want to believe that the government's genuine intention is to fight fake news and misinformation.

And finally, is there a way out of this? Do you think in the near future we can improve press freedom?

If you look at Bangladesh over the last 40+ years, what you will realise is that each subsequent government has made the Press Freedom in the country worse. The country is already ranked 162nd out of 180, if you take the RSF ranking seriously. 

North Korea is the country with the lowest rank of 180, just 18 spots away. In that sense, Bangladesh already has its back against the wall when it comes to press freedom. What makes me worried is that imposing restrictions on the press or an individual's free speech is a fairly popular idea in Bangladesh. 

The religious folks want certain content to be censored or punished, the pro-liberation, pro-government folks want the same, and the nationalist opposition does too. 

It's just that they each have their own select list of things that they would rather censor and punish. So, until a national awakening takes place regarding the urgent need for a free press and free speech, I am not hopeful about Bangladesh miraculously improving its press freedom anytime soon.