Press freedom and reporting on the government in Myanmar Ninh Pham Master’s candidate Missouri School of Journalism Spring 2014 Committee: Amy McCombs – Chair Barbara Cochran Randy Smith Acknowledgements I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my chair, Professor Amy McCombs, for her guidance during the course of this project. Professor McCombs was with me from the beginning when I tried to find a project to work on. As the Lee Hills Chair in Free- Press Studies, she also granted a scholarship for my research trip to Myanmar in March 2014. I also would like to use this opportunity to thank the East-West Center in Hawaii for underwriting my trip to Myanmar. This project would not have been possible without their support. I owe my deepest gratitude to my wonderful committee members, Professor Barbara Cochran and Professor Randy Smith, for their guidance during my semester in Washington D.C., and the course of this project. I could not have finished this project without the help of Aye Aye Win and U Min Zaw. They were patient, kind, and generous with their time. They had answers to every question that I raised and helped me to connect with journalists in Myanmar before my trip in March 2014. Great thanks to Professor Fritz Cropp, who encouraged me to join the Washington Program; Martha Pickens, who was always there anytime I was panicked during the course of my studies; my great friend and my boss at The Vietnam Institute Joe Hobbs, who pushed me to apply for “the best journalism school in the world,” and Professor Jerry Nelson whose support made it possible for me to be in Washington D.C. in the fall of 2013. I owe my deepest gratitude to family and friends who always have my back. And to James, who was with me from the beginning of this project, either helping with editing my proposal or transcribing interviews. This project could not have been possible without all of you. ii Table of contents Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………. 2 Chapter 2: Field notes…………………………………………………………………5 Chapter 3: Evaluation………………………………………………………………...22 Chapter 4: Professional Work………………………………………………………..24 Chapter 5: Analysis component ……………………………………………………..55 Appendix 1. Original Proposal……………………………………………………….74 2. Interviews I. Aye Win and Min Zaw…………………………………………….88 II. Than Lwin Htun………………………………………………….115 III. Soe Myint………………………………………………………...139 IV. Aye Hnin……………………………………………………........144 V. Steven Herman…………………………………………………...156 VI. Geoffrey Goddard………………………………………………..166 VII. Gabrielle Paluch………………………………………………….176 VIII. Thiha Saw………………………………………………………...181 IX. Chit Win Muang …………………………………………………183 X. Thiha Thwe…………………………………………….................197 XI. Thin Lei Win……………………………………………………...209 Chapter 1: Introduction I grew up in An Tien, a small village in the north of Vietnam. My main source of information was the loudspeaker, blasting propaganda throughout the village, and much later a black and white, 14 inch Japanese JVC television set. We only watched TV during dinner time and the 7 pm newscast was the closest thing to news and international news that I was exposed to. At that time, there was a lot of news about the war between Palestine and Israel. It was defined in my mind that Palestine was on the good side of the war and the Israelis were the bad guys, of course together with the Americans. In fact, every country which sided with the Americans were bad people, the notion faded after several years, especially after 1995 when President Bill Clinton opened a new chapter of relationship between our two countries. I graduated from college with a degree in teaching English and I had no particularly interest in any kind of job. I knew that I had no desire to teach and I knew I wanted to be on the Internet all the time. The Internet was new and exciting in 2004. My father gave me two weeks to find a job in the city, or else I would have to go back home to be a high school English teacher. I answered the first job I saw advertised and was offered the position. It was with the VnExpress website. On the first day after I graduated, I joined the International News Desk of VnExpress, today the most popular online newspaper in Vietnam. My job then was just to translate news from international news websites to Vietnamese. Most of them were quick, breaking news stories. Sometimes my editor 2 would give me a good analysis piece. One day in August 2004, my editor sat me down for a serious talk about selecting news. She could not believe I just translated an article lambasting Cuba, one of the remaining communist countries in the world. She did most of the talking during our 30 minute conversation, and I nodded understandingly. She said we should tread lightly while reporting anything about China. Stories about countries such as Cuba and Myanmar should be carefully chosen, best not to publish anything negative about them. The safest bet is to not say anything about them at all. That was my first lesson about self-censorship. I believe all of the new journalists in Vietnam had to go through that kind of talk at some point during their first days. It became common sense knowledge, which one of my foreign diplomat friend jokingly said that Vietnamese journalists knew where the lines were. I came to the Missouri School of Journalism, wanting to learn more about a free- press, multimedia journalism, and my passion, international journalism. I worked for Global Journalists as a student writer as well as a radio producer. This helped me find my ideas for my professional project. In the spring of 2012, my fellow student, Molly Bullock, and I did a timeline story on the changes in Myanmar with the newly elected government and the participation of The Lady Aung San Suu Kyi in the political scene. Hopes for a better press freedom were realized in August 2012 when the government announced the abolishment of the central censorship bureau, which was named the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division. Private media were allowed to publish daily newspapers while exiled media were allowed 3 to come back to the country and foreign media were giving access and offices in Yangon. The sudden change from a completely isolated country to an open one; from a ruthless military rule to civilian democratic government; from an oppressed press to a free to explore press surprises everyone to say the least. It did baffle me. What made the junta, military government, open up and let the international community step in. Two years after the announcement, one year after private daily newspapers are on the newsstand and, with the 2015 elections just around the corner, it is an interesting time to do an investigation on the state of press freedom in a newly open country. I came to Washington DC to do an internship with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, working on multimedia projects and research while researching on my subject. Thanks to a scholarship from the Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies and the East-West Center in Hawaii, I was able to join a group of Missouri Journalism students covering the East-West Center conference on freedom of the press held in Yangon, Myanmar. The trip deeped my knowledge about the country and the state of press freedom in Myanmar and was a great help to my project. I have always wanted to be a foreign correspondent and this has not changed since I started graduate school. Ideally, the next job that I have will combine my love for international news reporter and my skill as a multimedia journalist. This project has helped me grow greatly. 4 Chapter 2: Field Notes Week 1 (8/19/2013 - 8/24/2013) Dear Professors, I hope your Monday has been great so far, and you're enjoying the campus full of students, again. I, for one, really miss Columbia's open spaces and smiling faces. My first week went well. It was a bit of an adjustment from Columbia to Washington, D.C., but the process was not as painful as I expected. I started working for the UNAOC (United Nations Alliance of Civilizations) on Wednesday by reading a lot of materials about the organizations, and the type of work that former interns used to do. They have some ongoing projects they want me to take on, including a social media campaign, which ended the week before last. Last week, they wanted me to write a report on agencies in the UN system which work on women empowerment and gender issues. They also wanted me to write a substantial report on the campaign based on the tweets with #coveringmigration hashtag. I'm going to work on that this week. Since I'm working remotely, my supervisor, Stephanie Durand, and I agreed to have two conference calls during the week on Tuesdays and Thursdays and contact by emails in between. I soon will schedule my two trips to UNAOC office in New York, one possibly in mid September and one in early November. 5 I haven't done a lot of research this week. I plan on talking to a group of American journalists who went to Burma in the summer on a fellowship granted by Global Post. I'm sure their insights can be useful. In the mean time, if you have any suggestions for my proposal and people I should contact, please let me know. Professor Amy mentioned that I need to have a committee meeting when she's in Washington D.C., later September. I think it will be a great chance for me to talk things out with you. So, that is it for now.