Myawady Group (MWD)

The Myawady Group is the Tatmadaw’s own media network, comprising television, radio and print outlets owned and operated by the military rather than by any civilian ministry. Myawady TV, abbreviated MWD, was commissioned on 27 March 1995 to mark Armed Forces Day and was the second television station established in Myanmar after MRTV. It added digital channels from 2010 and expanded its digital portfolio in 2012 following completion of a new broadcasting station in Nay Pyi Taw. Myawady Daily launched on 2 April 2011, shortly after the swearing-in of the new nominally civilian government that formally ended direct junta rule; the paper’s own masthead records its publication start date as 1 April 2011.

The network is run by the Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare, under the Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Army). The directorate marked its 79th anniversary in April 2026 at the No 2 Tatmadaw TV Broadcasting Unit in Ottarathiri Township, Nay Pyi Taw, in a ceremony attended by the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, who afterwards viewed programme broadcasting at the Myawady TV Nay Pyi Taw station and its master control room. Official reporting of that event describes the directorate’s four core responsibilities as public relations, psychological warfare, mobilisation and public education.

Media assets

Television: MWD, MWD Variety, TVM, MWD Education Knowledge and Sports, Channel Light, Golden Land, WAF

Publishing: Myawady Daily and Yadanabon newspapers, together with periodicals including Ngwetayi Magazine, Thuta Kabar Journal and Sports View Journal (အားကစားမြင်ကွင်း), as listed on the Myawady portal library in 2026. The portal also carries an English-language edition. Earlier records list Thutha Alin and the Tayza Aurora children’s imprint; SMM did not confirm their current status.

Radio: Thazin FM, Star FM

Ownership and governance

MWD’s outlets are owned and operated by the Tatmadaw. Governance runs through the military chain of command rather than through any civilian department: the network is administered by the Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare within the Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Army). No board, charter, stakeholder representation or civilian oversight mechanism exists.

Interviews conducted for SMM with local journalists in May 2024 indicate that the military retains absolute control over managerial appointments, with decisions on leadership, staffing and editorial direction made internally by the military hierarchy.

The directorate’s leadership changed during the review period. Brig-Gen Ye Yint Aung succeeded Maj-Gen Zaw Min Tun as Director of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare by 27 March 2026. Zaw Min Tun had headed the directorate since February 2021 while also serving as Deputy Minister of Information and chief of the Tatmadaw True News Information Team.

The military’s information structure also expanded. On 31 January 2026 the authorities formed a new body tasked with publishing material in multiple languages to counter independent media narratives, established by gazette and led by Deputy Defence Minister Maj-Gen Aung Myo Thant. Its members include senior officials from the Office of the Judge Advocate General and the Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare, alongside representatives of the ministries of Information, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, and Transport and Communications. The body places military and civilian information organs within a single structure.

Source of funding and budget

SMM identified no publicly available stand-alone MWD budget or audited financial statements.

Journalists and media experts interviewed for SMM in May 2024 indicated that more than 80% of MWD’s expenditure is covered directly by the Tatmadaw, with the remainder believed to derive from advertising and commercial services. Those figures are neither published nor independently verifiable. Military expenditure in Myanmar is not disclosed at a level permitting the network’s costs to be identified.

Editorial independence

Editorial autonomy across the MWD network is absent. Outlets follow a top-down editorial line set by military command. Journalists with direct knowledge of internal operations told the Media and Journalism Research Center in May 2024 that content is routinely curated to reflect and reinforce the Tatmadaw’s narratives and priorities.

The institutional position makes the finding structural rather than inferential. MWD is administered by a directorate whose own stated remit includes psychological warfare, and its output is produced within that function.

No statutory framework guarantees editorial independence for military-run media. A Broadcasting Governing Body operates under the Ministry of Information, chaired by the Deputy Minister for Information, and officials of the Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare participate in its coordination meetings alongside commercial broadcasters, so MWD’s own administering body sits within the regulatory forum rather than under it. The statutory Broadcasting Council established by the 2015 Broadcasting Law was brought under military control by the November 2023 amendment, which redefined the council as a body formed with members of the military authorities, replacing a definition that had described it as autonomous and independent of government, the judiciary and broadcasters. SMM identified no independent external oversight mechanism capable of protecting MWD’s editorial autonomy from the Tatmadaw chain of command. An independent self-regulatory alternative, the Independent Press Council Myanmar (IPCM), was formed in exile in December 2023 and represents independent Myanmar media rather than state-controlled outlets.

The network’s role has been consistent since the February 2021 coup, when MWD was used to announce the military takeover. The Diplomat’s June 2026 analysis of the state’s information operation places Myawady Daily alongside the Global New Light of Myanmar at the formal end of a layered structure, distinguishing the military’s own organ from the civilian state newspaper while treating both as elements of a single campaign built around the political transition.

Distribution has been contested internationally. In December 2025, following civil-society complaints, Facebook and MediaFire terminated accounts belonging to Yadanabon Newspaper, a DPRPW-run publication linked to Myawady Newspaper, which had been using MediaFire to host PDFs shared through its Facebook account. The same round of platform actions removed Twitch livestreams of 14 MRTV and Myanma Radio channels and the MITV stream. Facebook’s action followed its February 2021 ban on military-controlled state and media entities.

Domestic broadcast reach remains substantial, and in areas where internet access is throttled or shut down, military and state broadcast channels retain disproportionate weight in the information environment.

AI and digital policy

MWD distributes through terrestrial digital television, satellite, radio and online platforms, including the myawady.net.mm portal and social media channels, several of which have been removed by platform operators for policy violations since 2021.

SMM identified no publicly accessible MWD policy governing generative artificial intelligence, synthetic media, automated production, human verification or disclosure of AI-generated content to audiences, and no national framework establishing such standards. The January 2026 multilingual body’s stated purpose of countering independent media narratives across languages indicates institutional investment in content production capacity, but no public information establishes what technologies it employs.

Classification rationale

MWD remains classified State-Controlled (SC), meeting all three conditions of the State Media Matrix.

It is predominantly state-funded. No budget is published, but SMM interview evidence indicates that more than 80% of expenditure is met directly by the Tatmadaw. Commercial income exists but is unquantified and has not been shown to provide financial autonomy.

It is state-owned and state-governed. MWD is owned by the Tatmadaw and administered by a directorate of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Army). Appointments, staffing and management run through the military chain of command, and no board, charter or civilian oversight mechanism exists.

Its editorial agenda is subject to state control. Editorial direction is set by military command, the administering directorate’s stated functions include psychological warfare, and no independent statutory safeguard or external accountability mechanism was identified.

MWD’s position within Myanmar’s media system differs from that of MRTV and NPE in one respect the classification does not capture on its own. Those organisations are ministry-administered civilian state media. Their institutional forms also survived the 2025–26 political restructuring, although the ministry’s political leadership changed. MWD differs because its governance runs through the Tatmadaw command structure rather than through the Ministry of Information, and the directorate that runs it continued through the dissolution of the State Administration Council, the elections and the installation of a new government, replacing its own head on its own timetable. The January 2026 multilingual body indicates convergence rather than separation, placing military and civilian information organs within a shared structure directed at the same objective.

August 2026