Press Council serves notice on Daily Sun

A case has been filed with Bangladesh Press Council against three people including the editor and publisher of the Daily Sun for publishing false and fabricated reports about the Prothom Alo and its editor.
Matiur Rahman, editor and publisher of Bangla daily Prothom Alo, filed the case on March 8.
In response, the press council served notice on the Daily Sun editor and publisher on March 12 and asked him to appear before the judicial committee of the council on April 11 around 11:00am.
The press council in its notice also directed the authorities of the English daily not to run any news items on the argued matters until the case is disposed of.
On January 12, Daily Sun on its last page ran a report under the headline “Vested quarters active once again” and on January 16, it published another item on its front page headlined “Whereabouts of cartoonist Arif: Prothom Alo didn't stand by me”.
According to the case statement, the Daily Sun in those two news items published various false and derogatory information, including blasphemy, minus-two formula, 1/11, grenade attack and militancy, against Prothom Alo and its editor.
Plaintiff Matiur Rahman alleged that the opponent is using the newspaper as a tool for instigating criminal activities and religious extremism and that the complainant had been made a victim of “nasty information-terrorism” through imaginary and derogatory allegations.
It has also been mentioned in the case that the opponent with ill-motive and to materialise “disgraceful interests” was trying to implicate the complainant in false cases.
Matiur Rahman further mentioned that the Daily Sun, Bangla dailies Kaler Kantha and Bangladesh Protidin and online news portal banglanews24.com -- all owned by East West Media Group -- are involved in yellow journalism and it has become their habit to publish false and fabricated reports against the complainant and Prothom Alo without any reason.
The plaintiff sought exemplary punishment to the accused for publishing false and slanderous news violating the ethics of journalism.
Lawyers Khairul Islam, Prashanta Kumar Karmakar and Aftab Uddin Siddique placed the case in the press council on behalf of the Prothom Alo editor.