Two years after the student-led uprising of August 2024 brought down the nineteen-year autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh finds itself navigating a precarious political dawn. The revolt was meant to dismantle not merely an entrenched political dynasty, but also the sycophantic media culture that enabled it.
For nearly two decades, an obedient press apparatus had preferred proximity to power over public accountability, acting as an echo chamber for a regime that eroded democratic institutions and silenced dissent.
The expectation following Hasina’s exit was straightforward: a liberated press would step into its rightful role as a pillar of institutional renewal, preserving the memory of the dead and disappeared, and ensuring that justice caught up with history.
Yet, as a newly elected democratic government assumes office, an uncomfortable question lingers over the Dhaka newsrooms: has Bangladeshi journalism genuinely shed its authoritarian habits, or does an instinctive deference to the former ruling Awami League still haunt its corridors?
In theoretical terms, post-uprising Bangladesh stands in urgent need of transitional justice journalism. Coined by media and human rights scholars, the term describes a brand of reporting specifically designed to help societies recover from political repression.
It functions by uncovering hidden truths, documenting the lived experiences of victims, and subjecting legal and institutional reforms to rigorous, impartial scrutiny. Its purpose is not retribution, but the methodical assembly of an undeniable public record.
This July marks two years since the street protests reshaped the nation’s destiny. The political authority of the current administration is directly anchored in the sacrifices of those summer weeks. Paradoxically, news coverage of the killed, the injured, and the forcibly disappeared under Hasina’s watch has steadily thinned.
While formal judicial proceedings inch forward in courtrooms, sustained narrative journalism—the relentless, humanizing coverage that keeps a face and a name before the national consciousness—has largely evaporated. Justice delayed by judicial bureaucracy is a familiar institutional failing; justice dropped from the news agenda is a self-inflicted media lapse.
The debate over the interim governance that managed the chaotic bridge between Hasina’s fall and the recent elections highlights this journalistic short-sightedness. The interim administration’s moral legitimacy was rarely in doubt, but its capacity to govern was severely constrained by a state security apparatus and civil service still populated by loyalists of the old guard.
Yet, media outlets sympathetic to the ousted regime launched aggressive critiques against the interim leaders and student organisers, applying standards of perfection that ignored the extraordinary structural friction under which they operated. Comparisons to the previous regime were drawn with effortless dishonesty.
What went unacknowledged was a glaring reality: against immense odds, the interim setup managed to steer a fragile nation toward democratic elections without allowing the state to collapse entirely.
This analytical asymmetry became obvious during the measles outbreak that swept through parts of the country. As hundreds of children died and tens of thousands fell ill, the instinct among major news outlets was to turn a public health emergency into a personal indictment of the interim leadership's executive competence.
Subsequent investigative work by independent outlets like Netra News eventually revealed a far more complex reality—mapping a chain of specific administrative choices, missed deadlines, and systemic failures by bureaucratic actors. Had the mainstream press been oriented toward structural accountability, it would have investigated the systemic mechanisms first and assigned political blame second.
Instead, it ran the cycle in reverse. While editors traded political insults, essential health communication—explaining symptoms to parents and directing families to vaccination clinics—was neglected.
A similar imbalance characterizes the media’s treatment of financial corruption. Grand scrutiny was rightly applied to the expense accounts and medical bills of interim advisers. Public officials spending public money should expect nothing less. But contrast that intense micro-scrutiny with the superficial coverage given to the monumental asset stripping that occurred during the Hasina era.
Former ministers and party figures living in luxury in London or Delhi, alongside billions in laundered capital tracked by the central bank across foreign jurisdictions, represent a scandal of epochal proportions. British authorities freezing London mansions linked to former Bangladeshi officials made headlines, but the story was largely treated as a transient international item rather than a permanent investigative beat.
A press serious about institutional reform would recognize that the sheer scale of the historical theft dwarfs the modest indiscretions of transitional caretakers.
The lesson of the Hasina era was that journalists who cozy up to power surrender the distance required to make journalism worth reading. A layer of compliant editors built careers on subservience rather than scrutiny, fatally compromising the public trust.
The primary task of contemporary Bangladeshi media is to prevent that same culture of access-driven deference from re-emerging under any new political order.
Transitional justice journalism requires news outlets to do two things simultaneously: doggedly investigate past state abuses while maintaining absolute independence from the political actors of the present.
It demands amplifying the voices of victims, preserving historical truth, and rigorously auditing state institutions without giving in to partisan demands for vengeance. By committing to systematic inquiry rather than political sensationalism, journalism can finally serve as a guardrail against the return of autocratic rule.
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Md Shamsul Islam is a columnist and media researcher. He can be reached at shamsulbkk@gmail.com.