Editorial: Clear-Eyed and Unbowed, DMG Enters Its Second Decade

05 Jan 2022

In any given nation, there will be government and the governed. That is why the role of the press, a nation’s fourth pillar, first emerged. The term “fourth pillar” (aka “fourth estate”) refers to a hoped-for equal standing among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government and the media, all of which are tasked with working for the benefit of the people. 

As a member of the fourth estate, Development Media Group (DMG) has seen its share of difficulties over the years. Over the course of a full decade, in fact: DMG will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of its founding on January 9, 2012, this weekend. 

Through the years, this news organisation has also garnered ample praise and criticism from both government and the governed. We have learned firsthand that as more criticism is directed at a news outlet, the more the safety of its journalists becomes an everyday concern.  

Just last month, freelance reporter and photographer Ko Soe Naing was arrested while photographing International Human Rights Day commemorations on December 10. He died four days later while in military custody.  

The number of journalists arrested since February’s military coup has been rising steadily, with dozens detained over the past 11 months. Many reporters and editors have left the profession out of fear for their lives and the lives of their family members. Ko Soe Naing paid the ultimate price for his press affiliation, but many of his fellow journalists have faced legal threats and other efforts to silence them, even if their lives — so far — have not been in immediate danger.  

“Myanmar has catapulted in the rankings of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual census of jailed journalists, the repressive upshot of a democracy-suspending February 1 coup that saw authorities suppress news coverage of their harsh clampdown on anti-military protesters,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said last month, “making the now military-ruled Southeast Asian nation the second worst jailer of journalists, after China.” 

DMG and our staff have been the subject of multiple lawsuits brought by authorities over the content of our reporting, which we stand by fully in each case. In December 2020 and again in January of last year, DMG reporters were targeted in two separate lawsuits, facing erroneous allegations of defamation. Two of the three DMG journalists named in these lawsuits went into hiding. They were not the first from DMG to do so, however: In May 2019, DMG Editor-in-Chief Aung Marm Oo went to ground after Special Branch police in Sittwe opened a meritless case against him under the Unlawful Associations Act.  

Since the military takeover on February 1, media elsewhere in Myanmar have felt similar and growing pressure. The fourth Estate is staring down the barrel — sometimes quite literally — of an existential peril not seen in more than a decade. As DMG enters its second decade, we are determined to move forward despite the difficulties faced in the past, present and future.  

DMG considers weighty questions about democracy, free speech and human rights to be within its editorial purview, and DMG has certainly ruffled feathers for speaking out on such matters. We have also seen the power of the press in smaller but no less important ways, such as when a reporter is contacted by a needy family that says they received an influx of donations from people who had read about their plight in a DMG article.  

These are the stories behind the stories that fortify our resolve, as DMG marks its 10-year anniversary with cautious optimism and a firm resolve to continue our storytelling, giving voice to the voiceless and speaking truth to power.