In a democratic country, the government couldn’t have newspaper of its own, as the press is an institution of its own to point out shortcomings, including other irregularities, to the public to form its own opinion, which would go a long way to influence opinion pools and also the voting trend.

In short, the government is only allowed to clarify its policy implementation in factual manner and not in anyway promote any political party, including the governing party or parties that is running the administration. If the party or parties that formed the government is making use of the government facilities to promote its party’s or their parties’ policies to gain more electoral votes in the election, this will become a fraud and could be sued in the constitutional court.

Thus, even a government having a newspaper as its own is against “freedom of press”, as it could be biased.

The NLD-led regime should let the New Light of Myanmar and the likes become private than keeping them as government enterprises, to promote real press freedom, so that it would be able to check on all the institutions and reports irregularities, for the benefit of the people.

Link to the story:  Questioning the government’s commitment to media freedom