Mahmudur slams media

Amar Desh acting editor Mahmudur Rahman launched a scathing attack on the media and journalist leaders yesterday for "criticising” his stance on the Shahbagh movement.
He also accused journalists of turning into activists over the Shahbagh demonstration.
“The poor people … the common people consider Amar Desh as their mouthpiece. They consider the other media as the mouthpiece of the rich and looters. Except for Amar Desh, all other media have corporate interests,” Mahmudur told a press briefing at the daily Amar Desh office in the capital last night.
The briefing was held hours after the Shahbagh protesters submitted a memorandum to the home minister, asking for Mahmudur's immediate arrest for "instigating violence by disseminating propaganda against the Shahbagh movement".
Claiming that the Amar Desh editor has been provoking the religious fanatics, the Shahbagh protesters have been calling for his arrest for the last few days.
Slamming the journalist leaders who demanded his arrest at a rally in front of the Jatiya Press Club yesterday, Mahmudur said: “You are not journalist leaders; you are partisan people and politicians.”
Several hundred news people from different media houses under the banner of Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists and Dhaka Union of Journalists joined the rally. The gathering was organised to call for capital punishment to all war criminals and also to protest Friday's attacks on journalists by activists of Islamist parties.
According to Mahmudur, journalists have “failed to understand people's pulse" regarding the Shahbagh protests.
“You have become activists. I urge you to realise the difference between an activist and a journalist,” said Mahmudur, who claimed to have five years' experience in journalism as an editor.
Terming Shahbagh “a state within a state”, he said, “Who owns that state? Does the owner live within or across the border? If he lives across the border, then who is he? … In my opinion, [our] state has collapsed.”
He said his paper had begun a cultural revolution against Indian imperialism and culture, and the movement would continue even if he was arrested. “I am ready to be arrested.”
Earlier on February 23, Mahmudur, also former chairman of the investment board, criticised a section of the media for what he said was blowing up the "insignificant" Shahbagh movement out of proportion.