Also included in incidents are actions taken against newsrooms, news organisations and their
websites and online spaces, independent associations of professional journalists and press clubs. These
include the cancellation of publishing licences, raids on news outletsβ premises and their prosecution
and the blocking of websites.
In this series of updates, a journalist is an individual who is engaged in gathering and reporting,
taking photographs or video footage, editing or publishing and presenting news that has been produced using professional and independent journalistic standards and methods.
A journalist may be in news work as a livelihood, whether paid or not, in different types of
media and platforms, and have different types of professional arrangements, such as being full-time
staff, freelance, a stringer or occasional contributor.
Included in the journalists covered by the monitoring work are individuals who have been
described as being former journalists or who have left their news organisations. This is for two reasons:
first, being or having been a journalist in Myanmar by itself is a risk, and persons have been targeted or
arrested because of a past affiliation with a news outlet; second, safety considerations can require an
individualβs description as a former journalist.
βJournalistsβ in this monitoring work likewise include citizen journalists, given that many
news organisations in Myanmar work with them on a regular basis. In the Myanmar context, the term
βcitizen journalistβ typically refers to a person who contributes news β whether in the form of raw
content, including photographs or video, or full stories. He or she may or may not be paid for contributions and may or may not have had some news training.
After the 2021 coup, news outlets began using material sent voluntarily by citizen journalists
after restrictions and arrests made news-related activities dangerous for professional journalists.
Update on Journalism and Media Safety in Myanmar
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