Recognition comes as army junta and China dominate Burmese info house
WASHINGTON – Radio Free Asia (RFA) has received two Nationwide Edward R. Murrow awards for chronicling the struggles dealing with younger individuals from post-coup Myanmar. The popularity for this protection comes as RFA was pressured to droop a lot of its news-gathering operations because of the U.S. Company for International Media’s unlawful cancellation of its grant and RFA’s unsure future.
“It’s laborious to consider that proper now, Myanmar’s media is dominated by its army junta and China,” stated Bay Fang, RFA President and CEO. “Difficult these narratives by means of hard-hitting, fact-based reporting has been RFA’s mandated mission by the U.S. Congress.
“These awards function a stark reminder of RFA’s crucial position within the Asia-Pacific area at the same time as lots of our language companies, together with RFA Burmese, have gone silent.”
The multimedia function Myanmar’s Gen-Z combating for a nation’s future, produced final November, consists of movies, pictures and textual content profiling the challenges and resilience of the era coming of age after the February 2021 army takeover. An RFA group primarily based outdoors the nation returned to Myanmar to talk to individuals on the entrance strains in a single japanese area to study their tales – and their hopes for the revival of their blood-stained nation. Greater than three years of combating has displaced greater than 3 million individuals contained in the nation, and refugees proceed to spill throughout borders to the west, south and east. Whereas the army maintains management of the nation’s largest cities, anti-junta forces have made unprecedented territorial positive factors.
A 2023 survey of Myanmar discovered greater than 5.1 million Myanmar adults accessed RFA content material commonly both on-line or by means of shortwave broadcasts.
The awards can be introduced by the Radio Tv and Digital Information Affiliation in New York on the night of October 13.
State of play at RFA: Till March, RFA was one of many solely worldwide retailers to have a sustained in-country presence for the reason that 2021 army coup. RFA’s Burmese Service was pressured to cease operations after the USAGM in March 2025 illegally cancelled the grant that funds Radio Free Asia. At current, 90 p.c of RFA’s employees has been both placed on unpaid go away or has resigned. RFA continues to combat the unlawful termination of its grant funds. The matter is at present being litigated within the DC Circuit Court docket of Appeals, with a listening to scheduled for late September.
