RFA wins two National Murrow awards for Myanmar coverage

[ad_1] 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 compelled 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 arduous to imagine 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 way 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 essential position within the Asia-Pacific area whilst lots of our language companies, together with RFA Burmese, have gone silent.”

The multimedia characteristic Myanmar’s Gen-Z preventing for a nation’s future, produced final November, contains movies, photos and textual content profiling the challenges and resilience of the era coming of age after the February 2021 army takeover. An RFA workforce based mostly exterior the nation returned to Myanmar to talk to individuals on the entrance traces in a single jap area to find out about their tales – and their hopes for the revival of their blood-stained nation. Greater than three years of preventing 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 repeatedly both on-line or by way of shortwave broadcasts.

The awards will probably be offered 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 shops to have a sustained in-country presence for the reason that 2021 army coup. RFA’s Burmese Service was compelled to cease operations after the USAGM in March 2025 illegally cancelled the grant that funds Radio Free Asia. At current, 90 % of RFA’s employees has been both placed on unpaid go away or has resigned. RFA continues to struggle the unlawful termination of its grant funds. The matter is at the moment being litigated within the DC Circuit Court docket of Appeals, with a listening to scheduled for late September.