Just over four years ago, a video journalist with exile-media agency Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) filmed a Burmese soldier pushing Japanese reporter Kenji Nagai to the ground before shooting him dead at point-blank range. The clip, among hours of footage captured by DVB during the anti-government uprising that became known as Burma's ''Saffron'' revolution, was broadcast around the world. It spoke powerfully of the brutality of the Burmese regime, as well as the need for an independent media that could scrutinize it from beyond its reach.
Today, Burma's exile media agencies - from the best-known outfits like DVB, The Irrawaddy and Mizzima to the small agencies that serve Burma's ethnic minorities - face severe funding difficulties. A US$300,000 embezzlement scandal has tarnished DVB's reputation and resulted in the departure of most of its undercover video journalists, crucial to the organization's operations.
And a surprising and rapid expansion in press freedom conditions inside Burma itself has prompted questions over the future of the exile media in general. Will Burma's next revolution be televised - and if so, by whom?
When President Thein Sein made an unprecedented call in his March 30 inaugural address for the role of the media as the ''fourth estate'' to be respected, Burma watchers could have been forgiven for cynicism. The former general was speaking in a country, renowned for having one of the most restricted and censored media environments in the world.
As Thein Sein spoke, around 25 journalists were locked up in jails, a small proportion of the some 2,000 political prisoners whose presence in the country could not be acknowledged in print. The regime completely dominated the local broadcast media, filling the airwaves with pro-military propaganda.
And yet Thein Sein's words have not proved to be completely empty. Change has come, and at a pace that has surprised many analysts. The Burmese regime's risible mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar, has dropped slogans accusing the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia - which beam Burmese-language radio programs into the country - of constituting a ''sky full of liars attempting to destroy [the] nation". The websites of the DVB and The Irrawaddy have, following years of censorship, been unblocked - though less than 1% of Burma's citizens have access to the Internet.
In Naypyidaw, foreign and local reporters have been allowed - with restrictions - to cover parliamentary proceedings. And officials, previously answerable to no one but their superiors, have made themselves more available to the media in recent months. In mid-October, Deputy Labor Minister Myint Thein gave an interview to a DVB reporter on the subject of Burma's migrants in Thailand. It was the first time a minister had given an interview to an organization that just months earlier the regime was denouncing as "killer media" bent on "generating public outrage."
Perhaps most significant have been changes at the government's infamous censor board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD). In June, the government announced that publishers would be allowed to print stories on sports, entertainment, technology, health and children's literature without PSRD approval.
And the censors are now applying a lighter touch to scrutiny of the country's 350 weekly and monthly news journals, allowing a range of topics to see the light of day that would formerly have been chopped, including interviews with exile-media editors, opposition politicians, dissidents and human-rights activists. Images of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, too, are now permitted.
"The relaxation of censorship has been significant and occurred faster than I think anyone in the industry expected," one Rangoon-based editor, asking to remain anonymous, told Asia Times Online by e-mail. "Journalists now have more scope to criticize or quote people criticizing both the government and private sector. They are able to cover issues that were previously considered too sensitive, such as political prisoners. There is also a lot more advocacy - calling on the government to do this or that, which I think is also positive."
The social and economic conditions of the country, too, are increasingly fair game. "You can say how poor the Burmese people are now," said Toe Zaw Latt, Chiang Mai bureau chief for DVB. "They were never poor before."
While most analysts welcome the changes, some point out that decades of censorship have left many Burma-based journalists under skilled and unaccustomed to exercising press freedom. "The government has said that journalists need to take more responsibility for what they are writing if censorship is to be removed but the majority of those in the industry have no formal training," the editor pointed out.
"There is little understanding of issues such as contempt and defamation and in some cases adherence to accepted journalism conventions, such as attribution of sources, is poor."
Khin Maung Nyo, a Rangoon-based freelancer with almost 20 years' journalism experience, said that in times past editors could rest easy knowing the censors were responsible for excising controversial material. Now, they are must take the tough decisions familiar to editors everywhere, knowing that officials will hold them responsible for what they print. "It's much more stressful now," he said. "We're talking about the relationships between tycoons and the government, about drugs and arms dealing. A year ago we couldn't do that."
The changing press environment, combined with developments in other spheres, has led some observers to conclude real change is afoot in Burma. In August, Thein Sein met Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw. That meeting led Suu Kyi to tell supporters there was an "opportunity for change", according to a report in this newspaper.
