After nearly seven years, I attended a significant political event. It was BNP chairperson Tarique Rahman’s view-exchange meeting with journalists at a city hotel on Saturday. The occasion was important not only because Tarique is widely assumed to be Bangladesh’s next prime minister, but because it offered a glimpse into how power may soon interact with the media.
I was impressed by the way he handled some of the country’s toughest editors and senior journalists. Calm, composed and articulate, he showed political maturity. Yet I left the venue with a deep sense of unease. What troubled me was not Tarique’s conduct, but the behaviour of many journalists around him.
A familiar and dangerous pattern is emerging: a new circle of flattering, praise-singing journalists is forming around a rising centre of power, just as another group once did around former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, right up to the final days of her rule.
When journalism turned into cheerleading
During Sheikh Hasina’s over one-and-a-half-decade rule, a significant section of Bangladesh’s media abandoned its professional role. Instead of scrutinising power, many journalists openly defended it. They amplified government narratives, vilified critics, and behaved less like independent professionals and more like party cadres.
Hasina’s press conferences often turned into “praise conferences”. They were examples of how praise replaced questioning. The consequences were severe. Journalism lost credibility. Public trust in the media eroded. And the prime minister herself became increasingly detached from reality. Surrounded by applause and flattery, she was shielded from inconvenient truths – rising public anger, institutional decay, corruption and repression.
Her fall did not happen because dissent was absent. It happened because she stopped hearing it. Both journalism and Hasina paid a heavy price for that distortion of truth.
The cost of servility
That price became brutally visible during and after the July uprising. As protests erupted, many journalists and media outlets came under attack – both physically and symbolically. Newsrooms were vandalised. Reporters were harassed. Media houses were threatened. While violence against journalists is never justifiable, the public anger did not emerge in a vacuum.
For years, a large section of the media had acted as a stooge for the government—justifying repression, dismissing dissent, refraining from publishing reports on human rights violations, and maligning opposition voices. When the state’s authority collapsed, that accumulated resentment spilled over onto the press.
Even after Hasina’s fall, journalism has struggled to overcome its tainted reputation. Trust has not returned. Apologies were rare, and self-reflection was limited. Many editors, owners and journalists simply shifted loyalties without confronting their own role in legitimising authoritarianism under Hasina. This unresolved baggage is something journalism still carries.
Warning signs around Tarique
At Tarique Rahman’s meeting, I sensed troubling echoes of that past. Many journalists appeared overly eager not to ask difficult questions, but to secure proximity. There was visible excitement about being invited. Some openly praised Tarique as the ‘future prime minister,’ as if electoral uncertainty no longer existed.
Professional boundaries collapsed. Once the meeting ended, many crowded around him, eager for handshakes and photographs. It felt less like a media interaction and more like a political fan gathering.
Thankfully, a few voices stood apart. Journalists like Nurul Kabir, editor of New Age, demonstrated what principled journalism looks like: firm, independent and unseduced by power. But such voices were in the minority.
Flattering journalists are a political risk
Sycophant journalists are not allies; they are liabilities. They filter reality. They exaggerate popularity. They downplay discontent. They turn criticism into hostility and dissent into conspiracy. Leaders surrounded by them stop receiving accurate feedback and begin governing inside an echo chamber.
This is how miscalculations happen. This is how public anger goes unnoticed until it explodes. Sheikh Hasina’s experience should be a textbook case. Her greatest weakness was not opposition pressure, but insulation from reality, an insulation built partly by journalists who chose praise over truth.
If Tarique Rahman allows himself to be encircled by such voices, he risks repeating the same mistake. He must understand that praise may feel reassuring, but it is politically poisonous.
Journalism has a line
Journalists must engage with political leaders. That is part of the profession. We question them, debate them, acknowledge achievements and expose failures. But there is a line that must never be crossed.
Journalists are not fans, not campaigners and not court chroniclers. Our duty is to serve citizens with accurate information, not to serve rulers. When journalists abandon that line, governance deteriorates. Corruption flourishes, institutions weaken, and eventually, public fury targets both the state and the media.
Tarique Rahman now faces an early and critical test of leadership. If he is to lead Bangladesh, he must actively resist flattery. He must distinguish between professional criticism and opportunistic praise. He must ensure that access does not become obedience.
A choice for the future
If Tarique Rahman becomes prime minister, he will inherit a deeply wounded state with damaged institutions, polarised politics and a sceptical public. Governing such a country requires clear vision and unfiltered truth.
The media, too, faces a choice. It can either reclaim its role as a watchdog or once again become an accessory to power. The events of July should have been a wake-up call. Repeating past mistakes under a new government would be unforgivable.
The fall of Sheikh Hasina was not just a political collapse; it was a systemic failure involving politicians, institutions and journalism itself. The warning signs are already visible again.
This time, both Tarique Rahman and the media must choose differently – or pay the same high price.
The writer is the Editor, Special Affairs of Daily TIMES of Bangladesh.
