International Journal of Communication 10(2016) Burmese Media in Transition 185 under suspicious circumstances, shocking the journalist community; his body was later exhumed, and, although evidence of torture was found, no one has been held to account for his murder. In March 2015, the editor-in-chief and a senior reporter from the Myanmar Post Weekly were arrested and sentenced to two months imprisonment each under the Penal Code for allegedly misquoting an interview with a military officer. In June, U Kyaw Soe, a former military official now with the Ministry of Information, initiated a criminal prosecution against 17 senior members of the Daily Eleven editorial staff for allegedly reporting illegally on an earlier defamation suit. U Kyaw Soe also has an earlier case pending against five senior Eleven staff members for defaming the MoI itself. The targeting of so many staff at once seems aimed at shutting down critical media outlets. Although media no longer face direct, prepublication censorship, what will trigger government charges of a threat to national security and public welfare remains unclear, although criticism of the military is widely recognized as taboo, as is reporting on communal and ethnic conflict. The use of libel and defamation suits has increased significantly; they are often filed by officials, ministries, or other state bodies not yet willing to make use of the Myanmar Press Council as an arbitrator between media and those with complaints. Concerns are now being voiced about possible restrictions on press freedom during elections scheduled for November 2015. All these developments call into question the much-lauded “transition” and its impact on media. Burmese Media Burma’s media were strictly regulated and heavily censored during the military era, with the exception of a short period during uprisings in 1988, when the people ruled the streets. The regime controlled all daily newspapers and broadcasting, either directly or indirectly through private concessions. All other publications had to be approved through the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division. The first private weekly and monthly journals on nonpolitical topics were permitted in 1990, and the first news journals in 2000; this sector strengthened considerably over the years, pushing for greater media freedom from inside the country. Also important were the international satellite broadcasters, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia Burmese services. Although not independent from (foreign) government funding and influence, they performed a vital service, especially during the years of heavy censorship. A significant influence in the changing media scene are the exile or formerly exile media, mostly founded after the massive uprisings of 1988, in which the army opened fire on hundreds of thousands of unarmed students, civilians, and civil servants protesting military rule and economic mismanagement. Thousands were killed, and many fled to the country’s border areas, where they formed new alliances with the ethnic minority groups fighting the regime. Ethnic armed groups were already producing small-scale media—primarily print publications and guerilla radio—and student activists were able to tap into foreign funding in the post-1988 political climate and establish print publications such as The Irrawaddy and Mizzima, the broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), and a myriad of smaller ventures (Brooten, 2004). These groups eventually became the mainstream, ethnically “unmarked” exile media and were generally better funded and more professional than the ethnic media, eventually moving online and expanding into various forms of multimedia production.