Myanmar’s journalists will take to Twitter and Facebook in their battle to beat press restrictions and deliver breaking news of today’s by-elections that for many will be the biggest story of their careers.
The vote — the first contested by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and likely to propel her into parliament — is set to pose a host of challenges for news editors from the country’s long-censored media.
All private news publications are weekly, after the previous military rulers nationalized dailies half a century ago and “everybody wants to be a Monday paper this week,” said Thiha Saw, editor of Open News, one of a number of papers to have applied for permission to print a day after the by-elections.
Those newspapers not shifting their print runs will rely on their burgeoning social media pages to provide readers with up to date coverage.
“Our paper will be [published] after the election, so we will post on Facebook and our Twitter account, so we will update all the news every hour after the polling stations open,” said Nyein Nyein Naing, executive editor of 7Day News, one of the country’s biggest weeklies with an estimated readership of 1.5 million.
Until last year, prominent coverage of Aung San Suu Kyi — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” — was almost unheard of and people who spoke to reporters were taking a real risk.
Front page pictures of the Nobel prize-winning opposition leader are now commonplace, while coverage of some other previously taboo subjects is also allowed after a new regime loosened censorship as part of wide-ranging reforms that have taken observers by surprise.
Weeklies are still subject to pre-publication scrutiny that is described by media rights organizations as among the world’s most draconian, but Nyein Nyein Naing said newspapers were increasingly deciding not to send sensitive stories to the censors.
“We are just trying to push our boundaries a little bit. We do something one week and nothing happens, so we do more the next week,” she said, indicating the latest edition of the paper, which carried a front page story about the controversial decision by authorities to postpone voting in three constituencies in Kachin State due to ongoing ethnic unrest in the northern region.
She said when it comes to breaking news online, editors publish what they want.
“For the Facebook and Twitter, we don’t think about censorship at all, we just put everything that we have got.”
She said 7Day News had become increasingly reliant on Facebook to reach its readership.
A story posted on the 7Day page of the social media Web site about electricity blackouts, an increasing problem during the summer months, had more than a hundred comments and 165 shares in just two hours — no mean feat in a country where only a fraction of the population has access to the Internet.
However, while censors might not stop papers covering the election in real time — the Internet itself could pose a challenge in a country beset by outages during sensitive periods.
“We all are worried about the Internet connection. Not only me but other journalists who are running their stories through the Internet,” said Nyein Nyein Naing.
She added that her reporter could not send pictures during a recent Aung San Suu Kyi trip to the far north because the connection was down.
“I don’t think that would be coincidentally,” she said when asked if the authorities were behind the outage.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel