Extortion of Prothom Alo

In recent times, several groups have been spreading rumors and misinformation about the country's top local Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited and the country's banking sector. Prothom Alo is the originator and the first instigator of this propaganda. This influential mainstream media is spreading rumors and lies about the country's banking sector. Following this tradition, they embarked on a mission to destroy Islami Bank. By starting a series of reports that goes against Islami Bank. After somehow putting pressure on Islami Bank, a full page advertisement of Islami Bank was printed in Prothom Alo on the advertisement page of the newspaper on January 12, 2023 (Thursday). This is their corporate policy of extortion.

This is not the first time. Even before this, Prothom Alo targeted several industries and individuals and blackmailed them by spreading rumors and hard lies against them. They put pressure on these individuals and suddenly stop writing against them after extorting them in the name of advertisement. This is the process of their corporate holism. Earlier, Prothom Alo published a few reports on corruption of the Earth Foundation.. Later, the inquiry about the Earth Foundation showed that the Earth Foundation gave unethical benefits to various media to cover up their issue. Prothom Alo was one of them and the son of the editor of Prothom Alo was involved in major transactions with the Earth Foundation. Prothom Alo published news against MLM companies like Destiny or Jubok when they did not pay.

In that trend, they have targeted Islami Bank now. Last year, there were rumors that there was no money in the bank since the middle of November. Suddenly the banking sector of the country became unstable due to such rumors. On November 24 - Prothom Alo published a report entitled 'Horrible November' on Islami Bank. Where rumors have been spread about the banking sector without any correct and acceptable data and its main purpose was to increase doubt in the minds of the customers about the banking sector. This is not the end. On December 27- '5 banks including Islami Bank in liquidity deficit', On December 29- 'Islami Bank wants to take deposits at 8% interest', and again on last January 4- 'Scam will stop in the bank sector', Prothom Alo published several reports like these. However, the investigation showed that these news were baseless fabrications. Taking loan from Bangladesh Bank on emergency basis is a normal process of. All banks take such loans to meet urgent needs. But this was made news. Thus, after continuously printing news against Islami Bank, it finally stopped it through advertisements. There may be many more advertisements from the same company in the future.

Several accusations of defamation against this newspaper by Transcom Group are against the ethics of journalism. Journalism follows a series of Ethics. One of them is that when a media is writing against or criticizing a person or organization, they cannot publish any advertisements of that particular organization This is it is called 'unethical practice' to print advertisements. Prothom Alo tied that unethical practice. In this way, Prothom Alo is on a mission to gain interest by resorting to rumors and lies.