Burmese Language
President creates interim press council
An interim press council will form in June following a presidential order aimed at dealing with media regulations before the country’s new media law is adopted.
Government’s Information Minister Kyaw Hsan instructed representatives from several independent press associations to nominate six people each from their organisations to participate in the new council.
The minister made the announcement yesterday during a meeting at the state-run Myanmar [Burma] Radio and Television’s headquarters.
He said the council would work to protect media freedom in the country under existing laws and to ensure the press abides by the 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Law and the 12 press scrutiny policies, which forces publications to submit their articles to censors before being published.
The council’s responsibilities are to protect the interest of the people, the State and sovereignty from being harmed by the press media – similar mandates that were given to state’s censorship board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division.
The press council has also been asked to provide the government with suggestions regarding issues involving regulations that infringe on the fourth estate’s rights, communication with international press organisations and training to improve media workers within the country.
The Information Department director Ye Tint and Tint Shwe, head of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, also attended the meeting.
In the past year, Burma’s media environment has enjoyed a relaxation of several of the former junta’s draconian censorship laws. Journals have published controversial interviews and taken on government leaders. However, without a new media law, editors and journalists are still vulnerable to harassment and prosecution.
In April, the Myanmar Post Global was punished and prevented from printing its supplementary pages for two weeks after the publication failed to submit articles to censors before they were printed.
Tags: media, Ministry of Information, newspapers, reform
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Zimbabwe which formed coalition in 2009 between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.now it is 2012,they still have nothing.
Burmese people do not expect too much.
http://www.voanews.com/zimbabwe/…/Zimbabwean-Media-Exp... – Zimbabwe
Media must not be above the ‘STATE’. There must be no power without accountability. Freedom of expression is not freedom of treason. Freedom does not come free. it comes with responsibility.
Well done President U TheinSein. We support you all the way.
Regulated media will be good for Burma. But regulation must not be in the same way as under BSPP> Understand?
What is Im Par Yar? So ridiculous. Transliteration makes Burmese people very poor at pronouncing English words. Dee moe cray see for ‘democracy’ for example.
Also such terms as ‘ethnic nationalities, only prove how ignorant politicians are.
The entrie country needs massive education: in science and technology, history -of Burma and rest of the world, politics and other humanities.
The less they know the more they talk, spreading false consciousness and disunity amongst the people.
And the more they censor.
Free and IGNORANT media can be very dangerous to Burma.
When it comes to liberty and Authority, there is no better writing than John Stuart Mill’s ” On Liberty”.
Mill wrote; ” The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature feature in the portion of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England”.
Now in modern time, the struggle between Liberty and Authority are every where around the world, especially when it comes to freedom of speech. In countries such as US and Canada, freedom of speech is protected by constitution rather than violating freedom of speech by press scrutinity council such as in Burma.
By very basic common sense, no human will burn down his or her own house, the same way it goes no journalist will create civil unrest or critize the country constitution if the constitution or the government is upholding the highest standard of governence. So why are there press sensor board if there is court of law. If a journalist is proven guilty by reporting wrong facts or inflating his or her own agenda into the news, that journalist will not survive in his or her career as a journalist. Because, people will not trust that kind of journalism any longer. We do not have to look far away, for example look at government mouth piece news paper such as “News Light of Myanmar”, the credibility of that news paper is at the failing state.
In chapter 2 of Mill’s writing, Mill argue that “The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government”. For Burma, isn’t it time to against to the government for controlling the press?Freedom of speech is not for the government or organization or individual to control. If everything what we speak is to be control, why are we even say “Freedom of Speech”? We should say it “Control Speech” rather than “Freedom of Speech
There is one vrey important argument made by Mill that I should share ” If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. The peculier evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to supress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worsefor being common.
It is the duty of the governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure of being right.