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Published: March. 29, 2012 at 2:00 PM

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar, March 29 (UPI) -- Officials say Myanmar's notoriously strict 50-year-old censorship laws may be a thing of the past with a pledge from the Ministry of Information to end to them.

Myanmar, which has some of the strictest censorship laws in the world, has not had a free press since 1962. While the censorship laws have recently loosened, censors still have the power to nix stories on sensitive subjects, such as the formation of labor unions.

Voice of America reported Ye Htut of the Ministry of Information said in a recent workshop on media freedom censorship laws would be scrapped by the end of the year, as the new government drafts media law to replace them.

"We want to maintain the stability and law and order in our country. In the previous government before 1962, there's a press freedom in our country," Htut said. "And instead of informing the general public, media themselves created a crisis."

While the end to censorship has created a buzz among journalists, they worry about the cutthroat competition that could ensue.

"It's going to be a bloodbath," said Ross Dunkley, publisher of the English language weekly, The Myanmar Times. "I mean, that's the absolute truth ... you get some [daily newspapers] up and running, then I figure you're going to see in the first year of the dailies at least 100 publications die."

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Myanmar pledges end to censorship laws

Burma has some of the strictest censorship laws in the world, but the new government has started drafting a new media law that is anticipated to make major changeson the media environment under reform in Rangoon.

Newspapers bearing the once banned image of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi are fairly common nowadays in Rangoon. But the 50-year-old censorship laws, a relic of the socialist era, are still in effect.

We want to maintain the stability and law and order in our country in the previous government before 1962 theres a press freedom in our country. And instead of informing the general public media themselves created a crisis," he said.

Exile media groups also attended. For some, it was their first visit home in 23 years. Toe Zaw Latt is the bureau chief of the Democratic Voice of Burma.

"Yesterday the information minister was here. He openly said they are willing to change and take reform, which was very encouraging. He said the state's role of media development is to facilitate, not to control, which is quite an amazing statement from a responsible party," he said.

Though editors and journalists already anticipate the end of censorship, the newfound freedom is accompanied by uncertainty in a competitive market for publishers like Ross Dunkley of the English language weekly The Myanmar Times.

"It's going to be a bloodbath. I mean, that's the absolute truth is that you get some [daily newspapers] up and running, then I figure you're going to see in the first year of the dailies at least 100 publications die," he said.

Some topics are still sensitive, such as the formation of labor unions. Last week, a story in the Myanmar Times about the first meeting of what will be Burma's new independent journalists union was cut by censors.

The only daily newspapers, such as The New Light of Myanmar, are published by the state. But new liberal laws could mean independent daily news for the first time since 1962.

The union is still drafting its constitution, and it is still unclear what will replace the ministry of information as an independent regulatory body. Associated Press correspondent Aye Aye Win is one of the co-founders of the new union.

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Burma Pledges to Loosen Notorious Censorship Laws

Ever since its launch in 1970, Gary Trudeaus Doonesbury comic strip has pushed the envelope with frank, daring and funny examinations of contemporary issues.

A couple of weeks ago Doonesbury pushed the envelope a little too far for a lot of newspapers, including The Oregonian and Bends only daily, The Bulletin.

The offending strips focused on a batshit-crazy Texas law that requires women seeking an abortion to see ultrasound images of the fetus. In some cases obtaining such images requires inserting a probe-like instrument (called a shaming wand in the Doonesbury strip) into the womans vagina.

The Doonesbury strips contained some blunt language words like transvaginal and genitals but no words or images that were obscene. Nevertheless, the editors at The Bulletin and The Oregonian and at about 60 other American newspapers decided they were too hot to handle. They chose instead to publish old alternative strips provided by Trudeaus syndicate.

In a column last Sunday, Bulletin Editor John Costa tried to explain the decision. It wasnt that The Bulletin had any problem with the political position Trudeau was taking, Costa assured his readers. The Texas law, he wrote, is one that The Bulletin, a pro-choice newspaper, would vehemently oppose editorially if it were proposed in Oregon. (Thats comforting, and we intend to hold Mr. Costa to his word if the Oregon Legislature ever becomes loony enough to consider such a bill.)

