Abstract
The military coup on February 1, 2021 interrupted the democratization process in Myanmar and thus a decade of relative opening of the country. This chapter will shed a light on this decade of transition from 2011 to 2021, the country’s media and political system as well as the country’s modern journalistic culture whose development got so abruptly interrupted by the military coup. It draws a contemporary image of a Myanmar media that is involved in a conflictual process coined by a constellation of mistrusting actors, who struggle over control. These include journalists, who as a strategic group follow a harsh aim of freedom of speech, private media companies struggling for licenses and an even playing field against subsidized state media on the market. In addition, there is the sector of ethnic media, which struggle to find their position inside or outside the nation’s media system. Furthermore, the chapter raises the question in how far journalistic practice has changed during the decade of transition.
The authors thank their research assistant Vera Rosinger for her support in formatting this chapter.
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Notes
- 1.
In April 2014 DVB video journalist Zaw Pe was sentenced for one year for “trespassing” and disturbing a civil servant on duty while doing a report on a Japanese funded scholarship programme. Https://dvb.no/news/journalists-slam-public-service-media-law-burma-myanmar/41193. Accessed 6.10.2014.
- 2.
Also in the 1990s the spread of satellite television enabled more some media practices that undermined the strong state control. Well-off people to purchase satellite dishes from China and Thailand or even subscribe pay TV from neighbouring Thailand (e.g. True) and therefore had access to international news channels.
- 3.
Myanmar Army.
- 4.
There was a lot of public pressure on the Myanmar government to reveal the terms and conditions of the contracts between the MOI and the two private companies. In October 2013 the MOI held a press conference in Nay Pyi Daw and explained to the media that public and broadcasting contracts including two television networks and six private FM radio stations are granted license in accordance with the existing domestic investment law.
- 5.
In August 2012 MJN members were, for example, responsible for organising demonstrations calling for the lifting of the suspension of two weeklies ordered by the state (Reporters Without Borders, 2012: 11).
- 6.
Brooten (2011: 233).
- 7.
Before the Coup d’État Myanmar’s governments aimed to achieve a first-time ever nationwide ceasefire agreement. The Thein Sein government’s Union Peace Working Committee negotiated the NCA with the National Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT), which is representing 16 ethnic armes organizations (EAOs) including the Kachin Independence Organization, the Arakan Liberation Party, the Wa National Organization and other organizations. See www.mmmpeacemonitor.org
- 8.
Speech by the Deputy Minister of Information at the Burma News International (BNI), Ethnic Media Media Conference in Taunggyi, 4.3.2014.
- 9.
San Yaming Aung (2013), After Reforms Ethnic Media Emerge in Burma, But Challenges Remain. The Irrawaddy. 31st October. http://www.irrawaddy.org/media/reforms-ethnic-media-emerge-burma-challenges-remain.html. Accessed 21.9.2014.
- 10.
The Kachin News Group runs a Kachin news homepage (http://www.kachinnews.com), but also produces a radio show for Radio Free Asia. Interview Kachin News Group journalist, Chiang Mai, 9.12.2014.
- 11.
This is due to the fact there is no common language among the six Chin language groups, so they only language all Chin read is Burmese.
- 12.
What appears to be common to both ethnic and national media is a certain amount of disinterest in the political interests of the Rohingya, although the violence in the region is regularly covered, whenever it flares up.
- 13.
- 14.
The Tatmadaw can’t turn back the clock on Myanmar’s news industry, April 11, 2021 by Khine, Frontier Myanmar.
- 15.
Myanmar becomes a nation without newspapers—The closure of Myanmar’s last independent newspaper marks a new milestone in the country’s political descent: Myanmar Now, Published on Mar 18, 2021.
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Fox, M., Helbardt, S., Hahn, O., Krebs, F. (2023). “Burmese Days” of Digitalization: From a Decade’s Dream of Myanmar’s Modern Journalistic Culture and Media System in the Making to a Press Freedom’s Nightmare of the Military Putsch in 2021. In: Bebawi, S., Onilov, O. (eds) Different Global Journalisms. Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18992-0_3
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