CGS Project Explores Media Ownership in BD
27 January 2021Centre for Governance Studies (CGS) has announced the completion of the project on media ownership in Bangladesh.
This project unpacks the complex relationship between ownership and media. The study titled 'Who Owns the Media in Bangladesh' was conducted with Professor Ali Riaz and Mohammad Sajjadur Rahman as the Principal Investigators.
Under their leadership a research team gathered data between October 2019 and December 2020. This report includes information about selected 48 media outlets (newspapers, radio, television, and web portals) of 32 business entities. This study observes that three key overlapping features dominate the media ownership landscape of Bangladesh.
First, many outlets are controlled by family members. It is observed that members of the same family control multiple media outlets as owners of different business groups. Second, most owners of media outlets are directly or indirectly affiliated with political parties. Four forms of association are conspicuous in this regard.
First, whether a media outlet will get a license largely depends on the government's relationship with the entrepreneur.
Second, politicians themselves become involved in media ownership. Third, influential ruling party politicians lobby for different business groups to help attain licenses for media outlets.
Fourth, ownership of the media changes hands to those who are connected to the incumbent political parties. And the third observation is that almost all the media outlets are owned by big business groups with diverse financial interests.
Media owners have a significant presence in four sectors: banks and financial institutions; insurance, energy, and real estate, the study notes. The project was funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USA. Report and the profiles of the media outlets, business entities and their owners are available on: http://www.bdmediaowners.com/.
News Courtesy: