media and censorship essay

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15.4 Censorship and Freedom of Speech

Learning objectives.

• Explain the FCC’s process of classifying material as indecent, obscene, or profane.
• Describe how the Hay’s Code affected 20th-century American mass media.

Figure 15.3

Attempts to censor material, such as banning books, typically attract a great deal of controversy and debate.

Timberland Regional Library – Banned Books Display At The Lacey Library – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

To fully understand the issues of censorship and freedom of speech and how they apply to modern media, we must first explore the terms themselves. Censorship is defined as suppressing or removing anything deemed objectionable. A common, everyday example can be found on the radio or television, where potentially offensive words are “bleeped” out. More controversial is censorship at a political or religious level. If you’ve ever been banned from reading a book in school, or watched a “clean” version of a movie on an airplane, you’ve experienced censorship.

Much as media legislation can be controversial due to First Amendment protections, censorship in the media is often hotly debated. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press (Case Summaries).” Under this definition, the term “speech” extends to a broader sense of “expression,” meaning verbal, nonverbal, visual, or symbolic expression. Historically, many individuals have cited the First Amendment when protesting FCC decisions to censor certain media products or programs. However, what many people do not realize is that U.S. law establishes several exceptions to free speech, including defamation, hate speech, breach of the peace, incitement to crime, sedition, and obscenity.

Classifying Material as Indecent, Obscene, or Profane

To comply with U.S. law, the FCC prohibits broadcasters from airing obscene programming. The FCC decides whether or not material is obscene by using a three-prong test.

Obscene material:

• causes the average person to have lustful or sexual thoughts;
• depicts lawfully offensive sexual conduct; and
• lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Material meeting all of these criteria is officially considered obscene and usually applies to hard-core pornography (Federal Communications Commission). “Indecent” material, on the other hand, is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be banned entirely.

Indecent material:

• contains graphic sexual or excretory depictions;
• dwells at length on depictions of sexual or excretory organs; and
• is used simply to shock or arouse an audience.

Material deemed indecent cannot be broadcast between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., to make it less likely that children will be exposed to it (Federal Communications Commission).

These classifications symbolize the media’s long struggle with what is considered appropriate and inappropriate material. Despite the existence of the guidelines, however, the process of categorizing materials is a long and arduous one.

There is a formalized process for deciding what material falls into which category. First, the FCC relies on television audiences to alert the agency of potentially controversial material that may require classification. The commission asks the public to file a complaint via letter, e-mail, fax, telephone, or the agency’s website, including the station, the community, and the date and time of the broadcast. The complaint should “contain enough detail about the material broadcast that the FCC can understand the exact words and language used (Federal Communications Commission).” Citizens are also allowed to submit tapes or transcripts of the aired material. Upon receiving a complaint, the FCC logs it in a database, which a staff member then accesses to perform an initial review. If necessary, the agency may contact either the station licensee or the individual who filed the complaint for further information.

Once the FCC has conducted a thorough investigation, it determines a final classification for the material. In the case of profane or indecent material, the agency may take further actions, including possibly fining the network or station (Federal Communications Commission). If the material is classified as obscene, the FCC will instead refer the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has the authority to criminally prosecute the media outlet. If convicted in court, violators can be subject to criminal fines and/or imprisonment (Federal Communications Commission).

Each year, the FCC receives thousands of complaints regarding obscene, indecent, or profane programming. While the agency ultimately defines most programs cited in the complaints as appropriate, many complaints require in-depth investigation and may result in fines called notices of apparent liability (NAL) or federal investigation.

Table 15.1 FCC Indecency Complaints and NALs: 2000–2005

Violence and Sex: Taboos in Entertainment

Although popular memory thinks of old black-and-white movies as tame or sanitized, many early filmmakers filled their movies with sexual or violent content. Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery , for example, is known for expressing “the appealing, deeply embedded nature of violence in the frontier experience and the American civilizing process,” and showcases “the rather spontaneous way that the attendant violence appears in the earliest developments of cinema (Film Reference).” The film ends with an image of a gunman firing a revolver directly at the camera, demonstrating that cinema’s fascination with violence was present even 100 years ago.

