Court Correspondent: Dhaka, Aug-17,
The High Court Monday
issued a rule questioning why inactivity
to introduce an effective and efficient ethical code of conduct for media
according to subsection 2 of section 11
in Press Council Act, 1974 should not be considered illegal.
The court also issued a
rule on why direction will not be given to create an ethical code of conduct
for maintaining professionalism of journalists, news agencies, newspapers.
Bench of justice Md
Mojibur Rahman Mia and Justice Kamrul Hossain Molla issued the rule during a
virtual hearing on a writ petition filed in this regard.
The court also
questioned why direction will not be given to take legal action for closing
unlicensed and unregistered online news portals and to register those that are
in consideration.
In the rule the court
also asked why direction will not be given to take proper steps to form a
‘Broadcasting commission’ according to the National Broadcast Policy-2014.
The Information
Secretary, Chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission
(BTRC) and Chairman of Bangladesh Press Council have been asked to submit a
reply to the rule within seven days.
Lawyer Rashida
Chowdhury Nilu and Zarin Rahman presented the petitioner’s side during the
hearing while Deputy Attorney General Nowroz Md Russel Chowdhury presented the
state side.
On May 5, two lawyers
of the Supreme Court Rashida Chowdhury Nilu and Zarin Rahman sent a legal
notice to the authority for introducing ethical code for publishing news on
broadcast media.
According to the
notice, in a recent incident of
recovering the dead body of a
21-year-old college student a case of incitement to suicide was filed under
section 306. But some media and specially some online news portals published
news on this in an unacceptable way and BTRC and Press Council didn’t take any
steps against them.
In these circumstances,
the need to implement an ethical code of conduct for publishing news and
actions against unregistered news portals have become necessary, said the
notice.
As the authorities
didn’t reply to the notice a writ petition was with the High Court.
End/Dct/Corr/Sma/
