The uprising of July 2024 in Bangladesh not only marked a political surprise in Bangladesh but also posed an important test for its media system. Starting off as a call for employment quotas for students studying in public sector institutions, it soon became an wider protest demanding good governance, political rights, and the accountability of the government. In early August, the revolutionaries achieved their goal in making the existing government of Sheikh Hasina collapse. For Bangladesh's media, however, the fall of one government did not automatically produce a free, independent, responsible, and trusted press. It created a more demanding challenge: an opportunity and obligation to redefine journalism itself. The key issue after July is not merely the degree of freedom enjoyed by the media, but what it does with that freedom. Bangladesh needs journalism that rises above political favours, party loyalty, intimidation, self-censorship, sensation-seeking, and business interests in favour of verification, independence, responsibility, diversity, and public service.
FROM CONTROLLED NARRATIVES TO AN OPEN INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT: A crucial component of modern communication emerged during the July uprising: when institutional media failed to capture reality, people formed their own information networks. The social networking websites, cell phone videos, live broadcasting, citizen journalism, student networks, and digital media were key sources of information during the July uprising. This was because traditional gatekeepers became redundant as citizens began producing as much information as they consumed. The process can be explained in terms of Gatekeeping Theory. Traditionally, editors, journalists, owners, and institutions filtered information and controlled its inclusion in the public information system. The digital age changed that relationship. In July, information passed the gates and went straight from witnesses to millions of citizens. There is an inherent problem in the democratization of communication. Although modern technologies have made it difficult to control information, they have also provided tools to spread disinformation, doctored images, false quotes, de-contextualised video clips, propaganda, and emotional rumours. The challenge after July will not be choosing between traditional media and social media but constructing a new information landscape where professional journalism can provide context.
THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC WATCHDOG: Perhaps journalism's most important post-uprising responsibility is to restore its classical watchdog function. A democratic media system cannot replace loyalty to one government with loyalty to another. Nor should journalism become an extension of the opposition, protest movements, business interests, or emerging political forces. The true test of press freedom begins when journalists scrutinise those they may personally support. The media needs to be fearless and impartial in scrutinising the actions of the government, political parties, spending, corruption, law enforcement, courts, businesses, the electoral system, and individuals in power. This rule applies to all governments.
Bangladesh's political transition offers no better case for understanding the necessity of institutional safeguards. According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists released in February 2025, even after the country underwent political transition, its journalists were subjected to assaults, criminal prosecution, harassment, and apprehensions regarding cyber law. (Committee to Protect Journalists) Later on, the CPJ pointed out that journalists seen as aligned with past regimes were being detained or investigated. The lesson is fundamental: press freedom cannot be selective. A journalist must not lose the right to due process because of an unpopular political association. At the same time, journalism cannot shield criminal conduct. Professional and legal accountability must be distinguished from political revenge.
FROM PARTISAN JOURNALISM TO PUBLIC-INTEREST JOURNALISM: One of Bangladesh's longstanding media weaknesses has been the intersection of political influence, corporate ownership, commercial interests, and editorial policy. This situation can be viewed through the Propaganda Model, which focuses on media ownership, reliance on advertising, sources, and politics/economics. When media depend heavily on politically connected ownership, government ads, corporate sponsorship, or privileged sources, editorial freedom is structurally fragile.
The post-July transformation must address not only what journalists write but also the institutional conditions under which journalism is produced. The Media Reform Commission recognised many of these structural problems. Its March 2025 report proposed measures addressing media ownership, journalists' economic security, protection from threats and harassment, transparency in government advertising and circulation figures, public broadcasting, online journalism, and the establishment of a National Media Commission. These recommendations point to an essential principle: journalists cannot defend democracy effectively when their professional independence remains economically and institutionally insecure.
MEDIA AS A FORUM FOR NATIONAL DIALOGUE: The post-uprising media must also perform what Normative Democratic Media Theory regards as one of journalism's most important functions: creating a marketplace of ideas in which competing perspectives can peacefully encounter one another. Bangladesh remains politically polarized. In such an environment, journalism should not intensify division just because conflict generates audiences, clicks, ratings, and social-media engagement. Newspapers, television channels, radio, online platforms, and public broadcasters should create space for competing political parties, students, academics, civil society, women, minorities, business leaders, workers, rural communities, and marginalized citizens. The media should ask difficult questions and encourage meaningful dialogue. A democratic society does not require citizens to agree. It requires institutions that enable them to disagree without destroying one another. Journalism is one of those institutions.