Porter was not the only U.S. filmmaker working during the early years of cinema to employ graphic violence. Films such as Intolerance (1916) and The Birth of a Nation (1915) are notorious for their overt portrayals of violent activities. The director of both films, D. W. Griffith, intentionally portrayed content graphically because he “believed that the portrayal of violence must be uncompromised to show its consequences for humanity (Film Reference).”

Although audiences responded eagerly to the new medium of film, some naysayers believed that Hollywood films and their associated hedonistic culture was a negative moral influence. As you read in Chapter 8 “Movies” , this changed during the 1930s with the implementation of the Hays Code. Formally termed the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, the code is popularly known by the name of its author, Will Hays, the chairman of the industry’s self-regulatory Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), which was founded in 1922 to “police all in-house productions (Film Reference).” Created to forestall what was perceived to be looming governmental control over the industry, the Hays Code was, essentially, Hollywood self-censorship. The code displayed the motion picture industry’s commitment to the public, stating:

Motion picture producers recognize the high trust and confidence which have been placed in them by the people of the world and which have made motion pictures a universal form of entertainment…. Hence, though regarding motion pictures primarily as entertainment without any explicit purposes of teaching or propaganda, they know that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking (Arts Reformation).

Among other requirements, the Hays Code enacted strict guidelines on the portrayal of violence. Crimes such as murder, theft, robbery, safecracking, and “dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc.” could not be presented in detail (Arts Reformation). The code also addressed the portrayals of sex, saying that “the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing (Arts Reformation).”

Figure 15.4

As the chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, Will Hays oversaw the creation of the industry’s self-censoring Hays Code.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

As television grew in popularity during the mid-1900s, the strict code placed on the film industry spread to other forms of visual media. Many early sitcoms, for example, showed married couples sleeping in separate twin beds to avoid suggesting sexual relations.

By the end of the 1940s, the MPPDA had begun to relax the rigid regulations of the Hays Code. Propelled by the changing moral standards of the 1950s and 1960s, this led to a gradual reintroduction of violence and sex into mass media.

Ratings Systems

As filmmakers began pushing the boundaries of acceptable visual content, the Hollywood studio industry scrambled to create a system to ensure appropriate audiences for films. In 1968, the successor of the MPPDA, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), established the familiar film ratings system to help alert potential audiences to the type of content they could expect from a production.

Film Ratings

Although the ratings system changed slightly in its early years, by 1972 it seemed that the MPAA had settled on its ratings. These ratings consisted of G (general audiences), PG (parental guidance suggested), R (restricted to ages 17 or up unless accompanied by a parent), and X (completely restricted to ages 17 and up). The system worked until 1984, when several major battles took place over controversial material. During that year, the highly popular films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins both premiered with a PG rating. Both films—and subsequently the MPAA—received criticism for the explicit violence presented on screen, which many viewers considered too intense for the relatively mild PG rating. In response to the complaints, the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating to indicate that some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.

Another change came to the ratings system in 1990, with the introduction of the NC-17 rating. Carrying the same restrictions as the existing X rating, the new designation came at the behest of the film industry to distinguish mature films from pornographic ones. Despite the arguably milder format of the rating’s name, many filmmakers find it too strict in practice; receiving an NC-17 rating often leads to a lack of promotion or distribution because numerous movie theaters and rental outlets refuse to carry films with this rating.

Television and Video Game Ratings

Regardless of these criticisms, most audience members find the rating system helpful, particularly when determining what is appropriate for children. The adoption of industry ratings for television programs and video games reflects the success of the film ratings system. During the 1990s, for example, the broadcasting industry introduced a voluntary rating system not unlike that used for films to accompany all TV shows. These ratings are displayed on screen during the first 15 seconds of a program and include TV-Y (all children), TV-Y7 (children ages 7 and up), TV-Y7-FV (older children—fantasy violence), TV-G (general audience), TV-PG (parental guidance suggested), TV-14 (parents strongly cautioned), and TV-MA (mature audiences only).

