2 Brooten, McElhone and Venkiteswaran (p. 74). Facebook quickly responded to the report’s release by removing the accounts of eighteen high-profile army figures in Myanmar, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and fifty-two Facebook pages, which had a combined total following of close to twelve million users (Facebook 2018). A few days later, two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were sentenced to seven years in prison under the Official Secrets Act over accusations of holding secret government documents that they intended to share with international media and the ethnic armed group Arakan Army (Sithu Aung Myint 2018). The two were arrested in December 2017 after investigating a massacre of Rohingya men and boys in the coastal town of Inn Din in northern Rakhine State. After responding to a call from police officers, who met them in a restaurant and handed them documents, the journalists were arrested for having the documents in their possession. As they were being taken away from the court after the sentencing, Wa Lone was quoted as saying, “We know we did nothing wrong. I have no fear. I believe in justice, democracy and freedom” (Shoon Naing and Aye Min Thant 2018, ¶22). The arrest and subsequent sentencing were met with national and international condemnation, as was the rejection of their appeal in early 2019. At a public protest to call for their release, organizer Ei Ei Moe, from the pro-democracy youth movement Generation Wave, described their jailing as “blocking the eyes and blinding the ears of the public” (Dunant and Su Myat Mon 2018, ¶15).2 These events underscore the complexities of Myanmar’s much lauded “transition”. Celebrated early on for the release of imprisoned journalists and the end of pre-publication censorship, hopes for increased freedom of expression and media freedom were tempered by the crackdown that followed. Much has happened in the media sector since the controversial elections in 2010 organized by the military junta and boycotted by Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD), including reforms to laws that had repressed the media for decades. Some argue that these changes are a continuation of the military government’s Seven Step Roadmap to Disciplined Democracy, announced in 2003 (see the interview with Thiha Saw, this volume; Lall 2016; Rogers 2012). Laws on news media and publishing replaced older ones, allowing private owners to 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 2 8/4/19 10:29 am