I will now explore the relationship between Myanmar media and the government and the

impact it has had on newspapers. For clarity, I will structure my explanation into three time
periods called Before Junta, During Junta and After Junta.
Before Junta
In the early days, Myanmar had an open newspaper scene. The King at the time was an
advocate for press freedom and even encouraged the press to report on him even if they
portrayed him negatively. This continued through the british colonial period all the way to
independence. In 1947, a new constitution was introduced legally allowing free speech. The
media-government relationship at this time was good and Myanmar had one of the freest
presses in Asia with over 30 daily papers. The first attempt at restricting press criticism came in
1961 when the PM suspended a newspaper. Until then, the Press Review Department only
monitored media and made no serious attempt at censorship.


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NEXT SLIDE - 1962 Junta
That all changed after the military coup. The new military government kicked the foreign press
out. The remaining journalists were under intense scrutiny with many being detained or
arrested. A year later, they nationalised all private newspapers and brought them under the
control of the Ministry of Information.
They later allowed private papers with the condition that they obtained licenses and submitted
all content to prepublication censorship. The restricted topics included issues such as
democracy, human rights, politics, natural disasters.
This is significant because newspapers were allotted a certain amount of subsidized paper. They
had to first print the copies to send them to the censorship board, if any content was rejected
they had to individually rip out and ink over every single copy. This was at a huge cost so
naturally journalists began to avoid these topics altogether.

Private newspapers were also sometimes forced to carry government-produced articles. They
were also mostly restricted to weeklies or monthlies. The government owned all the dailies. The
import of foreign newspapers were also restricted. This meant that the government controlled
all of the information produced locally and prevented foreign sources from sending information
in. Papers could also be ordered shut at any moment.
These changes in the media-government relationship changed what was previously a free press
into mouthpieces for government propaganda. In fact the last page of the state-owned papers
regularly included slogans defaming the BBC. In 2007 during the anti-government protests,
gov-controlled newspapers labelled protesters as devils and blamed foreign media for
instigating the protests. Many private media were closed after refusing to publish the
propaganda.
As a result of the poor media-gov relationship, the 2010 Reporters Without Borders Global
Index ranked Myanmar in the bottom 4 as 174 out of 178. Due to the media reforms introduced
after the end of the Junta, it is now ranked 145 out of 180 countries. This makes it the freest
Asean country according to the index. Lets backtrack a bit and explain what happened during
the media reform period.

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NEXT SLIDE - Media Reform
As part of its transition from Junta to democratic government, they started a series of political
reforms. One aspect of that is media. To achieve media reform, they implemented a 3 step
process which started in 2012.
1. Relaxing restrictions in favour of self censorship and accountability
2. Establishing a new print media law to replace the 1962 law formed under the junta.
3. Enforcing and regulating the new law to ensure a free press.





NEXT SLIDE - After Junta
But perhaps this number does not really reflect the current situation and this supposed new era
of of media freedom. In July this year 5 journalists have been sentenced to ten years in prison
for reporting that a factory had been turned into a chemical weapons plant.
While they have supposedly welcomed foreign media back into the country for the first time in
nearly 50 years, they have recently begun tightening visa restrictions, granting only one month
visas of instead of six to journalists with a lengthy renewal process.
The censorship board is officially dissolved but reality remains that none of the junta officials
have been laid off, most are still sitting at the same desk but under a new job title. It is now a
culture self-censorship because the reporters have yet to adjust to the new system. In the days
of pre-publication censorship they could be sure that any undesirable work they submitted
would be crossed out. Now, they have to push the boundaries knowing that they have to bear
all the repercussions if they cross the line.