Table 15.2 Television Ratings System

Source: http://www.tvguidelines.org/ratings.htm

At about the same time that television ratings appeared, the Entertainment Software Rating Board was established to provide ratings on video games. Video game ratings include EC (early childhood), E (everyone), E 10+ (ages 10 and older), T (teen), M (mature), and AO (adults only).

Table 15.3 Video Game Ratings System

Source: http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

Even with these ratings, the video game industry has long endured criticism over violence and sex in video games. One of the top-selling video game series in the world, Grand Theft Auto , is highly controversial because players have the option to solicit prostitution or murder civilians (Media Awareness). In 2010, a report claimed that “38 percent of the female characters in video games are scantily clad, 23 percent baring breasts or cleavage, 31 percent exposing thighs, another 31 percent exposing stomachs or midriffs, and 15 percent baring their behinds (Media Awareness).” Despite multiple lawsuits, some video game creators stand by their decisions to place graphic displays of violence and sex in their games on the grounds of freedom of speech.

Key Takeaways

• The U.S. Government devised the three-prong test to determine if material can be considered “obscene.” The FCC applies these guidelines to determine whether broadcast content can be classified as profane, indecent, or obscene.
• Established during the 1930s, the Hays Code placed strict regulations on film, requiring that filmmakers avoid portraying violence and sex in films.
• After the decline of the Hays Code during the 1960s, the MPAA introduced a self-policed film ratings system. This system later inspired similar ratings for television and video game content.

Look over the MPAA’s explanation of each film rating online at http://www.mpaa.org/ratings/what-each-rating-means . View a film with these requirements in mind and think about how the rating was selected. Then answer the following short-answer questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• Would this material be considered “obscene” under the Hays Code criteria? Would it be considered obscene under the FCC’s three-prong test? Explain why or why not. How would the film be different if it were released in accordance to the guidelines of the Hays Code?
• Do you agree with the rating your chosen film was given? Why or why not?

Arts Reformation, “The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Hays Code),” ArtsReformation, http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html .

Case Summaries, “First Amendment—Religion and Expression,” http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/ .

Federal Communications Commission, “Obscenity, Indecency & Profanity: Frequently Asked Questions,” http://www.fcc.gov/eb/oip/FAQ.html .

Film Reference, “Violence,” Film Reference, http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Romantic-Comedy-Yugoslavia/Violence-BEGINNINGS.html .

Media Awareness, Media Issues, “Sex and Relationships in the Media,” http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_sex.cfm .

Media Awareness, Media Issues, “Violence in Media Entertainment,” http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/violence_entertainment.cfm .

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Media Censorship and Its Impact

The freedom of information, the press and free speech is arguably an important human rights deeply rooted in the structures of democracy. Democracy, which largely derives its origin from the US, is one of the legal rights that should be provided and protected in the modern context (Goldberg, Verhulst and Prosser 207).

Under the UN Declaration of Human Rights, it is a requirement that every person to have the right to freedom of expression and opinion. In addition, the First Amendment of the US constitution prohibits the state to make any law that abridges the people’s freedom of speech and free press.

The media is arguably one of the most important tools that provide people with information as well as channels for expression and making speech. As such, any law that interferes with free media amount to violation of these legal provisions. Nevertheless, some information may be harmful, objectionable, sensitive and incorrect (Goldberg, Verhulst and Prosser 209).

Media censorship has become one of the most important tools through which the government attempts to control the type of information given to the people in order to suppress harmful communication.

Although media censorship is important in avoiding the harmful effects of uncontrolled communication, the government mediated censorship on the media is too much, which amounts to violation of the right to free press, expression and communication. Arguably, there is too much censorship on the media, which keeps important information relating to current political events away from the public.

The US has been enacting laws to control the negative effects of harmful, objectionable, sensitive and politically incorrect information. While this is important for the best interest of the citizens, it is worth noting that some of the enacted laws are excessively suppressing the media.

