The repercussions would be too severe for the recently appointed head censor, retired Maj Tint Swe, and his team.
“Bribing only helps to have your journal edited faster,” says the journalist. “It does not help sensitive stories pass.”
Burma’s leading sports publications use this method to ensure that reports of the evening’s big match are available first thing in the morning, a factor which has helped magazines dedicated to football become the highest selling in the country.
Not paying these additional bribes can mean a delay of a few days. When the PSRD took the last of Burma’s newspapers, The Myanmar Times, under its wing in November 2004, the paper was forced to move its deadline forward two days to allow the censors sufficient time before publication. With the former head censor of the newspaper, Brig-Gen Thein Swe, in jail as a high-ranking member of the disbanded Military Intelligence, The Myanmar Times was suddenly forced to deal with the PSRD. As its editors soon acknowledged, bribery was going to become a fact of life.
With all of Burma’s written press now under its jurisdiction, the PSRD has an even greater stranglehold on Burma’s media and access to the country’s richest publication—The Myanmar Times charges advertising rates up to 10 times higher than competing journals and receives considerable funding from the Tokyo-based Sasakawa Foundation.
Not surprisingly, a censorship board in the ascendancy is bad news for Burma’s already much-maligned press.
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