State-owned News and Periodicals Enterprise (NPE) is the largest publisher in Myanmar. It was established in 1965 as Newspapers Supervisory Committee to become News and Periodicals Corporation in 1972 and News and Periodicals Enterprise in 1998. The publisher runs the newspapers Myanma Alinn (established back in 1914), Kyemon (established in 1957) and The Global New Light of Myanmar (a newspaper first published in 1964 under the name of The Working People’s Daily). NPE also runs Myanmar News Agency, the country’s official news agency whose history goes back to 1962 when the agency was established under the name The Revolutionary Council News Agency. As of 2017, NPE has also been running Myanmar Digital News, a news portal created by a privately owned company (Megalink Advanced Technologies) with the goal of bringing together content from all of NPE’s print publications as well as to publish original content created by the portal.
Media assets
Publishing: Myanma Alinn, Kyemon, The Global New Light of Myanmar
News agency: Myanmar News Agency (MNA)
News portal: Myanmar Digital News
State Media Matrix Typology: State-Controlled (SC)
Ownership and governance
NPE is owned and operated by the Ministry of Information in Myanmar. NPE’s management, including its general director, is appointed by the ministry.
Source of funding and budget
There is no information publicly available about the annual budget of NPE. According to local journalists and experts, although most of the NPE’s publications are encouraged by the ministry of information to generate revenues from advertising, most of the budget of NPE (over 80%) comes from the government.
Editorial independence
NPE’s publications are known in Myanmar as government mouthpieces. Their mission is to promote the government’s viewpoints and interests. According to the ministry’s website, the mission of the NPE’s publications is “to focus on publishing newspapers to be in line with the vision of the Ministry of Information to inform, to educate and to entertain.”
There is no domestic statute and no independent assessment/oversight mechanism that would guarantee the editorial independence of NPE’s outlets.
October 2023