For instance, the communications decency Act (CDA) of 1996 was enacted with an aim of regulating indecency and obscenity in cyberspace, especially when information is available for children (Wittern-Keller 56). However, the government used this act to suppress the media.

For instance, in 1997, the Supreme Court found the CDA unconstitutional in the case of Reno v. ACLU. When delivering ruling in this case, Justice Stevens held that the act was placing excessive burden on the media, which was unacceptable and unconstitutional (Nelson 88).

The government has also been attempting to suppress the media based on the claims of protecting children rights. For instance, in 1998, the US enacted the Child Online Protection Act, which restricted companies from feeding the minors with harmful materials on the internet (Wittern-Keller 79).

However, the Act was exerting too many restrictions on the free media. For instance, the Supreme Court found this act unconstitutional because it was hindering free speech among the adults, even when child protection from the information is assured.

Over the decades, the American government has used a number of ways to suppress the media through censorship. Currently, too much media censorship through federal and state laws attempts to control the information passed through press. The first amendment to the US federal constitution concerns with the protection of people’s rights to religion, speech, press and peaceful assembly.

Adopted in 1791, the First Amendment is one of the ten amendments that constitute the American Bill of Rights. One of the main purposes of a free media is to provide citizens with information about the things taking place in the government, public and corporate sectors (Gillers 279). The government’s objective of suppressing information, especially which related to political and economic sectors, amounts to violation of the two statutes.

One of the major reasons why the government tends to suppress information is to prevent public anger, which might lead to protests and insecurity. Currently, the office of the president recognizes this. For instance, the office of the president states, “the governments should not keep information confidentially just because public officer bearers might feel embarrassed or because errors and failures might be made public”.

This is an indication that the accountability cannot be achieved without proper information disclosure. The government accepts that some information is not being made public, especially in terms of public finance. The activities taking place at the Wall Street, where allegations of corporate influence on public finance offices are common, is an example of a lack of accountability through information concealing (Gillers 281).

On its part, the government attempts to conceal this kind of information to avoid public rage. In particular, the Occupy Wall Street protests were largely blamed on the excessive media involvement, which led to deviance. Thus, the government seeks to censor the media to avoid release of incorrect information, which amounts to violation of the first amendment and freedom of information act.

Noteworthy, media censorship is important to avoid sharing of the wrong information that may mislead the public. However, using laws to censor the media may lead to over-censorship, which allows only certain government approved data made public while less-attractive but true facts fail to feature in the released news.

This amounts to violation of the freedom to free press. Over-censorship is likely to make public officers hide their activities, which might be corrupt.

In the US, military censorship is an important topic of debate. It is worth noting that information relating to national security is highly sensitive. In addition, the government has the right to hold such information because it is largely a state secret. In any government, the military bears the largest burden in protecting the countries interests and boundaries against enemies.

Control of Information about the military activities is justified. Nevertheless, military censorship in the US had often led to deflection of news that reflects poorly the people in power. For instance, censorship of the media in reporting about the American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq was partly aimed at hiding information about America’s rogue nature, which led to an unjustified war.

In fact, a lot of information about the country’s failures in finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and many instances of torture perpetrated by American and British soldiers in Iraq has been concealed under the pretence of military censorship.

On the other hand, a number of critics argue that censorship is important to restrict rogue media from perpetrating deviance, violence and lawlessness. For instance, critics argue that unrestricted release of information, especially those portraying the people in power negatively, is likely to increase the risk of retaliations by groups or countries that are affected by the information.

For instance, the recent release of information proving that American security agencies have been eavesdropping phone conversations by foreign leaders, including the German presidency, led to bitter relations and speculations between the two nations. Thus, the media must be censored to maintain positive views about the US and enhance her relations with foreign nations, especially her allied in Europe and other regions.

In addition, after the media released Abu Ghraib photos in 2004, Muslim extremists retaliated by beheading Nicholas Berg, and American contractor. They posted the video footage on the internet to show the Americans that their actions have consequences. Arguably, this could be avoided in the media was prohibited from posting Abu Ghraib photos.

