What Do Journals Tell Their Readers?

When we in Myanmar say a “gja ne” (journal) we mean a weekly news magazine or a newspaper that is published weekly, usually in the format of a tabloid and containing about thirty-six to sixty pages.

These papers are important sources of information for the Myanmar people. In such a rumour-ridden country, when someone tells a news story to another person, he will invariably be asked, “Where did you hear that?”, or “Are you sure? Who told you so?”, and if he replies that he has read it in the so-and-so journal, he will to a certain degree be believed.

The journals do not contain propaganda, like the government newspapers or radio and TV stations, nor do they contain criticism of the government, like opposition media operating abroad, but they do contain interesting local news that is closely related to the daily lives of the people, such as that a number of new telephones are to be sold by the telecommunications department at a lower price than before; that petrol is to be sold by private gas stations; that unwholesome food-colouring materials have been found in pickled tea leaves; or that there have been mudslide and floods in such-and-such an area. That is why people buy journals to read and then spread the information they find there to other people. When the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) presented a TV programme called “What are the journals telling? (gja ne dweigabapjo: neithale:), I found it to be a most appropriate title, precisely reflecting the interest that Myanmar people have in the weekly newspapers — the JOURNALS.

In this chapter I describe the progress that has been made during the last two years by Myanmar journalists in improving their journals by extending the area of reportage into the previously forbidden territory of politics. First, however, I would like to describe very briefly the state of the news media in Myanmar in the preceding years.

A Brief History of the News Media before 2008

A recent history of the news media in Myanmar should begin with U Ne Win. After seizing power in a military coup in 1962, General Ne Win abolished not only the political parties but also the newspapers, except for a few that were nationalized and turned into government propaganda papers.