Myanmar's media from an audience perspective / 15 Trusting is tough With limited access to information and few news sources to choose from, people struggle with trusting the media. The findings from the focus group discussions and the in-depth interviews show that people in Myanmar have a natural skepticism towards not only the established media but also news and information coming from other sources – including friends and family. “I don’t believe news once I hear it. If the same news comes from three news media, it is believable. Because even if I ask someone, he or she may exaggerate the news.” (19-year-old man from rural Kachin). Many do however highlight state-owned media as being most trustworthy and reliable. Like one man from rural Yangon puts it: “MWD is military-owned and the MRTV is government-owned media. We trust in those media. They share the news which are possible [to believe]” (43-yearold man from rural Yangon). Those trusting the state-owned or military-owned media seem to believe that these media are more capable of providing accurate information because they have direct access to news and information sources. Particularly when it comes to factual topics such as official wage levels or enrollment criteria for higher education. Even those who do not fully trust the state-owned or military-owned media mention that they rely on them for these kinds of information. The more critical respondents will even say that they use these information channels to see how the state and/or military view different topics. These participants displayed strong abilities in sourcing different media for different purposes, using the different strengths of the media for their own benefit. While the state-owned media might provide them with some type of news, the independent media could provide them with another kind and the international media with yet another kind. As a heavy media user from urban Kachin explains: “VOA, MRTV and BBC are always good. Some of them write news in both Burmese and English which is interesting to read. They are also very good sources to read. 7days and MWD seem biased in favor of the government. They write good things about the government. But DVB is a little bit different from them. [...] New Light of Myanmar writes a lot of news about the government and seems to be giving favor to the government side. I do not trust them that much, there are many lies. The news sources from The Mirror are true but it is also the military backed media10 [sic]. RVA broadcast news for only Christians.” (61-year-old man from urban Kachin). 10 Although the respondent believes that The Mirror is a military-owned newspaper, it is in fact published by the Ministry of Information and therefore it would be more correct to say that it is government-owned.