The state, the military, and the market: Capture in the new Burmese media landscape For two years—2012 and 2013—a heady period of growth and experimentation swept the media sector. As Yangon Journalism School founding director and chief trainer Ye Naing Moe recalls, print media embraced new freedoms and independence, and, although practitioners struggled against entrenched self-censorship, journalism became more hard-hitting. At the same time, the professional divide between the print and broadcast sectors deepened. The crony broadcasters continued to protect the establishment, including the niches and interests they had carved out in the pre-transition period. The newly independent print sector struggled to do watchdog journalism and to build businesses.6 Yet, after a somewhat promising start, in 2014 nascent media freedoms came under threat, with journalists arrested and media organizations harassed (PEN America 2015). The quasi-civilian administration continued to use the Ministry of Information and state media, as well as its alliances with crony media and the military, to maintain its influence and control. An opaque legal environment, inadequate legal reforms, and a captured judiciary enabled the rollback on freedoms.7 In October of that year, five members of Eleven Media were charged with criminal defamation after they published an article alleging that the Ministry of Information had paid more than market value for printing presses. In June 2015, 17 of Eleven’s staff members were charged with criminal contempt of court after publishing testimony from its own defamation trial. Fourteen of its staff were convicted and fined.8 Given Eleven Media’s reputation for attacking the quasi-civilian administration and supporting Aung San Suu Kyi, these court cases were widely viewed as politically motivated. Esteemed writer and PEN Myanmar founder and former president Ma Thida notes that in the wake of the court cases, Eleven Media’s coverage “quieted” down.9 In 2015 Burma was No. 9 on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ list of the world’s 10 most censored countries, below China and above Cuba. Among the reasons cited: media enterprises had special registration; laws continued to ban news considered insulting to religion, disturbing to the rule of law, or harmful to ethnic unity; and national security-related laws were used to threaten and imprison journalists who reported on sensitive military matters (Committee to Protect Journalists 2015). Later that year, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory in the November parliamentary elections. Its elections manifesto promised media freedom (2105 Election Manifesto 2015). The Ministry of Information and media control To inaugurate his first day as NLD Information Minister, Pe Myint is said to have worked late into the night editing the state daily, The Global New Light of Myanmar. The next day the front page featured, for the first time, a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi. Information Minister Pe Myint is a writer and former member of the Myanmar Interim Press Council (Lun Min Mang et al. 2016). Although media practitioners 63