FIGHTING MISINFORMATION WITHOUT BECOMING AN INSTRUMENT OF CENSORSHIP: The power of social media became manifest in July. As artificial intelligence (AI) advances, this power will grow, making manipulated images, cloned voices, fake videos, fake news reports, and automated propaganda ever more believable. The solution, however, cannot be increased censorship by governments. Governments cannot increase censorship. Professional news organisations need to create fact-checking departments that separate news from opinion, make corrections, detect manipulation, explain their verification techniques, and cooperate with universities and civil society organizations on media literacy. Journalists themselves require continuous training in digital verification, artificial intelligence, data journalism, cybersecurity, investigative reporting, and multimedia storytelling. The future battle for democracy may increasingly become a battle over what citizens believe to be true.
PROTECTING JOURNALISTS AND INSTITUTIONALISING MEDIA FREEDOM: When journalists are concerned about being physically attacked, sued, arrested, punished economically, intimidated by mobs, and ostracised professionally, freedom of expression is endangered.
Thus, international studies carried out after the revolt in Bangladesh stress the importance of reform as an institutional rather than purely verbal matter. As the joint UNESCO-UNDP assessment puts it, Bangladesh's political transition could create an open, independent, and plural media environment but faces significant obstacles requiring structural changes. (UNDP)
The idea is clear-cut governments should not be the arbiters of what journalism is allowed.
An independent media regulatory regime needs to guarantee freedom as well as professionalism. Publicly owned media should evolve from the government's propaganda tools into true public service media that serve citizens regardless of who is in power. Media reforms should protect journalists from non-governmental coercion. A newsroom facing the threat of intimidation by mobs, political groups, business interests, and lobbyists is not any freer than a newsroom dominated by the government.
REBUILDING PUBLIC TRUST: The biggest problem confronting the Bangladeshi media after July does not lie in technology or politics. It lies in credibility. Trust cannot be forced; trust must be earned. The media need to be open about their sources of income, conflicts of interest, corrections, sourcing practices, editorial practices, advertisements, and the distinction between news and opinion. News organisations must do a much better job of reflecting Bangladesh. Bangladeshi journalism that focuses almost exclusively on Dhaka and its elite does not sufficiently reflect the experience of 170 million-plus Bangladeshis. This represents a shift from elite-cantered journalism to citizen-cantered journalism.
JOURNALISM MUST NOT EXCHANGE ONE MASTER FOR ANOTHER: The deepest lesson of July is ultimately ethical. The media cannot celebrate the end of political domination while reproducing the same culture under different political actors. If journalists once practiced self-censorship out of fear of the government, they should not now censor themselves out of fear of mobs, political parties, online activists, owners, or accusations of ideological disloyalty. Journalism must remain independent enough to criticise yesterday's rulers, today's government, tomorrow's government and even the movements it once admired. That is the meaning of institutional journalism.
There could be no better time for Bangladesh to find itself on the verge of a historical watershed. While the July revolt expanded the scope of political possibilities, history will determine that the real measure of change is not what was lost or won in terms of power. The media are among the most important of those institutions. The task ahead is to transform Bangladesh's media from politically vulnerable institutions into professionally independent ones; from transmitters of competing propaganda into verifiers of truth; from elite-cantered platforms into forums for citizens; and from witnesses to history into guardians of democratic accountability. The July Uprising demonstrated citizens' extraordinary power to challenge entrenched authority. After July, journalism's responsibility is to ensure that such power whether exercised by governments, political parties, movements, or mobs remains subject to public scrutiny. This is the reason why the post-July media cannot be the voice of the government or the voice of those who oppose the government. Instead, it needs to become the voice of truth, accountability, pluralism, and the common good.
Governments come and go. Politicians and political movements come and fade into oblivion with time. But a democracy's survival depends on how powerful its structures are compared to its leaders. Hence, the media legacy that Bangladesh must draw from the July Uprising for its democracy is that of a journalism which has the courage to question power, the discipline to verify facts, the independence to avoid political capture, the inclusiveness to reflect the whole country, and the sense of responsibility to realise that the freedom of press is not just a perk of journalists; it is a democratic right of the citizens.
Dr Serajul I Bhuiyan is Professor and former Chair, Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, Savannah State University
