Article Preview
TopIntroduction
In recent times, the media is often considered “Politically Corrupted”. Politics and media correlate with influential factors within. Political content produced by the media results from several elements that contribute to its creation, including customer desires, organizational factors, extra-organizational factors, and social processes. Mass media have always been an indispensable form of communication (Coronel 2008 & Ahmmed, 2014). As watchdogs for the public, the media play a critical role in the battle against corruption. The news media has a 200-year history of serving as a watchdog (Coronel, 2008). Media can potentially spread public awareness and anti-corruption means (Boswell & Rose-Ackerman, 1996). With the development of cloud-based broadcasting systems, media outlets have become borderless. As per to a report by the newspaper association of Americans (NAA, 2006), almost one-fourth (24%) of Americans consider “the Internet” as the primary medium for acquiring political ideas and news, although 44% do so at least weekly (Perrin, 2015). The government of Bangladesh introduced digitization facilities in all sectors along with the launching event of the Internet, brandishing the media sector with multi-dimensional aspects. As time passed, the thirst to forge a digital platform for Bangladesh became obligatory as the world is moving fast towards technological advancement and digitization. The government of Bangladesh has been initiating numerous projects which would provide more successive headway towards digitization; with an equal pace, newsrooms are also started expanding and blooming digitally. There are currently over 2000 regional and national online news outlets in addition to over 2000 terrestrial television channels and 3025 newspapers (Karim, 2021). Social media sites, particularly Facebook, have evolved into a secondary source for information collecting and dissemination. In accordance with the National Online Mass Media Policy, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has so far approved 85 online news portals and the online news editions of 92 established newspapers in the country. According to data acquired from the Department of Films and Publications, there are over 700 registered newspapers in the country (Bangladesh Forms and Publications Office, 2022). In addition to publicly funded television and radio, the government has authorized the broadcast of 45 additional commercial television channels, 27 FM radio stations, and 31 community radio stations. According to the latest available statistics, 31 television networks, 22 FM stations, and 17 community radio stations are actively broadcasting, with the remaining stations in various stages of preparation for their launch (Karim, 2021).
Though the media provides a wide range of credible sources and guarantees audience feedback. Yet, there is room for debate over the authenticity of the news that is being served to the mass. Fake news is becoming a reality in Bangladesh that must be handled and confronted. To address the alarming effects of false news, the Bangladesh government passed the Digital Security Act and the Broadcast Policy (Karim, 2021). Digital media has recently infiltrated the lives of mass people and paved the way for conducting two-way communication through active participation. Even digital media has been determining the future of political affairs through strong participation and increased regulating authority.