More press freedom for Burma's media

23 July 2012 Last updated at 21:14 ET By Lewis Macleod BBC Monitoring

Cautious reforms being introduced by Burma's President Thein Sein are freeing up the rigid controls on the media.

Although repressive laws remain technically in force, practical guidelines have given print, television and internet journalists considerable leeway to report on everything including controversial political questions.

Information Minister Kyaw Hsan says a new media law is being drafted that will abolish censorship and replace it with a self-regulating Press Council.

After criticism in the exiled media that journalists were not being consulted, Kyaw Hsan invited some Burmese media players back home to help work on the draft with additional assistance from UNESCO, the UN cultural agency.

By the time she was 14, Myo Myo already knew that she wanted to be a journalist.

She is eagerly anticipating the government's revision of Burma's media law.

''I want more press freedom,'' said the 31-year-old who worked for a weekly newspaper in Rangoon, and then the Myanmar Times.

She recently spent three months in Singapore on the Asia Journalism Fellowship programme under the Temasek Foundation and the communications school at the Nanyang Technological University.

''I've made up my mind that I will spend my life in media industry.''

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More press freedom for Burma's media