How Statistics Become Propaganda

Media & Culture

Today’s guest is Aaron Brown, author of the new book Wrong Number: How to Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation. A former chief risk manager at AQR Capital Management who teaches statistics at New York University and University of California, San Diego, Brown also contributes popular video essays to Reason. In Wrong Number, Brown investigates questions such as: Did California’s minimum wage hike create more jobs? Does using marijuana massively increase the odds of having a heart attack or stroke? Is the United States experiencing a spike in the number of high temperature days? In an interview recorded…

Global Free Speech

The Bangladeshi army stands guard at the Prothom Alo daily newspaper offices which were set ablaze during protests. Photo: AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu/Alamy This article first appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Index on Censorship, The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is seducing the Western world published on 2 April 2026. Smoke rose from two buildings late in the Dhaka night, thick and bitter, flames leaping through the shattered windows and gutting newsrooms. Outside, on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue and inbang the heart of Karwan Bazar on the night of 18 December 2025, hundreds of people surged forward, chanting, jeering and hurling stones at the offices of Bangladesh’s premier dailies – the Bengali Prothom Alo (First Light) and the English-language Daily Star. Representing the liberal, secular voice of an increasingly divided Bangladesh, editors and journalists at the two newspapers have faced legal attacks from the government and threats of violence. They have also had threats from sections of the general public. By nightfall, the glass frontage of Prothom Alo’s offices had been smashed. Inside, smoke spread rapidly through the newsroom, curling around desks where reporters had been editing copy only hours earlier. Journalists and staff scrambled for exits as the fire took hold on the lower floors of the building. Across the city, at The Daily Star’s headquarters, a similar scene was unfolding: stones hurled through windows, vehicles torched, entrances blocked and journalists trapped inside as smoke filled stairwells. Videos posted online showed flames licking at the building’s interior as staff shouted for help from the upper floors. From a neighbouring high-rise, senior Prothom Alo reporter Galib Ashraf watched helplessly as the conflagration gutted the newsroom that had been his professional home for years. “This wasn’t just a building burning,” he told journalists later. “It was our history going up in smoke.” The acrid smell of burning paper was mixed with fear as glass crunched underfoot and sirens wailed in the distance. For journalists inside the buildings, the experience was visceral. For those watching from outside – fellow reporters, photographers, passers-by – the message was unmistakable. In Bangladesh, even the largest and most established newsrooms were vulnerable to attack. A month later, when Index visited the charred remains of the two offices, a yellow tape surrounded the building, marking the scene of a crime. Veteran journalist Matiur Rahman, editor of Prothom Alo, forced a smile. “We reached out to everyone that night for help,” he said. On the night of the fire, several journalists at The Daily Star found themselves trapped in their offices. The only escape route was upwards, to the rooftop. One reporter, Zyma Islam, posted on Facebook from inside, her words chilling in their simplicity: “I can’t breathe anymore … there’s too much smoke … I am inside.” Some reporters feared that they would die. Mahfuz Anam, editor of the Daily Star told Index that if he had been around, he would have been lynched. He, too, tried reaching out to the authorities. Whilst everyone was sympathetic, it took a long time for help to arrive. The need for a new leader There was an acute sense of betrayal also hanging in the air when Index visited the offices of the two newspapers. Both Prothom Alo and The Daily Star had argued for a more liberal political order in Bangladesh. In August 2024, the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had fled the country when her government agents killed more than 800 student demonstrators. Like many of the country’s educated and middle classes, journalists felt Bangladesh needed a new leader known for probity, someone like the Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus. The newspapers supported Yunus, who was known for his pioneering microlending work in Bangladesh, specifically to support indigenous trading women. The fact that he had been persecuted and by Hasina added to his credibility. So there was considerable enthusiasm when he agreed to become the chief adviser of the interim government, the de facto prime minister until elections were held. But his political choices stunned people. Even while expressing faith in the youth, he blindsided the female student leaders responsible for the uprising that felled Hasina by letting the misogynistic Jamaat-e-Islami party dictate terms. Sheikh Hasina had banned the Jamaat, but following her ousting, the Jamaat had a new lease of life and was going to contest the February elections. Disappointed women leaders of the movement left the newly-formed National Citizen Party that the students had formed. Many felt that Yunus had betrayed their hopes. On the night of the attacks, the editors and senior journalists, including editors of rival newspapers, made frantic calls to Yunus and his advisers, as well as senior government officials, pleading for help. None came for a long time – both offices had been reduced to burnt-out shells before the fires were brought under control. There was no explanation forthcoming as to why the police did not arrive at the two newspaper offices, in the heart of Dhaka, to stop the mob before the crowds grew in size. The Daily Star was founded in 1991, two decades after the brutal civil war against Pakistan that led to Bangladesh’s independence – albeit at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Prothom Alo was formed in 1998. The two newspapers have long been recognised as constructive critics of the governments of the day. While both have been accused of pro-India and anti-fundamentalist bias, they are both in fact remarkably independent. Nothing demonstrates this clearer than their dexterous navigation of the tortuous turns of Bangladeshi politics, characterised until recently by the Manichaean divide between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) which each took turns holding power since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. The night the presses stopped The December night of the fires, one of the darkest in the history of newspaper publishing in Bangladesh, was not merely a picture of chaos, it was the symbolic decapitation of independent journalism in Bangladesh. The two newspapers were forced to suspend their print editions, Prothom Alo for the first time in nearly three decades and The Daily Star for the first time in its 35-year existence. Martial law, threats of lawsuits and the arrests and disappearances of reporters hadn’t silenced them. But a mob did succeed where others had failed, even if only for one night. The mobs that converged on Dhaka’s media hubs did not emerge from a vacuum. The proximate cause of the confrontation was the assassination of a student leader, Sharif Osman Hadi, who was the spokesperson for Inquilab Mancha, Platform of the Revolution, which had emerged from the student-led uprising. His killers are still at large. But that anger was quickly and violently redirected at the press. Mobs accused the two newspapers of political bias, branding them “India-backed” and loyal to Hasina. Human rights and press bodies across the world condemned the attacks, not as isolated incidents but rather as symptoms of a deeper malaise. Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, called the arson attacks ‘deeply alarming,’ expressing her outrage over ‘orchestrated mob violence.’ Bangladesh’s media landscape had been corroded for years by oppressive laws, intimidation and impunity. Whilst the arson attacks were dramatic, they were not anomalous. They were the logical culmination of a long, grinding war on free expression in Bangladesh. The erosion began with fear. For more than a decade, Bangladesh has stayed in the bottom quartile of global press freedom rankings (in 2025, it ranked 149th out of 180 countries surveyed by Reporters Without Borders). Editors came to understand which stories would invite legal trouble. Reporters learned when not to quote certain sources. Bloggers discovered that a Facebook post could carry the same risks as an investigative exposé. Some were hacked to death, and many fled to safety, seeking asylum abroad. Digital dissent A major turning point came in 2018, with the enactment of the Digital Security Act (DSA) – a broad and vaguely worded law ostensibly aimed at combating cybercrime and digital harm. In practice, it became a powerful tool for muzzling dissent. The Act’s provisions criminalised a wide range of speech perceived as “false” or “offensive”, leaving journalists, social-media users and activists vulnerable to long jail terms and heavy fines. Rights groups warned early on that the law could and would be abused to silence critics. One of the most emblematic cases involved Shamsuzzaman Shams, a reporter for Prothom Alo arrested in 2023 after writing about rising food prices. The Hasina government charged him under the DSA with spreading “false news”. Nearly 3,000 people, including hundreds of journalists, have been charged under the Act since it was passed into law – this in a country whose constitution guarantees freedom of expression. The DSA’s broad reach is part of a larger pattern, wherein legal mechanisms intended to protect citizens instead serve as implements of fear and silence. In 2020, cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore, for example, spent 10 months in pre-trial detention under the DSA on account of his satirical work, drawing international condemnation for his treatment. The writer Mushtaq Ahmed died in jail in 2021. He had criticised the government’s handling of the pandemic and died of a heart attack, although his supporters and lawyers, including the co-accused, said he had been tortured in jail. Beyond arrests and lawsuits, the threat of violence hangs like Damocles’ sword over independent voices. One of the starkest and most haunting chapters in Bangladesh’s press freedom story is the disappearance of journalists – most notoriously that of Shafiqul Islam Kajol, a photojournalist and editor who vanished in March 2020. Kajol was last seen leaving his Dhaka home a day after being charged under the DSA with a defamation suit, filed by an Awami League politician. CCTV footage showed unidentified men tampering with his motorcycle before he disappeared. Kajol’s family suspected abduction; rights groups demanded investigations that never yielded closure. Authorities denied he was in custody. When Kajol was eventually found, with his hands and feet tied, near the Indian border, Bangladeshi authorities arrested him for trespassing. A narrowing conversation These attacks and deaths are horrifying reminders that journalists and independent thinkers constantly face mortal danger in Bangladesh for the very act of thinking and speaking freely. When journalists fear for their safety and media houses are targets of mob violence, the public conversation narrows. Citizens lose access to independent verification of facts, analysis and accountability reporting, making it easier for misinformation to flourish In the elections in February 2026, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s son, Tarique Rahman, secured a two-thirds majority in parliamentary seats, with their rivals the Awami League not allowed to stand, and Jamaat performing much less well than people had feared. While the BNP’s manifesto has spoken of upholding press freedom, in the binary nature of Bangladeshi politics, it might in fact mean that publications suppressed under the Awami League will have greater freedom – while publications that opposed the BNP might find that not much has changed. A newspaper which BNP leader Rahman was involved with was accused of running campaigns against atheist bloggers. What distinguishes the recent attacks on Prothom Alo and The Daily Star however was not merely their scale, but their symbolism. This was censorship by arson, carried out not by the state directly, but by crowds emboldened by years of official hostility. When governments describe journalists as enemies, traitors or foreign agents, they license others to act accordingly. When attacks on critics of the government are normalised, the moral fabric of society frays. Bengal is the culture of patrikas, pamphlets penned by intellectuals to defy orthodoxy. Shut them down, and it becomes a lesser Bengal. When voices are silenced or endangered, the very sense of a collective narrative – of what holds a diverse nation together – is weakened. READ MORE

This article first appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Index on Censorship, The monster unleashed: How Hungary’s illiberal vision is seducing the Western world published on 2 April 2026. Smoke rose from two buildings late in the Dhaka night, thick and bitter, flames leaping through the shattered windows and gutting newsrooms. Outside, on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue and inbang the heart of Karwan Bazar on the night of 18 December 2025, hundreds of people surged forward, chanting, jeering and hurling stones at the offices of Bangladesh’s premier dailies – the Bengali Prothom Alo (First Light) and the English-language Daily Star. Representing…

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