the licenses of exile media such as the Democratic Voice of Burma and Mizzima TV channels in February. Licenses for the other three digital media outlets, namely Khit Thit Media, Myanmar Now, and 7Day News were also removed in March. All these media outlets showed defiance and continued publishing and broadcasting, except for 7Day News.22 Other semi-private and entertainment channels, such as Channel K, Sky Net, Channel 7, and 5-plus were allowed to continue, but content that was deemed to be detrimental to the coup council was no longer permitted. In April and May, three media outlets based in Kachin and Shan states, The 74 Media, Myitkyina News Journal, and Tachileik News were added to the blacklist by the authorities. In a few other cases, the junta did not revoke licenses, but arrested those holding senior newsroom posts. For instance, Kanbawza Tai News, based in Shan State, had to cease operating after two of their journalists were detained in May. Since March, the military forces have been chasing journalists from media outlets which continue to broadcast as clandestine units or from the border area. Having difficulty in collecting information and seeing a decline in safety, the number of working journalists gradually shrank in the first four months following the coup. The journalistic career became more precarious given that the law enforcement bodies keep harassing journalists for doing their jobs. In the official broadcasting sector, the army-run media now hold a monopoly and are building an image of the army as righteous rulers while threatening the critical voices of independent journalists and social influencers by charging them under penal code sections 505(a) and (b). Under a newly revised section 505(a) of Myanmar’s penal code, any attempt to “hinder, disturb, damage the motivation, discipline, health and conduct”23 of the military personnel and government employees and cause hatred, disobedience to them, or disloyalty toward the military and the government is punishable by up to three years in prison. Between February and October, 102 journalists were detained and 48 of them are still in prison, according to a representative from an online monitoring group called Detained Journalists Information Myanmar.24 Daily disappearances and raids of journalists’ homes and offices in broad daylight have been common since February. DISAPPEARING QUALITY NEWS AND DIMINISHING JOURNALISTIC CAREERS The military is using all the parts of its ISA and waging psychological warfare on the people with fabricated news from all available platforms — at which the people laugh and make jokes on social media. Still, this content is as dangerous as it has always been. Meanwhile, it is harder for journalists to get updates from the people while most parts of the country are turning into literal battlegrounds. As US Senator Hiram Johnson is said to have stated, “the first casualty when war comes is truth”.25 Media professionals could not afford to be activists while conforming to professional journalistic codes regarding ethics and objectivity. Nevertheless, some of the media outlets saw their reputations damaged when readers criticized them for being inaccurate and sensationalist rather than taking the time and effort to verify information. In many cases, the financial capacity of the media is also a determining factor in producing quality news reports, while travelling becomes almost impossible in some areas and human resources are more limited than ever. As a consequence, approximately 70 percent of journalists have been working in a clandestine manner and many media outlets have increasingly been relying on the content generated by citizen journalists.26 The capacity of both national and local news media has been shrinking and it is too costly for them to cover all the possible implications of the forceful measures imposed around the country. Even before the coup, around one quarter of the country’s population were living in conflict-affected areas which host one or more ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) resisting the central government’s authority. Now due to the cancelling of ceasefire agreements in various border areas, and the recent clashes in new battle zones between the People’s Defence Force and the military, it has become unfeasible to carry out reporting in many parts of the country. Heavy fighting in new or old con- 22 7Day News cancelled its digital presence and has been offline since March 2021. 23 “Analysis: Amendments to the Penal Code by the State Administration Council”, Centre for Law and Democracy, May 2021, available at https://www.law-democracy.org/live/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Myanmar.Penal-Code-Analysis.FINAL_.pdf, p. 6. 24 See their Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/953399941862726/. 25 This quote is attributed to Johnson, from a speech made around 1917–18. 26 Author’s interview from 27 July 2021 with a journalist who fled the country in April 2021 and is now in exile. 9