FE Today Logo

The rise of financial journalism in Bangladesh

Abu Ahmed | November 23, 2017 00:00:00


Three decades back, there was nothing like financial journalism in Bangladesh. Journalism was there, but that profession was all about news and comments, mostly relating to social and political events. I remember, I hardly found any essay or commentary relating to our economy back then. The news about what the World Bank or the IMF or the organisations like those were offering to Bangladesh was all about the financial news in the print media.

In the 1980s and most part of the 1990s the news about the Bangladesh stock market was almost absent from the then print media. Though the electronic media came into operation at the beginning of the 2000s, but it took a long time to give a due coverage in their presentation of issues relating to stocks trades and business.

The first private-sector electronic media came into being under the name ETV, and people turned to this television channel in large numbers just to know more of the truth of what was happening around then. This television channel was the first to understand the importance of stock trading and it started telecasting the stock trading on a real-time basis. Nowadays, few more of TV channels are doing the same, with discussions by the expert panels. In the news, all electronic media now took it as a must to telecast the stock and other financial news.

There are many web-based financial portals having specialties in stock market and other financial news.

The first and also the most successful financial newspaper to date is The Financial Express -- the daily which exclusively devoted itself to financial news, views and commentaries. This newspaper came out in the middle of 1996 with the initiative of some good souls belonging to the business community. They understood before other people, the need for a specialised finance-related newspaper. It was not that easy to bring out an English daily, specially of the finance related one, but, in the end, the initiators proved successful. This daily put together brilliant minds from the journalistic community to take it forward. Today a group of seasoned journalists having interest in financial journalism and many other guest writers, engaged by the paper, are taking the paper way forward.

Every type of business and finance now is seen having a copy of the Financial Express on their tables. Persons of positions in the finance and business world made this newspaper a must read. Many stock investors do not go out of their homes without reading this newspaper in the morning. What this newspaper presents under stock and trade and corporate news items have become decisive factors in influencing the investors in their decision making.

Three decades back, I remember, when I went to the Bangla vernaculars with a request for printing a news item relating to stock-market reform, senior journalists in them used to raise their eyebrow and wanted to know who I am. Many journalists, after failing to understand the importance of stock-market news, threw my press release in the baskets for waste papers near their legs. But the situation now got changed. Now, there is hardly any newspaper, both in Bangla and English, without having specialist journalists covering finance news. News on finance and the economy now overtook, in many cases if not in all cases, the political news. A group of financial journalists now came up in the country’s media industry who are pushing ahead the cause of the economy. These journalists either studied Economics, or business or nothing like that, but from experience they turned to be good financial journalists. I take this change with a great pride & hope seeing them doing work in the right direction always. I believe, once people in the media will understand the importance of finance-related information and that of news the economy will undergo a change at a much quicker pace. It is true financial journalism is not that easy that every Tom, Dick and Harry can practice. For practicing this journalism and reporting, the practitioners must know, at least, up to a level, of the theoretical and practical aspects of business & economics. They must know how to raise right questions. Though readers of financial newspapers are not that many in numbers, but the numbers will go up as the economy makes progress.

All the universities, both public and private, do have the department of Journalism and Communication Studies. These departments are producing a few hundred journalists every year. The good thing is that, unlike what had been there in the past, the syllabus' of journalism now incorporated the subjects and issues of finance and business. No graduate with the degree of Journalism is coming out from the academic institutions without reading business and finance.

Some of these journalists ventured to have their own online newspapers. These on-line financial newspapers print views also from the experts in this area. No branch of other journalism prospered so much as that of the one of business and finance with the rise of financial journalism. The journalists related to this profession formed their own bodies which they use to air their grievances as well as platform for discussing the issues relating to the economy. For a person like me, it is good to see that financial news is overtaking the other types of news when seen from a prospective of importance. In-depth analysis of financial news requires both theoretical & practical knowledge. Financial journalists as well as specialist writers in this area are teachers to each other. But there is a shortage of fortnightly or monthly finance-related newspaper in the country unlike what we see in other countries. Periodicals are in a position to present in-depth analysis before the investors.

The writer is Professor of Economics, University of Dhaka.

[email protected]


Share if you like