Editors' Guild demands urgent incentives for mass media over coronavirus
Partial communication breakdown due to the ten-day imposed holiday in the country has pulled down the newspaper distribution chain
Editors Guild, Bangladesh urged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to declare an emergency incentive package for the mass media in Bangladesh that has fallen victim to the global pandemic.
Welcoming the government endeavours to fight coronavirus, the guild put forward their six-point demand in a press release signed by Mozammel Babu, president of Editors Guild, Bangladesh.
The six-point demand includes:
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- To declare an urgent incentive package for the mass media
- To clear all due bills for media advertisements by different government organizations
- To help collect the due bills from private sectors
- To suspend television satellite payment for three months
- To waive all sort of VATs on advertisement revenue
- To ensure health assistance for journalists working under the threat of coronavirus
Broadcast and online media houses are operating despite virus fears while some newspapers have shifted their operations to online platform as an adaptive measure for survival due to drastic rate cut in advertisements, the press note reads.
Moreover, partial communication breakdown due to the ten-day imposed holiday in the country has pulled down the newspaper distribution chain.
The virus-hit media industry in Bangladesh has been experiencing an unprecedented crisis, said the press release adding that serving people with authentic news and refuting fake information at the time of a pandemic is an important task that media organizations are performing with utmost sincerity.
