The danger of words: major challenges facing Myanmar journalists on reporting the Rohingya conflict

Abstract

Due to the fighting between the Myanmar Army and the Rohingya militant group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in August 2017, hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh. The Myanmar Army was accused of committing torture, atrocities, arson and gang-rapes against the Rohingya Muslims during its operations to wipe out the ARSA. When covering this conflict, Myanmar journalists faced criticism from international media and monitoring groups that most of their stories were one-sided and lacked multiple voices. To discover which barriers have impeded Myanmar journalists in their reporting, I conducted in-depth interviews with 17 reporters and editors from 10 media outlets and also drew from my own experiences during 14 years as a Myanmar journalist. The analysis of interviews showed that journalists faced restricted access to the conflict area, limited cooperation from the government and the army, pressures from local Rakhine people, difficulty accessing Rohingya Muslims, barriers in the verification processes, personal safety concerns, and ethical dilemmas. The results suggested that as long as freedom of press is restrained and safety of messengers is threatened, journalists will find it hard to practice peace journalism or conflict sensitive journalism to the fullest. In addition, as previous studies on conflict reporting suggest, this study also revealed that some journalists favored what they believed to be in the national interest whenever they found themselves in an ethical dilemma.