In conclusion, the debate about media censorship will remain a contentious issue as long as the country has not developed laws to differentiate between positive censorship and negative concealment of information about leaders. In fact, there must be no political influence on media censorship.

Works Cited

Gillers, Stephen. “A tendency to deprave and corrupt.” Washington Law Review , 85.2, (2007): 276-88. Print.

Goldberg, David, Stefaan Verhulst and Tony Prosser. Regulating the Changing Media: A Comparative Study . New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print

Nelson, Samuel. Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism . The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print

Wittern-Keller, Laura. Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship, 1915–1981 . Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. Print

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Media Freedom: A Downward Spiral

Key findings.

• Media freedom has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade.
• In some of the most influential democracies in the world, populist leaders have overseen concerted attempts to throttle the independence of the media sector.
• While the threats to global media freedom are real and concerning in their own right, their impact on the state of democracy is what makes them truly dangerous.
• Experience has shown, however, that press freedom can rebound from even lengthy stints of repression when given the opportunity. The basic desire for democratic liberties, including access to honest and fact-based journalism, can never be extinguished.

The fundamental right to seek and disseminate information through an independent press is under attack, and part of the assault has come from an unexpected source. Elected leaders in many democracies, who should be press freedom’s staunchest defenders, have made explicit attempts to silence critical media voices and strengthen outlets that serve up favorable coverage. The trend is linked to a global decline in democracy itself: The erosion of press freedom is both a symptom of and a contributor to the breakdown of other democratic institutions and principles, a fact that makes it especially alarming.

According to Freedom House’s  Freedom in the World  data, media freedom has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade, with new forms of repression taking hold in open societies and authoritarian states alike. The trend is most acute in Europe, previously a bastion of well-established freedoms, and in Eurasia and the Middle East, where many of the world’s worst dictatorships are concentrated. If democratic powers cease to support media independence at home and impose no consequences for its restriction abroad, the free press corps could be in danger of virtual extinction.

Experience has shown, however, that press freedom can rebound from even lengthy stints of repression when given the opportunity. The basic desire for democratic liberties, including access to honest and fact-based journalism, can never be extinguished, and it is never too late to renew the demand that these rights be granted in full.

Attacks on Press Freedom in Democracies

In some of the most influential democracies in the world, large segments of the population are no longer receiving unbiased news and information. This is not because journalists are being thrown in jail, as might occur in authoritarian settings. Instead, the media have fallen prey to more nuanced efforts to throttle their independence. Common methods include government-backed ownership changes, regulatory and financial pressure, and public denunciations of honest journalists. Governments have also offered proactive support to friendly outlets through measures such as lucrative state contracts, favorable regulatory decisions, and preferential access to state information. The goal is to make the press serve those in power rather than the public.

The problem has arisen in tandem with right-wing populism, which has undermined basic freedoms in many democratic countries. Populist leaders present themselves as the defenders of an aggrieved majority against liberal elites and ethnic minorities whose loyalties they question, and argue that the interests of the nation—as they define it—should override democratic principles like press freedom, transparency, and open debate.

Among Free countries in Freedom House’s  Freedom in the World  report, 19 percent (16 countries) have endured a reduction in their press freedom scores over the past five years. This is consistent with a key finding of  Freedom in the World —that democracies in general are undergoing a decline in political rights and civil liberties. It has become painfully apparent that a free press can never be taken for granted, even when democratic rule has been in place for decades.

Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary and Aleksandar Vučić’s administration in Serbia have had great success in snuffing out critical journalism, blazing a trail for populist forces elsewhere. Both leaders have consolidated media ownership in the hands of their cronies, ensuring that the outlets with the widest reach support the government and smear its perceived opponents. In Hungary, where the process has advanced much further, nearly 80 percent of the media are owned by government allies. *

Cultivation of progovernment media is spreading to neighboring states. The leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria, until recently part of that country’s ruling coalition, was caught on video attempting to collude with Russians to purchase the largest national newspaper and infuse its coverage with partisan bias. Score declines linked to economic manipulation of media—including cases in which the government directs advertising to friendly outlets or encourages business allies to buy those that are critical—were more common across Europe over the past five years than in other parts of the world. Such tactics of influence and interference are a relatively recent phenomenon on the continent, which has generally displayed strong support for press freedom since the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago.

