194 Lisa Brooten International Journal of Communication 10(2016) Much of what transpires in rural areas goes unnoticed by Myanmar and international media. Although visitors to Yangon no longer see the armed guards and barbed-wire barricades that surrounded government buildings prior to the capital’s move to Naypidaw in 2005 or experience the culture of fear and surveillance, this is still apparent in many smaller towns and rural areas, especially in areas hosting mega-development projects. While a few fledging regional and ethnic media are doing important work, the majority of Myanmar media and media development assistance is focused on Yangon and Mandalay, and people in rural areas have little access to national media. Even when they do, the stringers working for Yangon-based media usually cannot capture the complexities of local stories the way a local paper can, regional journalists argue, in part because they rely on official sources and do not adequately address the concerns of common people. Ethnic and regional journalists express frustrations about how Yangon-based media pay attention to their areas or issues only if there are big stories such as cease-fire negotiations, sectarian violence, or meetings between leaders. As Tanintharyi Weekly editor Myo Aung explains, desk editors in Yangon do not know the area and therefore cannot guide the (largely untrained) local journalists very well (personal communication, July 18, 2013). Political Economy and the Media A significant concern in any transition is the military’s ties to the economy, often through military-connected businesspeople or cronies. In Indonesia, the military’s dense ties to business threatened the consolidation of democracy by preventing the government from demanding accountability and needed reforms (Abdulbaki, 2008), until a decree in 2010 ordered military businesses to be taken over by the state (Mietzner, 2011). In Taiwan, government control over broadcasting was maintained in large part due to the government’s role in the enormous business empires that privatized media, despite large financial losses (Milton, 2001). In Burma, the junta began privatizing state-owned businesses in anticipation of the 2010 elections by passing their control into the hands of senior generals and their cronies (Mietzner, 2011). The centralization of power that characterizes authoritarian rule is often seen later in the development of a few strong media conglomerates with intimate relations with the military and political elite (Voltmer, 2013)—a pattern Myanmar is following. The popular 7 Day Journal, for example, is owned by the son of former foreign minister Win Aung; The Messenger Journal is owned by the son of the chair of the powerful Union Election Commission; and the daughter of ex-lieutenant general Khin Maung Than owns the Hot News Journal (Ko Htwe & Williams, 2014). MRTV4 is a joint venture between the Ministry of Information and the privately owned Forever Group, whose chief executive officer, Win Maw, is reportedly close to the former minister of information, Kyaw San. SkyNet is a direct-to-home satellite service owned by Shwe Than Lwin Company, whose chairman, Kyaw Win, is reportedly close to the president and has strong ties to the military. Burmese tycoon Tay Za, whose father was a lieutenant colonel and worked for the Ministry of Industry, is a powerful owner in the telecommunications industry. The country’s Internet infrastructure has largely been controlled by Redlink, which is owned by the son of Thura Shwe Mann, a former junta member and, until a recent shakeup, speaker of the lower house of parliament. Myanmar's current media landscape is characterized by “big media ownership concentrated among a small coterie of people from the former regime or those closely connected to it” (Ko Htwe & Williams, 2014, para. 10).