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.
It is risky times for any independent journalist in Myanmar, but Ma Khine is among those who stay with their craft despite the risks to life and security, and the inadequate income from the news profession these days.
အဝေးရောက်ဘဝတွင် နေထိုင်လုပ်ကိုင်ရခြင်းသည် မြန်မာသတင်းသမားများအတွက် ပိုမိုလုံခြုံမှု ရှိကောင်း ရှိနိုင်သည်။ သို့သော် သူတို့သည် အခက်အခဲကြုံနေရသော ယခုအလုပ်အကိုင်ထံမှ စားဝတ်နေရေး လှည့်ကြည့်စရာမလိုသော အနေအထားတစ်ရပ် (ဘဝ) ကို ရရှိနိုင်ပါ့မည်လားဟု စိုးရိမ်နေကြသည်ဟု Reporting ASEAN က ကောက်ယူသည့် စစ်တမ်းအဖြေက ဆိုသည်။
Since the February 2021 coup, many journalists have had to change to other work or flee to safer areas, while those who stick with news live in constant worry. But in the darkness, journalists are keeping their eyes focused on better times for their profession – someday.
Enthusiasm and a sense of public duty, lack of safety, worries about income and professional work arrangements. All of these mix in how life has been since the February coup in Myanmar, a young local journalist recounts in this personal account.
Our charts look at the number of journalists, media staffers arrested since the 1 Feb coup, and the crackdown on news organisations. Data from the Detained Journalists Information group, plus other verified information. Data viz by Yvonne T Chua.
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.”
ผู้สื่อข่าวเมียนมามักคุ้นเคยกับสภาพการทำงานที่ยากลำบาก แต่การรัฐประหารโดยกองทัพในเดือนกุมภาพันธ์นี้ ทำให้เกิดคำถามที่ว่า คนในวิชาชีพสื่อสารมวลชนจะยังทำอะไรได้บ้าง โดยที่ชาวเมียนมาได้ทำอาชีพนี้อย่างจริงจังแค่ 10 ปีหลังนี้เอง
Myanmar’s journalists are no strangers to working in hostile settings. But the February military coup throws up questions about what may be left of the profession of journalism, which has been around for just a decade in the Southeast Asian country.
ASEAN has been testing its non-intervention habit in ways never done before, playing what is to date its biggest, most active role in relation to Myanmar’s handling of the Rohingya issue. But ASEAN’s role is little known or cared for inside the country, where the mainstream attitude is usually apathy or hostility to this minority community. Aung Zaw Min looks into why this so, in this feature for the Reporting ASEAN series.
Myanmar has become a case study for how disinformation, fake news and hate speech affect online space and content, and therefore, public perceptions and debates. In this Q & A, The Irrawaddy’s Moe Myint shares his insights about the challenges, some of them very dangerous for professional journalists, thrown up by the toxic online environment marked by misinformation and deep divisions in Myanmar today.
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