Doing news work in Myanmar comes with high risk to life and safety, in a profession with uncertain prospects for the future. Since 2021 the coup, the junta has been using legal persecution as a weapon against journalism and journalists.

Amid the brutal crackdown in Myanmar, a journalist tells Reporting ASEAN they will continue to record the story of the popular uprising. They asked outsiders to press for space for journalism and said that in a digital world, there is no longer ‘outside’ or ‘inside’ Myanmar:  “We have professional journalists, technology and platforms.”

Talk of media freedom in Southeast Asia these days has to include media accountability. It is time for the different users of the information sphere – journalists, media houses, media monitoring groups, journalism professors and researchers, consumers – to protect the space for free media to operate, Johanna Son writes in this analysis for World Press Freedom Day.