A response to bdpanorama - should one laugh, cry, sue or what?

What does one do when a news website in Bangladesh publishes total defamatory rubbish about you and your family - and then gets 13,000 Facebook shares?










Well, a website called bdpanorama has done exactly that. It has published an article, which roughly translates as this:

"Panorama report: After the arrest of BNP chairperson's adviser Shafik Rehman .... journalist David Bergman yesterday met and did a financial deal with Tareq Rahman at London. The meeting took place at April 19 at a restaurant in central London. The middleman of the meeting was a close friend of [his wife], whose name starts with M. Tareq's human right adviser barrister MA Sayem was also present in the meeting. Sources said the agenda of the meeting was to ensure that Safik's arrest was presented in a negative manner and against Awami League in the international media. Initially, they have a 50,000 pound agreement. an official of Sayem's law firm disclosed these information to the Panorama. We will keep you informed on this when we have more information.'

So, on April 19th - and indeed on every day since the middle of January 2016 - I have been living in Dhaka, and have not left the country. So unless I can distort the laws of physics I certainly was not at the meeting on April 19th. My wife was also in Dhaka on that day, and also has not been to London for some months.

I don't know and have certainly never met MA Sayem. And of course I have never received any money from the BNP or any other political party or any individuals connected to a political party

All my journalism is done completely independently. I only ever receive professional fees for my articles from the newspaper or website for whom I write, and from no other person or entity. That also goes for what I write in my blog - though of course no-one pays me for that!

So, it would be wonderful to know who are bdpanorama's 'sources'.

More likely of course no source ever existed, a figment of the website's imagination - and someone decided just to make it up. They saw a recent article I wrote on the background to Shafik Rehman's arrest, did not like it, could not refute it any way since it was entirely fact-based, and decided to try and discredit me with these nasty lies.

Of course, this unfortunately is nothing new, and is something I have written about in the past in the context of my work on the International Crimes Tribunal

And a note to all media. Anyone who repeats these false claims published by bdpanoram are repeating the defamation.

Very sad.