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Thomson Reuters Foundation ran its first ever 'Making TV News' course in Yangon this year.
It's often called Asia's last frontier market and by the large numbers of foreign business types strolling through the lobbies and bars of Yangon’s many smart hotels it appears there is a kind of gold rush in Myanmar today. Two years after the half-century dictatorship government came to an end, an unprecedented democratic transition is underway, and with it, huge potential markets are opening up. It’s a very exciting time to be delivering a Thomson Reuters Foundation training course in the capital.
Hosted at Yangon's Local Resource Centre, 15 early career television reporters, producers, presenters and programme directors gathered for a week to share ideas and learn new skills. Facilitated by Royston Martin and legendary Vietnamese cameraman, Nguyen Van Vinh, the workshop had one key message; "It's all about good journalism".
With this core take-home idea readily agreed by the participants, the five days became a fascinating mix of practice and theory, with groups working daily to produce powerful visual stories on a wide range of subjects. Even in Myanmar, where connectivity and mobile use lag behind the rest of Asia, the internet and online reporting were repeatedly mentioned, and both trainers had a valuable chance to learn more about the local media landscape. With journalists from the state broadcaster, its international arm and three private, independent networks there was no shortage of information and debate.
Although censorship laws have been largely eased, Myanmar’s censorship bureau - the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) - has not been disbanded and still wields power because it can still suspend any weekly that publishes “forbidden” content. A locally-based foreign journalist said that without a law providing the media with effective protection, journalists are still in danger of over-censoring themselves, following habits that evolved during decades of government intervention.
In the week we were there, Myanmar announced the winners of a landmark telecommunications auction, forging ahead with plans for huge investment from Qatar and Norway despite opposition from some members of Parliament and confusion surrounding the lack of a national law for the industry. The result was followed by calls from some Buddhist groups for the plan to be boycotted, on the grounds that Qatar is a Muslim country. At the same time, AP reported that Myanmar's government had banned that week's issue of Time magazine because of a cover story about a Buddhist monk accused of fueling recent religious violence in the country.
State television announced Tuesday that the decision was made "in order to prevent the recurrence of racial and religious riots".
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