Mizzima recently received a secret document detailing the Information Minister's discussion with other ministries regarding the censorship, control and distribution of information regarding government offices.
The following are excerpts of a circular issued by the Information Minister to all ministries on the coordination of press censorship on governmental and departmental news.
2. In this IT age, tactful 'pre-emptive' action taken by governmental departments in releasing their news is better than the total control and blackout of the news.
3. The private media cover the government departments' news by gathering the required news by all possible means and writing commentaries and features when they cannot get official news released by the departments concerned. In these cases, frequent objections, elaborations and clarifications were found to be made by the departments concerned. Sometimes they have to take action against the media is such instances.
(a) In the press censorship policy adopted, positive writing on government departmental news has been allowed. Thus the government departments should understand this situation to some extent and should cooperate with the private media for the benefit of their departments.
(b) Since the people want to know the progress of work being performed by the government departments, they should form an information committee for the occasional release of official news on the work being conducted by them for the benefit of state and people. In this way, the people can get in-depth information on what work is being done for the long term benefit of the state and people, what is their progress and what are their future plans, etc. By doing these works, the people will come and cooperate more with the government departments in their work. The people will trust the transparency of the state by seeing this occasional news released officially by the government departments and it will also deter rumors being circulated among the people. Government departments can release this official news either by inviting media themselves or through our Information Ministry. At present, the Yangon (Rangoon) City Development Committee (YCDC) and People's Police Force (PPF) have established their own press committees for the release of official news through these committees. Thus the media can easily get the official, confirmed news from them and cover this news in their media. This system is found to be successful and functioning smoothly.
(c) If the departments concerned have some news which is to be withheld, concealed, and censored and not to be circulated publicly to the people, they should inform the Information Ministry in advance by written form, then our ministry will control the release of this news in desired form by using appropriate means. Therefore the ministries should coordinate with us in releasing information from time to time in accordance with their needs.
(d) Moreover, the ministries should have 'contact points' concerning the media for the verification, confirmation and clarification of official news released by the ministries and departments.
