lack of verification often leads to editors being forced to pull stories from Rakhine: When a story has a religious or ethnic component we are especially careful about what we write, as we don’t want to fuel the conflict. Many times we decide not to print a story because we can’t be sure of the facts, or because we can’t access opinions on both sides. It is particularly difficult for us to talk to the Rohingya [Muslim] community in Rakhine, since many of them live in government-run refugee camps, which are closed to the media. If we can’t print a balanced story, then we don’t print any story at all.15 Editors may also reject a story on inter-ethnic violence to prevent a backlash from sectarian readers. An editor at Seven Day News explains: Whenever we write about the conflict in Rakhine we get a lot of angry letters and phone calls, especially from the Arakan (Rakhine Buddhist) side. Following criticism of our reporting on the violence in Rakhine in 2012, we decided to give the issue less prominence.16 Self-censorship of this kind can lead to a dearth of balanced information on the causes and consequences of inter-ethnic violence. When balanced reporting is scarce, biased accounts go unchallenged and the probability that the public will be misinformed increases. Several journalists interviewed for this study complained of calculated pro-Buddhist coverage of the 2012 Rakhine conflict by much of the Myanmar media.17 As one journalist at Eleven Media said of his colleagues: Most reporters are Buddhists and they are patriotic. Their personal nationalism is reflected in what they write. This isn’t only true of reporting on the Rohingya issue, but also of coverage of international affairs, especially bi-lateral relations with China.18 Although patriotic fervor is not uncommon among journalists in other places at times of national crisis—for example in the US following the terrorist attacks on 9/11— it is particularly dangerous in the context of volatile interethnic tensions (Kull, Clay, & Evans, 2003; Levy & Bugingo, 2001). One-sided reporting not only obscures audiences’ understanding of the issues, but also increases the probability of further violence. Other interviewees in this study attribute biased coverage of ethnic tensions to low educational standards among media professionals. Some argue that biased reporting stems from journalists’ poor understanding of media framing.19 Framing theory contends that the media focus audience attention on certain events and then place them within a field of meaning. It suggests that how something is presented to the audience influences the choices people make about how to process that information (Entman, 1993; Goffman, 1974; Scheufele, 1999). In Myanmar, by offhandedly using loaded nouns such as ‘Bangladeshi’ or ‘immigrant’ to describe the Rohingya, journalists unconsciously framed the Muslim-Buddhist conflict in nationalist terms.20 Voltmer’s theories identify significant political bias as a feature of media systems undergoing liberalization whether the origins of political change are bottom–up, top–down or external. Her work has less to say about bias arising from ethnic loyalties that may cut across political affiliations. Sectarian biases in media reporting are an impediment to liberalization and should be included in theoretical frameworks. The generals who seized power in Myanmar in 1962 justified their rule as necessary to hold together a country fractured by ethnic strife. Several interviewees for this study raised suspicions that government provocateurs were behind outbreaks of sectarian violence in central Myanmar in 2013.21 Fresh sectarian violence adds credence to the military’s insistence on remaining a prop to Myanmar’s civilian government. But despite harboring suspicions that the military were stoking inter-ethnic tensions to justify retaining power beyond 2015, the majority of journalists were too afraid to publish such concerns.22 4.2. Political Parallelism Voltmer’s theories predict that when liberalization is initiated from below, the independent media will exhibit a strong pro-opposition bias. But when the process is top–down, the media are more likely to align with factions within the ruling regime. The media are drawn into the escalating conflict between government hard and soft liners over the pace of liberalization. If change is precipitated by external pressure, then exiled and foreign media embolden and widen opposition networks by providing information that challenges the regime’s propaganda (Table 1). Unsurprisingly, given the multidirectional sources of its liberalization, Myanmar’s media displayed elements of all the features listed above. In Myanmar, as in other authoritarian states, government persecution of the press led journalists to join pro-democracy groups. During the rule of the military 15 Author’s interview with Seven Day News editor, December 2013. Author’s interview with Seven Day News editor, December 2013. 17 Riots in June 2012 between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhist Rakhine killed approximately 170 and displacing roughly 140,000 mostly Rohingyas. 18 Author’s interview with Eleven Media editor, December 2013. 19 Author’s interview with Myanmar Journalists Network representative, December 2013. 20 The Rohingyas’ exact roots are debated, but many likely settled in Burma in the nineteenth century, having migrated from modern-day Bangladesh following expansion of the British Empire. Today, the Rohingya are excluded from the 135 ethnic groups the government recognizes as Myanmar citizens. 21 Author’s interviews with journalists at Mizzima, Seven Day News and Myanmar Freedom Daily, December 2013. 22 Author’s interview with Street View Journal journalist, December 2014. 16 Politics and Governance, 2017, Volume 5, Issue 2, Pages 41–58 47