The following month, Thein Sein appeared to make a rare concession to public opinion in suspending the multi-billion dollar Myitsone Dam project following a campaign by environmental activists and local media. In October, a mass prisoner amnesty saw the release of around 200 political prisoners, with at least three journalists among them. Further releases are believed to be in the pipeline.
Mixed messages
But while many analysts, diplomats and international nongovernmental organizations have been seduced by the new president's reform program, other observers remain wary. They question the intentions of a man who rose to the highest echelons of a military that ruled Burma with an iron fist for almost half a century.
Others point to a still unresolved battle within the regime between supposedly reform-minded ministers such as the president and House Speaker Shwe Mann and more hard-line elements led by Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo as grounds for caution.
Bracketed by many in that hardline stable is Minister of Information Kyaw Hsan, the man responsible for Burma's media environment. Press freedom would bring "more disadvantages than advantages," Kyaw Hsan recently told the Lower House in Naypyidaw in a speech in which he likened the media to dangerous "red ants" that could bite Burma if allowed to run riot.
At the same time, 14 DVB journalists remain in prison, including 27-year-old Hla Hla Win, sentenced to 27 years in jail in 2009 after being caught interviewing monks for a story. In September, 21-year-old Sithu Zeya had his eight-year jail sentence extended by a decade under the vague and often-abused Electronics Act. "That's why we are very cynical about the 'changes' for the media," said Toe Zaw Latt.
And many issues crucial to the debate over the new democratic Burma that is supposedly emerging remain off limits for media inside the country. In particular, the controversial 2008 constitution, pushed through in a referendum held in the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, is beyond criticism. Yet this is the charter that provided a blanket amnesty to all members of the previous, murderous ruling junta and that enshrines the military-dominated National Defense and Security Council with executive power above that of the president.
Conflict in the country's outlying ethnic minority states, a fight that has largely defined the previous 60 years of Burma's history, is still scarcely acknowledged in the local press. On June 9, the Burmese Army launched an offensive against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), breaking a ceasefire that had lasted 17 years.
Driving the conflict was the KIA's refusal to transform itself into a Border Guard Force, as demanded by the military's roadmap to democracy, as well as the KIA's control of strategic areas in Kachin State slated for Chinese funded hydropower projects.
The exile media, led by the Kachin News Group and the Shan Herald Agency for News, have reported horrific abuses perpetrated by the Burmese Army in Kachin State and northern Shan State since the conflict began. In just one recent case, KNG reported the kidnap and gang rape by "dozens" of Burmese soldiers of a 28-year-old Kachin woman near the Chinese border.
Kachin Women's Association Thailand, a rights group, documents many more such cases in its October report "Burma's Cover-Up War: Atrocities Against The Kachin People". For the Burmese military, rape remains a weapon of war in the new democratic era.
Yet the conflict remains off-limits for media based inside the country. Naw Din, editor of Kachin News Group, said Yangon-based reporters have been forbidden by government authorities from travelling to the conflict zone. He argues that the international community has been duped into taking its eyes off what is happening in Kachin State by focusing on happenings in Rangoon and Naypyidaw.
"The government is lying to Western governments when they say they are reforming the country. This is a trick," he said. "All this time, they've been attacking the Kachin people."
David Mathieson, senior researcher on Burma for Human Rights Watch, said the Burmese Army enjoyed a "culture of recreational sadism" in ethnic areas of the country. "Until the majority of the media inside can freely and openly report on this stuff, I think there's always going to be a role for the exile media," he said.
Aung Zaw, editor and founder of the exile-run Irrawaddy, expressed similar sentiments. "Sometimes people say 'Aung San
Suu Kyi's photo can be published so we've got press freedom.' But this is a very tiny baby step," he said. "What about the victims of human rights violations, rape cases and prisoners inside the prisons - can they write about that? Nobody can write about these things…These stories can only be written by media outside."
The PSRD recently spiked an interview Aung Zaw gave to the Myanmar Times despite allowing an earlier interview to appear in a Burmese-language journal.
The exile media can claim credit for breaking many stories of real significance - news that could never make it by the state's censorship board within Burma. In June 2010, DVB broke news of the country's secretive nuclear program, a story that made the front pages of newspapers and was aired by al-Jazeera around the world. Mizzima's report in August on oil driller Transocean's ties to Burma's drug lords made the front-page of The New York Times and led to a US government investigation into the firm.
