Myanmar Media Historically and the Challenges of Transition 3 publish print dailies for the first time in five decades, despite enormous financial and resource challenges. Media outlets formerly in exile and in the country’s borderlands, including those that identify as ethnic media, were permitted to officially register and to set up offices in the country as early as 2012. Many are now disseminating content — including in historically banned ethnic languages — previously considered too critical and subject to censorship and criminal prosecution. Stop-gap reform measures intended to appease those critical of the ongoing centralized control of the broadcast sector include two-year cooperation agreements between five Myanmar companies and the state-run MRTV that see each company operating as a content provider for one of MRTV’s digital free-to-air TV channels. At a September 2018 public protest in Yangon held in solidarity with the imprisoned Reuters journalists, poet Maung Saungkha donned a beige NLD jacket, topped it with a green military-style jacket, and proceeded to “hit” journalists covering the event with a rolled up copy of state-run newspaper Kyemon (Dunant and Su Myat Mon 2018, p. 17).3 After the NLD’s landslide victory in the November 2015 general elections, and despite continued military control over key levers of government power, there were high expectations that the NLD and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi would prioritize and nourish free media and free expression. This demonstration reflects the disappointment and anger of journalists and free expression advocates about these unmet expectations. Assessments of the NLD’s performance thus far have been dismal. In May 2018 the writers and free expression network PEN Myanmar, along with eighteen of its civil society and free expression partners, gave the government a score of two out of sixty possible points for its second-year performance because of restrictive laws, defamation lawsuits and imprisonments, the regression of free expression in the digital sphere, dominance of state and military-owned media, powerful joint-ventures between the state and its business cronies, and a generalized failure to prioritize media reform and free expression; the 2018 score was six points lower than the previous year (PEN Myanmar 2018). The Telecommunications Law is one of the NLD’s weapons. Since 2013 the law has been used widely against online critics. According 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 3 8/4/19 10:29 am