a lot of followers on Facebook than in accurately reporting the news.9 Pursuing financial gain, as well as popularity and fame, can lead journalists to abdicate their professional responsibilities, challenges not accounted for in Voltmer’s theories (Table 1). Several interviewees in this study acknowledged bribery as a persistent problem in Myanmar’s newsrooms. For example, an editor at Eleven Media admits: When a new restaurant opens, for example, a reporter might receive money to write a positive review. Sometimes the reporter refuses the money and tells their editor. But other times they take the money. It is difficult to know how often this happens. As an editor, I read 12 to 16 stories a day. Most of the articles I receive aren’t good quality and I have to spend a long time on each one to make it publishable. I therefore don’t have time to check every fact.10 The ethical and professional dilemmas confronting Myanmar’s editors are compounded by reliance on citizen journalists with no formal ties to their news organization. In the current Myanmar market, few private media organizations can afford to establish bureaus outside of major cities. As a result, Yangon-based newsrooms often rely on citizen journalists to report on events in remote parts of the country. Lacking any professional education, citizen journalists often fail to record the information necessary to make a story publishable. As an editor at Chin World News explains: Our entire news organization has only eight full-time staff. We have to rely on citizen journalists and this causes a lot of ethical problems. They contact us with a story, but they have rarely checked who is involved or why it is happening. They don’t get the details needed to corroborate a story. We have to tell them to go and ask follow-up questions. But this delays publication of the story. We frequently have to trade timeliness for ethics.11 Journalists’ poor training and inexperience means that both deliberate and unintended inaccuracies are commonplace in the Myanmar media. Inaccuracies can undermine public confidence in the media and provide authoritarian regimes with a pretext for withdrawing hardwon media freedoms. In Russia, a disregard for professional standards by many journalists allowed President Putin to reassert state control over the broadcast media, a move supported by the majority of Russians (Burrett, 2011). Journalists’ poor understanding of profes- sional norms can impair the democratization process. These challenges, absent from Voltmer’s theories (Table 1), should be included in theoretical descriptions of the features of the media during liberalization. The advent of social media creates new ethical quandaries for the media not considered in Voltmer’s theories. In 2015, only 12.6 percent of Myanmar’s population had access to the Internet (Internet World Stats, 2016). But already social media had become a key news source for urban residents. As one editor explains: For young people in particular, news shared by friends on Facebook is their main source of information. People don’t discriminate between information produced by media professionals or by amateurs. They do not question the origins or authenticity of what they read online.12 Several journalists interviewed for this study raised the related issues of fake news and a lack of capacity for critical thinking among audiences as challenges for the Myanmar media. Interviewees stated that audiences were more likely to trust information posted online by their friends than news appearing in the professional media: The media have a bad reputation. For decades there was only the state media and they were propaganda organs for the government. In post-authoritarian states like Myanmar people tend to trust their friends over institutions, and that includes the media.13 Myanmar’s multiple ethnic conflicts are the most common theme of fake news, both online and in the traditional media. Journalists lament that new media freedoms won since 2012 have often exacerbate ethnic tensions. Posts on social media precipitated some of the most violent clashes of recent years. Anti-Muslim riots in Mandalay in July 2014, for example, were sparked by a post on Facebook alleging the rape of a Buddhist girl by her Muslim employer. Although the story proved untrue, it quickly went viral, triggering communal violence within 24 hours of posting (Crane, 2014). More attention must be paid to the potential problems posed by social media in theories of the media’s role in democratization. Audiences’ ability to assess the reliability of online information is a problem everywhere. But it is particularly acute in transitional societies, where authoritarian governments discourage the teaching of critical thinking skills. False reporting is a problem on both sides in the Buddhist–Muslim conflict in Rakhine.14 Owing to problems of access and personal security, it can be difficult for Yangon-based media organizations to verify reports from Myanmar’s far-flung regions. At Seven Day News a 9 Author’s interview with Seven Day News reporter, December 2014. Author’s interview with Eleven Media editor, December 2013. 11 Author’s interview with Chin World News editor, December 2013. 12 Author’s Interview with board member of Pen International, March 2015. 13 Author’s interview with a Yangon-based media trainer, September 2015. 14 Author’s interview with a Yangon-based international media agency correspondent, December 2013. 10 Politics and Governance, 2017, Volume 5, Issue 2, Pages 41–58 46