Trouble in exile
But while Burma's continued need for exile media is evident, the organizations are under severe financial pressure as donors - mainly the governments of Sweden, Norway and Denmark and the US-based National Endowment for Democracy and Open Societies Initiative - cut their funding for their operations. Partly responsible is general budgetary belt-tightening that is putting pressure on all Western donor organizations. At the same time, some donors are diverting money from exile groups to organizations inside Burma.
Last year, the Irrawaddy was forced to axe its monthly print news magazine after the Danish government withdrew its funding. A very public spat with the Danish Embassy revealed diplomats' frustrations with the organization. A leaked e-mail written by a Danish diplomat claimed the Irrawaddy's staff had broken a contractual commitment to attempt to become more sustainable.
"They seemingly prefer the easier option to be totally dependent on donor contributions," the message claimed. The magazine responded with an open letter accusing the content and timing of the leak of being "both erroneous and inflammatory".
This year, DVB was forced to cancel much of its programming after having its funding slashed by $1 million. Since then, things have gotten worse for the agency. In September, it emerged that three Mae Sot-based staff members responsible for DVB's inside network may have embezzled $300,000 in funds meant to pay reporters inside the country. Most of the organization's video journalists have since left DVB and formed a new organization, "Burma VJ", aiming to sell footage to outside media organizations on a freelance basis.
In a bid to restore confidence, DVB executive director Aye Chan Naing and his deputy Khin Maung Win, though not involved in the alleged crime, have stepped down while an investigation is carried out. The scandal could not have come at a worse time for exile-run media as donors continue to tip the balance of funding in favor of organizations inside the country.
For some observers, the exile media's problems are not entirely undeserved. One Yangon-based analyst said the exile media, with its strong ties to the Suu Kyi-led pro-democracy movement, had failed to acknowledge the existence of a burgeoning number of people inside Myanmar who had lost faith in her ability to improve the lot of the people.
While the limitations on media inside the country meant the exile media still performed an essential role, they often functioned more as "radical pamphlets" than independent news organizations. "We need them to exist but we need them to get better," he said.
Indeed, while times are tough for exile groups, a burgeoning civil society movement inside the country is increasingly benefiting from donors' largesse. In February, Mikael Winther, the Danish ambassador to Burma, Thailand and Cambodia, told Agence France-Presse that Denmark had not changed its policy on Burma. "But since we now have more access inside than we had before, we do support poverty-oriented projects for people suffering inside Burma," he said.
One organization making waves on the inside is civil society non-profit Myanmar Egress, run by Nay Win Maung, a policy analyst who spent time at Yale University and a former journalist who advocates engagement with the government in order to develop the country's economy.
His "Third Force" positions itself as an alternative to Burma's generals and Suu Kyi's democracy movement and has won the support of many diplomats and international humanitarian groups inside the country. Egress's activities include research and training in civil society activism and journalism. There is little love lost between Nay Win Maung and exile-media journalists, who note his close ties with the government and his family's military pedigree.
Some observers caution against donors abandoning the exile media altogether while the country's future remains uncertain. "Four years ago, DVB was the darling of the international community after the way that they covered the uprisings in 2007," said Mathieson. "Now with all the openings and the signs of change, people are thinking that Egress is the one. But you don't need to direct all your money in one direction. The debate needs to be had now to make sure all the eggs don't go into one basket."
If Burma continues on its current trajectory - and that is by no means certain - competition for donor money between organizations within and outside the country will increase. "There will continue to be a role for exile media in the foreseeable future but it's up to them to keep moving with the times and make themselves relevant," said the Yangon-based editor. "I think donors will demand higher standards if they are going to keep funding these organizations because there are now many more options inside the country."
Staff at an international media-development organization that supports the training of Burma's journalists said that a level of "complacency" and "aid dependency" had developed in some exile media organizations. Many had overstretched and quality had suffered as "personalities" carved out increasingly large fiefdoms, the organization claims.
In order to survive, argues the organization's project director, these agencies will need to focus on doing what they do best. "They need to look to themselves to adjust to that situation by actually saying 'what is our niche here?' And what of our previous aspirations do we need to just let go?"
The long-term goal for the exile media is to return to a free Burma. There is some way to go before exile journalists will feel it is safe to go home. "The right time and the right moment will come. But we'll go home with dignity," said Aung Zaw. "We won't kowtow, bow our heads and go back to Burma and look like prisoners. I'm not going back like that. Nobody's going back like that… What I've been doing for the last 20 years, I could face a hundred years in prison. It's all illegal. If I could do what I've been doing here when I go back to Burma, I will."