In Israel, one of the few democracies in the Middle East, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly excoriated investigative reporters and now faces corruption charges for allegedly offering regulatory favors to two major media firms in exchange for positive coverage. Although Netanyahu has resisted efforts to formally indict and try him on these charges, the evidence suggests that the prime minister was willing to sacrifice press freedom in order to maintain political power. Many voters apparently accepted this tradeoff in the April 2019 elections, putting Netanyahu’s party and its allies in a position to form a new ruling coalition.

India, the world’s most populous democracy, is also sending signals that holding the government accountable is not part of the press’s responsibility. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has supported campaigns to discourage speech that is “antinational,” and government-aligned thugs have raided critical journalists’ homes and offices. The media have become widely flattering of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who won reelection last month, amid allegations that the government issues directives on how the press should cover his activities and intimidates journalists who push back. The government has also been selective in the allocation of television licenses, effectively excluding unfriendly outlets from the airwaves.

In perhaps the most concerning development of recent years, press freedom has come under unusual pressure in the United States, the world’s leading democratic power. Although key news organizations remain strong and continue to produce vigorous reporting on those in office, President Donald Trump’s continual vilification of the press has seriously exacerbated an ongoing erosion of public confidence in the mainstream media. Among other steps, the president has repeatedly threatened to strengthen libel laws, revoke the licenses of certain broadcasters, and damage media owners’ other business interests. The US constitution provides robust protections against such actions, but President Trump’s public stance on press freedom has had a tangible impact on the global landscape. Journalists around the world now have less reason to believe that Washington will come to their aid if their basic rights are violated.

Fueling a Global Decline

The breakdown of global press freedom is closely related to the broader decline of democracy that Freedom House has tracked for the past 13 years. Although the press is not always the first institution to be attacked when a country’s leadership takes an antidemocratic turn, repression of free media is a strong indication that other political rights and civil liberties are in danger. Assaults on media independence are frequently associated with power grabs by new or incumbent leaders, or with entrenched regimes’ attempts to crush perceived threats to their control.

Over the past five years, countries that were already designated as Not Free in Freedom House’s  Freedom in the World  report were also those most likely to suffer a decline in their press freedom scores, with 28 percent of Not Free countries experiencing such a drop. Partly Free countries were almost equally likely to experience a gain as a decline in press freedom, reflecting the volatility of these middle performers and the complex forces influencing their trajectory. The worsening records of Not Free states, combined with the negative trend among Free countries, have driven the overall decline in global press freedom.

While populist leaders in democracies seek to secure and build on their gains by taming the press, established autocratic governments continue to tighten the screws on dissenting voices, as any breach in their media dominance threatens to expose official wrongdoing or debunk official narratives. In Russia in 2018, authorities moved to block the popular messaging application Telegram after the company refused to hand over its encryption keys to security officials. The government in Cameroon shut down internet service in the restive Anglophone region for most of last year, a heavy-handed reaction to protests and a nascent insurgency stemming from long-standing discrimination against the large Anglophone minority. In Myanmar, two Reuters journalists were sentenced to seven years in prison after a flawed trial in which the court ignored plain evidence that they had been entrapped to halt their investigation of military atrocities against the Rohingya minority; although they were recently pardoned, they were not exonerated.

The downgrades in various countries can be attributed to a range of legal, political, and economic factors, but some stand out as more concerning and pervasive. Violence and harassment aimed at particular journalists and media outlets have played some role in 63 percent of the countries with a press freedom score reduction over the past five years. The 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi was the most infamous recent case, but it was hardly unique. Journalists in El Salvador received death threats in 2015 after they uncovered stories of police abuse and extrajudicial killings. A Malian journalist who was outspoken about rampant political corruption was shot in the chest in 2017. Also that year, a Tanzanian journalist investigating the murders of local officials disappeared, and his fate remains a mystery.

