An interesting day for Star

Yesterday, according to TV reports, the AL general secretary and the foreign minister commented on this paper -- one was an unsubstantiated  perspective and the other a charade.

Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader, responding to a question from a journalist that "Mahfuz Anam wrote that by not participating in the election BNP is facing an existential crisis", said, "The Daily Star has been supporting BNP and had hoped that the latter's movement would succeed. There is natural reason for Mahfuz Anam to be disappointed as the reality did not go in that direction."

The innuendo is clear but totally unfounded. Some time ago we wrote that to the power, "press freedom means praise freedom" -- freedom to praise, and anything else is yellow journalism. In the last three months, the majority of our coverage was on the ruling party. But that was not good enough because all was not in praise. We have published the most robust of supplements on every occasion, especially those dealing with Bangabandhu, and have covered most extensively all the major infrastructural projects. Our fault is that we also cover the other side. No alternative views, no critical observations and no dissenting voices, only "yes, minister" as in the famous satirical TV series on British politics.

Mr Quader only proved our point.

The second comment was made by the foreign minister. He critiqued The Daily Star for making public the content of his "personal letter" to the UN secretary general's chef du cabinet.  He told a TV reporter that "if I invite you to dinner or write a letter enquiring about how you and your family are doing, should that be published as news? What sort of journalism is this?" He then said, "I made some personal contacts during my attendance in UNGA sessions and wrote "thank you" letters to them."

The letter is more than 700 words, which begins and ends in the most formal way as is the standard laid-down practice in correspondence between the UN system and member states.

Other than the salutation and the conclusion, there are five paragraphs in the letter that deal with UN-Bangladesh relations, the visit of our PM, our commitment to the UN, participation in various projects and plans of the SG like "Pact of the Future", "New Agenda for Peace", our glorious role in sheltering the Rohingyas, and development, etc.

The paragraph that convinced us to make it public, and we took his comments on it, states (extracts), "Bangladesh, a  proactive and supportive member state, also has high expectation from the United Nations system …… In this regard and in the context of undue, unwarranted and vested political pressure that we are facing from different corners ahead of our upcoming National Parliamentary Elections, we hope that United Nations System, including its secretariat, agencies and the country office, would play a constructive and collaborative role to assist Bangladesh to remain persistent in its development trajectory."

We leave it to our readers, experts, former diplomats and all others who love and take interest in the international standing of our country as to the merit of this letter and indeed judge how much it added to the dignity of the country. On the one hand, we criticise the UN when it reports on our human rights and freedoms and then invite it to get involved in elections related matters.

Might we ask, which part of this letter is personal? Can the foreign minister cite a single word which can be construed as such. Then why is this charade? If media is accused of irresponsibility then the accuser should be truthful. Did our FM think that claiming his letter to be "personal" would exonerate him from his responsibility?