No, Costa went on to say: The reason Doonesbury couldnt taint the sanctified pages of The Bulletin was that elements of it were not suitable for the predictable readership of the comics page. I didn't think it appropriate that the image of a doctor displaying the instrument he was about to insert in a woman was appropriate for the many youngsters who read the comics pages.

The Oregonian offered a similar line: The strip went over the line of good taste and humor [by] using graphic language and images inappropriate for a comics page.

The were-doing-it-to-protect-the-kiddies excuse is lame for a couple of reasons. One is that the days when the funny pages were populated by characters like Little Orphan Annie and Donald Duck are long gone; most of the strips that appear today clearly are written for adult, or at least teenage, readers. Also its hard to picture young children being mature and sophisticated enough to be devotees of Doonesbury and if they are, theyre probably not strangers to words like vagina and genitals.

We strongly suspect the real reason The Bulletin and The Oregonian decided to yank Doonesbury was fear of catching flak from their more prudish readers. And no doubt they would have.

But so what? A newspaper that doesnt ever take heat from its readers isnt doing its job. If being universally popular is an editors aim in life he should quit and become a game show host.

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Censorship Isn't Funny

Google and Twitter have rejected calls by a UK parliamentary committee to introduce measures to stop users breaking privacy injunctions, saying it would be impossible to censor content effectively.

The cross-party select committee of MPs and peers said in a report that the government should consider introducing legislation that would force Google to censor its search results to block material that a court has found to be in breach of someone's privacy.

Requiring search engines to screen the content of their web pages would be like asking phone companies to listen in on every call made across their networks for potentially suspicious activity, Google said on Tuesday.

However, the company said it already removes specific pages deemed unlawful by the courts and provides a number of simple tools anyone can use to report such content.

Twitter said it would continue to operate its current system of evaluating legal requests to remove material on a case-by-case basis.

Facebook said it was still reviewing the report by the cross-party committee set up by the prime minister in May last year to examine privacy and free speech after the controversy over the increasing use of so-called "super-injunctions" like the one taken out by footballer Ryan Giggs.

Google

Although the Manchester United footballer had taken out a super-injunction to prevent the newspapers from reporting allegations that he had an extramarital affair with model Imogen Thomas, details of the injunction and the alleged affair were widely reported on social networking sites.

The committee said on Tuesday that new privacy laws were not necessary, but called for an enhanced press regulator, with powers to fine newspapers. It also singled out internet companies for criticism, according to the Financial Times.

The committee said internet companies, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, had presented numerous challenges to the rule of law in the UK.

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Twitter and Google reject UK calls for censorship

An editor-in-chief of the Georgian edition of Forbes, Revaz Sakevarishvili, said he was quitting the magazine citing systematic attempts of censorship and meddling into editorial independence by a publisher company.

Forbes Georgia is one of those 21 international licensee editions which the publishing and new media company, Forbes, has worldwide.

Forbes Georgia was launched in December 2011 and its publisher is Media Partners Georgia, which, according to Forbes, is a publishing house established by partners that have more than ten years of industry experience in Caucasus and Central Asia."

Sakevarishvili said in a statement on March 27, that the most recent case of censorship attempt by co-founder of Media Partners, Gagik Yeghiazarian, came when Forbes Georgia wanted to make a focus of its next issue Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian opposition politician, who featured in the Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires earlier this month with an accompanying lengthy story profiling the billionaire-turned-politician.

Sakevarishvili alleged that after backing off from his initial attempt to completely remove story about Ivanishvili from Forbes Georgias next issue, Yeghiazarian then started meddling in preparing questions for an interview with Ivanishvili and after preparing a story, Sakevarishvili claimed, Yeghiazarian tried to directly and roughly censor the story.

Maia Mirijanashvili of Media Partners Georgia told Civil.ge on Tuesday that the company would put a statement in response to Sakevarishvilis allegations on Forbes Georgia website on March 28.

Sakevarishvili suggested that Yeghiazarians friendship with Gela Bezhuashvili, chief of the Georgian intelligence service, was largely the reason behind censorship attempts from the publisher.

Former editor-in-chief of Forbes Georgia also said that his email correspondence with Yeghiazarian contains evidence to prove his allegations about censorship attempts from the publisher and would make them public if needed.

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Forbes Georgia Editor Quits Citing 'Censorship'