Media organisations help Burma democracy group map election coverage

International media organisations are working with democracy and rights network the Burma Partnership to assess the impact of Burma's first election in 20 years.

The organisations have joined forces to create the Burma Election Tracker. Pre-election and election day reports and now news from after the event are mapped, which the Burma Partnership says shows the elections as "a completely flawed process that exploited the widespread climate of fear in Burma to retain military rule".

News organisations working on the election tracker initiative include Democratic Voice of Burma, The Irrawaddy and Burma News International. The partnership is working with media organisations, human rights groups and networks within Burma to overcome restrictions to press freedom and reporting from the country.

"The Election Tracker website is powered by data gathered through many different channels, including interviews with citizens, stories from trusted networks inside Burma and those coming from the international diaspora. The map also includes reports from Burma's exile media, whose stories come from their own inside networks as well as reporters based on Burma's borders. These media outlets include The Irrawaddy, Democratic Voice of Burma, Mizzima, and Burma News International, among others. They have graciously allowed us to add their stories to the map," a spokeswoman for the Burma Partnership told Journalism.co.uk.

Burma has a history of restricting foreign media and prior to the election the country's Election Commission said it would not allow more foreign journalists in to report. In the past week reports suggest that two Australian journalists have been deported from the country while working on a documentary about media in south east Asia, while a Japanese journalist was detained during the election and later deported.

At the time of writing 328 reports had been collected and can be filtered by date, geographical area and issue.

"If Burma were a truly free and democratic country, with an uncensored media and open communications networks, news about the elections would be immediately available to its citizens and the international community. However, given that Burma is absolutely unfree, and these elections are incontrovertibly unfair, the communities behind Burma Election Tracker will dedicate their efforts throughout the month to provide viewers with what the regime has tried so hard to suppress: a true picture of what really happened during the elections on 7 November 2010," says the Election Tracker site.

The last election in Burma was in 1990 when foreign media were allowed in to report on the events. It was won by the opposition party led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi but the result was not recognised by the ruling military junta.

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