A newspaper's strength is its readership, and thanks to you all, we have been and still are very strong. Though we have been made to face severe constraints including a forcible cut in our advertisement, as our readers stayed with us we were able to overcome the contrived turbulence that we were forced to face.

For all your support, good wishes and patronisation, please accept our sincerest and grateful thanks.

Print journalism is facing a two-pronged challenge -- one technological and the other -- a more insidious one -- ideological.

The technological challenge we will adapt to and overcome. But the ideological challenge we must fight with every bit of strength we are capable of mustering. For the challenge is not only to journalism but also to our freedoms and to all the fundamental rights that we have learned to take as given.

The most vicious and abrasive challenge to independent media is coming from the elected leader of the land that we look upon as the fountainhead of free and independent media, namely the United States. Nowhere else has the media been termed the “enemy” and journalists called the “most corrupt people anywhere”. Sadly the attack on free media is far wider and is almost a global phenomenon. It is also gaining ground in our own region and in our own country.

The irony of the attack is that it emanates both from our failures but more so from our successes. Let me explain.

Part of the reason for the attack on the independent media is our own fault. We have become sloppy, easily persuadable, sometimes purchasable, and are unwilling to do the due diligence that our stories require. Too often we take the easy way out and are willing to compromise our ethics for personal or institutional gains.

But a bigger reason for the attack is our success -- we are now more able to expose corruption, abuse of power, misuse of public resource, etc and more effective in preventing denial of rights, formulation of black laws, exploitation of the uninformed and the underprivileged, etc.

Hence the media must be discredited, derided, denigrated, abused, its effectiveness curtailed with anti-free media laws and, where possible, media institutions closed down, like it has been done in several countries of the world, including in the US, the Philippines, Egypt and some countries of South Asia, including ours.

The role of the free media is crucial for humanity to survive the era of “post-truth”, “alternative facts” and “false news”. In countries like ours, a false debate of “Development versus Democracy” is being deliberately generated as if we need to choose one over the other. The experience of all successful developing countries has been that sustained growth only occurs in countries that practise democracy and nurture a free media.

This newspaper is very proud of the great strides that our people have made. In fact, we take immense satisfaction in our own humble contribution to this phenomenon over the last 26 years made through a pro-people, pro-democracy, pro-accountability and anti-establishment brand of journalism that is usually practised in every democratic society and as we have practised in Bangladesh. We have rejoiced at our every achievement just as we cried out loud in protest at our failures, especially the ones that were so easily avoidable. We support the vision of a “Digital Bangladesh” and would spare no effort to fight corruption.

On the occasion of our 26th anniversary we renew our commitment to valued readers and assure them they will always find us beside them in their attempt to strengthen democracy, defend fundamental rights, make parliament more effective, fight cronyism, establish a progressive and fair business environment and make institutions of accountability effective, and in every other struggle that they may find it necessary to wage. All this the media can and will do, only and only if it remains independent and free.

The writer is the editor and publisher of this newspaper