State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Yaser Khan Chowdhury has stressed the need to maintain professional standards in online news portals, urging digital media outlets to remain vocal against terrorism, communalism and fascism.
He made the remarks on Thursday (November 12) after a meeting with leaders of the Online News Paper Owners Association of Bangladesh (ONAB) at the Secretariat.
Emphasising the importance of quality journalism, the state minister said maintaining professional standards was essential for attracting readers and sustaining audience interest.
“Maintaining standards is extremely important. If you fail to maintain standards, you will not get views either. If the quality of your content is not good, people will not be interested in visiting your news portals. Therefore, you need to involve journalists with the necessary professional standards in your news operations,” he said.
Regarding a proposal to abolish the annual renewal requirement for registered online news portals, Yaser said the renewal fee was merely a token amount of Tk 5,000 and had been in place in the past as well.
He said written proposals from online media owners would make it easier for the government to consider their demands.
The state minister added that discussions were being held with different organisations and that content creators would also be consulted in phases, alongside representatives of online media outlets.
On the formulation of a policy for online media, he said the government would take initiatives after consultations with the relevant advisers and other stakeholders.
He said opinions from all concerned parties would be sought before any decision was made.
At the meeting, ONAB leaders placed several demands, including scrapping the annual renewal requirement for registered online news portals, bringing registered portals under the government's advertisement distribution system and shutting down unregistered news portals.