interests of both journalists and viewers. After the coup, the military unsurprisingly started to influence decision-making at the Myanmar Press Council, when over 90 percent of the former members of the Council boycotted the coup and criticized the new MOI minister. When the new list of Council members was announced, the journalistic community objected outright to the replacements, as many of the newly-appointed members were not known in media circles as being reputable professional journalists, and some were reportedly working as agents for the special branch of the police.35 For the junta, the new media council remains an institution that would lend legitimacy to its leaders. Since the opening up of the country in 2011, governments kept disrupting media growth and favoured the state monopoly in both print and broadcasting media. Contrary to its promise upon taking power, the NLD government managed to remain not only as a media regulator but also as a player with a lion’s share of the media sector. Even before the NLD came to power, Myanmar had already suffered from media decline as the military had failed to enrich pluralistic values in society. The past mistakes were not corrected under the NLD; rather they neglected to learn any lessons. The NLD, which was known as a pro-democracy party, even showed hostility to journalists when difficult truths were uncovered, especially regarding cases of human rights abuses for the Rohingyas.36 Now Myanmar is seeing the consequences of previous media system errors. The past policies paved the way for an easy return to military control over the media. CONCLUSION In 2019, Ben Dunant, a columnist from the Frontier, wrote: “Government-media relations are locked in a vicious cycle. To break it, the government must stop treating journalists as threats to be managed and instead consider them partners in deepening democracy”.37 Yet, nothing had stopped the downward spiral of government-media relations prior to the coup. Far from making radical changes to move the system away from authoritarianism, the previous leaders decided to maintain the status quo. The government retains its power to license, regulate, prosecute, and imprison its media competitors while ignoring three media laws that badly need amendments. Even before the coup, Myanmar had seen a dramatic media decline in terms of circulation, capacity, and quality of media content. Although there is an undoubtable trend for “liking” and sharing content on social media, journalism is often regarded as neither financially viable nor physically safe. Since media development has been stunted in the last five years, there has also been, in many aspects, a weakened capability to face the new challenges posed by circumstances under the coup. As the army play the role of media owners, they are free to self-promote without limit. The state-run media, a key structure of the military’s ISA, remain intact to serve the voice of the ruling junta while the coup leaders are using what the NLD left behind: a more efficiently-equipped surveillance system. The media contribution to the people’s access to information could have been stronger if the reforms had continued with a stronger political will from previous leaders to remove the inherited authoritarian structure. Perhaps, had the institutional reforms in the last five years been strong enough, the people’s resistance could have been better — positioned with a stronger media presence in both rural and urban areas. 35 “Changes of media since the coup”, Burma Monitor. 36 S. Lewis, „Key facts about Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo“, Reuters, 7 May 2019, available at https://www.reuters.com/article/usmyanmar-journalists-profiles-factbox-idUSKCN1SD05W. 37 B. Dunant, “The downward spiral of government-media relations”, Frontier Myanmar, 10 December 2019, available at https://www.frontiermyanmar. net/en/the-downward-spiral-of-government-media-relations/. 12