10 - The Role of the Media in Myanmar: Can It Be a Watchdog for Corruption?

Summary

The mass media today in Myanmar remains largely under the control of the state, although there has been a noticeable degree of relaxation. The state continues to use the media as a tool for advancing the political and socio-economic interests of the ruling regime, as it has since the era of centrally-planned socialism, from 1962 to 1988. Over the past ten years, the military government has gradually allowed participation by the private sector, first in the print media and later in the broadcast media. Yet the government has continued to monopolize the publication of daily newspapers. In the first one hundred days of the new, nominally civilian, government, the situation changed little from the conditions that prevailed under the military regime that ruled the country for over two decades from 1988 to 2010.

In effect, any role the Myanmar media might aspire to in terms of serving as a Fourth Estate remains very constrained, since such necessary conditions as having editorial independence, providing good quality information, and having a broad reach across society, need to develop further (Islam 2002). Neither print media nor audio-visual media are able to fully realize these three characteristics.

This article presents an overview of media development in Myanmar, with an emphasis on the domestic print media, specifically on its role of raising public awareness about corruption and social issues. It will also discuss the possible influence of the growth of domestic broadcast media upon these issues.

Print Media: Development and Challenges

In Myanmar today, there are three main nationwide daily newspapers, namely Myanma Ahlin, Kyemon (The Mirror) and the New Light of Myanmar (an English-language newspaper). Together these can be referred to as “the official press”. There are two other daily newspapers, the Yangon City News and Yadanarpon, which are run by City Development Committees of Yangon and Mandalay respectively. However, their outreach is limited to city readers, and they have very limited distribution outside their respective municipal areas. For the three national dailies, the state-run Myanmar News Agency (MNA) serves as the main source of information. Since the daily papers are published under the umbrella of the Ministry of Information, they are subject to many restrictions, and the types of news stories and issues they can report are very limited.