Trends in press freedom differ by region. Since 2014, there has been no net change in the average press freedom score for the Americas or Asia-Pacific, and sub-Saharan Africa has seen a slight increase of 3 percent. But the average scores in the two least free regions of the world, Eurasia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), declined by 9 percent and 11 percent, respectively, while press freedom in Europe—where four out of every five countries are Free—dropped by 8 percent.

In Eurasia and MENA, the media in the past year have faced an intensification of traditional challenges. Examples include new legislative restrictions in Belarus, further arrests and convictions in Lebanon, and heightened insecurity and fatalities in war-torn Yemen. These developments illustrate the ways in which already difficult environments can grow steadily worse in the absence of meaningful international support for media independence and other fundamental rights.

Even in the regions where average scores were more stable, press freedom has come under threat in individual countries. A new privacy law in Nepal restricts collection of the personal information of any individual, including public officials, exploiting legitimate concerns about privacy to suppress media scrutiny of political leaders’ conflicts of interest or corruption. In Pakistan, security agents have allegedly warned journalists against coverage of taboo subjects, such as abuses by the military, or given reporters instructions on how to cover specific political issues. The regime in China has worked to close off the last remaining avenues for accessing uncensored information by increasing pressure on private technology companies to police the content on their platforms more assiduously.

Guiding Lights in the Darkness

The picture of global press freedom is not entirely bleak. The most encouraging examples of democratic progress over the past two years—Ethiopia, Malaysia, Armenia, Ecuador, and The Gambia—have nearly all featured parallel gains in their media environments. Among these five countries, only Armenia failed to register an improvement in its press freedom score in the same year as its initial political opening in  Freedom in the World . This correlation underscores once again the close relationship between media freedom and political change: Just as antidemocratic power grabs often involve attacks on independent media, a reformist leadership is defined in part by its willingness to accept criticism from a free press. And just as restrictions on media freedom frequently precede the erosion of other rights, the removal of such restrictions facilitates and catalyzes further democratic advancements.

The improvements in these countries also point to the resilience of independent journalism, even after years of repression. In Malaysia and Ecuador, the lifting of political pressure on the media allowed independent outlets to rebound from censorship and previously progovernment outlets to produce less obsequious coverage. In Ethiopia, outlets that had been operating from abroad were able to return to the country. In The Gambia, persecuted journalists returned from exile, and more locals have decided to enter the profession.

Media freedom can recover much more quickly after a period of authoritarian governance than some other elements of democracy, such as the rule of law. But it is also subject to rapid reversals. The Arab Spring provides a cautionary tale. Soon after the 2011 uprisings, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya all recorded improvements in press freedom in  Freedom in the World . All have since faced setbacks. Like democracy itself, press freedom is not an end state that remains secure once it is achieved—it must be nurtured and defended against the forces that oppose it.

The Media and Democracy

While the threats to global media freedom are real and concerning in their own right, their impact on the state of democracy is what makes them truly dangerous. A free and independent media sector that can keep the population informed and hold leaders to account is as crucial for a strong and sustainable democracy as free and fair elections. Without it, citizens cannot make informed decisions about how they are ruled, and abuse of power, which is all but inevitable in any society, cannot be exposed and corrected.

A review of some of the countries that have faced potential turning points in the last year illustrates how the media’s ability to support democracy depends on their freedom to operate independently.

Journalists played a key role in the April 2019 ouster of authoritarian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria, not only by reporting on antigovernment protests but also by staging their own demonstrations when major news outlets failed to give due attention to the popular movement. However, the frequent arrests of critical journalists that took place under Bouteflika have continued since his resignation, an indication that the unfolding leadership transition may be less revolutionary than many have hoped.

