Myanmar Media Historically and the Challenges of Transition 33 and distribution networks remains to be seen. Key needs include increased transparency regarding media ownership, mechanisms to establish and maintain a source of public information about media operations, opportunities for public input and feedback about the role of media in Myanmar, and regulation that serves the public interest. The Myanmar people have embraced the information age and the recent opening and, despite recent setbacks, many groups are working hard to keep these new forms of access open. Notwithstanding the dominance of the state and military in the Myanmar media landscape, private media have existed for some time, even though many are owned by cronies of army officials, families of high-ranking ministers or generals, or by people known to be close to them. The political opening has done little to transform the established patterns of highly concentrated ownership. This is demonstrated by the private and independent media outlets that struggle to sustain their operations against the dominance of state-run media and those owned by business elites. Assessing the political economy of Myanmar media is a difficult task because each of the government-crony joint ventures was established without any form of reporting requirement regarding ownership structure or revenues, and because various secondary sources and government websites often report inconsistent information (Smith 1991). This is a research lacuna that needs to be addressed in much greater detail as soon as possible to promote transparency in the media sector. We endeavour here to map the prominent players. In doing so, we distinguish between state-run media, which until recently were military controlled, and private sector media, although these categories are far from exclusive, as already indicated, and their many intersections and relationships need to be mapped out with much more clarity. One example of the blurring of the state-run/private distinction is in the telecommunications sector. Telecommunication services were first provided by the state-owned MPT, but they were controlled, expensive, and limited to certain areas, much like the subsequent initial access to mobile services and the internet. Until 2013, internet connections were provided by Yatanaporn Teleport, RedLink and SkyNet MPS, joint ventures with the regime that depended on MPT’s communications infrastructure (Song 2013). The two sons of 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 33 8/4/19 10:29 am