While bad things are still perpetrated by bad regimes, one important thing has changed for obnoxious despots — they can’t hide their bastardry from the rest of the world any more.

The events currently unfolding in Burma are a perfect example. Up until recently, the brutal actions of a military government against its own people would have been hidden from the gaze of rest of the world behind a wall of closed-down TV and radio stations, telephone blackouts and harsh censorship. But this week Burma’s ugly underbelly exploded onto the world’s television screens, websites and newspapers, and there was very little the Burmese military junta could do to stop the flow of appalling PR.

Much of this coverage is being masterminded and distributed by The Irrawaddy — the irrepressible website and magazine published since 1992 by Burmese citizens living in exile — which is supplying what it describes as “clandestine pictures and video footage that confirm the extent of the tragedy now unfolding in Burma” to a wide range of TV stations and publications like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.

“Despite efforts by the reclusive regime to seal off its cowed people from the outside world, ” explains The Irrawaddy, “pictorial evidence of the crimes now being committed in the junta’s name is getting out, thanks in large measure to the ingenuity of young people with the high-tech know-how to sidestep official attempts to gag them”.

For an inspirational reminder of how and why independent media matters so much, click here.