BFF bans journalist
The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) yesterday took the unprecedented step of banning sports journalist Mozammel Huq Chanchal from covering all football events organized by BFF in the future.
Chanchal, who is a senior reporter for the Dainik Jugantor was declared persona non grata by the BFF in a press release which stated that the ban has been imposed due to continual attacking, malicious and concocted stories against the federation and personal attacks on the BFF high-ups. The BFF specifically drew reference to a story published in the daily by the said reporter on April 28, 2011 which highlighted a number of failures of the BFF committee in their three year tenure.
A quick scan of the report showcased that many of the facts represented in the story was true and when contacted for comment the BFF president Kazi Salahuddin said that while they have referred to the story, Chanchal's reporting had generally been motivated, and agenda-driven for a number of years.
“I can show you 40 articles which are full of malicious rumours and untruthful information with language that cannot be described as decent,” said Kazi Salahuddin when contacted yesterday.
“He [Chanchal] has a precedence too of writing inflammatory stories with headlines that have no connection to the story.
“The issue [of declaring him persona non grata] was raised by a member during today's (Thursday) executive committee meeting and the decision was unanimously made by all members that he should be banned,” said Salahuddin.
The BFF president also stated that they had sent a number of rejoinders to the newspaper following the publication of false information, but none of their rejoinders had been printed.
When contacted, Chanchal denied the allegations saying that the BFF had only sent two rejoinders, both of which had been printed by his newspaper.
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