Before Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was removed from office, also in April, the population was accustomed to domestic news outlets that failed to provide unbiased and substantive information. Citizen journalists and exile-based outlets filled the gap, disseminating news and images largely via the internet. As frustration with al-Bashir’s misrule grew throughout the winter and he perceived the extent of the threat to his power, his regime cracked down, arresting journalists who covered mass protests and revoking the credentials of some foreign reporters. As in Algeria, journalists staged their own protests. Military commanders attempted to placate the public after al-Bashir’s arrest, announcing the end of media censorship and tacitly acknowledging that a perception of increased press freedom would help consolidate their control. But journalists are skeptical of such declarations by the junta, and they have joined other protesters in pressing for a transfer of power to civilian leaders who can oversee a genuine democratic opening.

In Venezuela, media repression has increased since the opposition-controlled National Assembly designated Juan Guaidó as acting president in January. Combined with repeated electricity blackouts, this pressure from the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro has severely hampered efforts by media outlets in the country to inform the public about political events and the ongoing humanitarian crisis. But a handful of resilient journalists have continued to disseminate news through social media, the internet, and international partners. One reporting group has developed technology to record video with low bandwidth on mobile devices and then automatically delete it after transfer to a secure server, reducing the risk of reprisals against journalists who are detained and searched. Journalists’ ability to document opposition activities as well as the brutality of the regime response has helped to galvanize international support for the democracy movement.

In order to address the information gap on the ground in Venezuela, some media outlets have also forged direct relationships with subsets of the population. Journalists enter communities that have had limited access to objective news under Maduro and report on local stories. This fosters public trust and makes residents more receptive to other impartial news. Despite these valiant efforts, however, the production of reliable, objective news that is accessible to Venezuelans remains a daunting challenge.

Armenia has made far more progress in its democratic transition in the past year, with protests leading to fresh elections and a new, reformist government. As in Sudan, most television channels initially avoided covering the mass demonstrations. But a small contingent of independent outlets, including Civilnet and Azatutyun, was able to provide steady in-depth reporting, including live streams and skillful use of social media. The information flow helped the popular movement to gain momentum, increasing pressure on establishment forces and legitimizing the rising new leadership. These outlets also helped stem disinformation spread by the former regime.

There is an obvious tension between journalists who are attempting to perform their proper democratic function and antidemocratic regimes that are determined to retain power. The innovative and courageous work of independent reporters offers hope that even in the most desperate circumstances, those who are committed to distributing information in the public interest can find a way. But these journalists alone cannot address the needs of billions of people who still have access to little more than their government’s narrative and must rely on their own instincts and observations to assess the claims of corrupt and abusive leaders.

Further Analysis

This essay is the first in a series of four on the links between media freedom and democracy.

In “The Implications for Democracy of China’s Globalizing Media Influence,” Sarah Cook looks at the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party is expanding its overseas influence operations through involvement in news reporting, content dissemination, public debate, and in some cases electoral politics outside China. Even in settings where Beijing has not yet attempted to undermine free expression and access to information, the groundwork is being laid for future interference, with insidious implications for democracy.

In “The Illiberal Toolbox for Co-opting the Media,” Zselyke Csaky analyzes the toolbox that democratically elected but illiberal leaders use to co-opt the media. She examines the legal, extralegal, and economic tactics deployed in Serbia and Hungary, both of which declined to Partly Free in  Freedom in the World  this year. The essay also describes the conditions that make media environments vulnerable to illiberal co-optation.

In “Why Social Media Are Still Worth Saving,” Adrian Shahbaz writes about the extent to which major technology platforms such as Google and Facebook have disrupted the online media ecosystem, for better and worse, around the globe. The essay analyzes how authoritarians and propagandists manipulate digital media to undermine democracy, and proposes a new partnership between tech companies and news media to support high-quality journalism.

Recommendations

The following recommendations for policymakers in democratic nations will help ensure the sustainability of independent media worldwide:

• Ensure that their actions do not excuse or inspire violations of press freedom. Democratic nations have a particularly important role to play in maintaining media freedom. Words matter, and when US officials verbally attack the press or fail to swiftly and vigorously condemn acts of repression such as Khashoggi’s murder, it sends a signal to undemocratic leaders around the world that assaults on the press and crimes against journalists are permissible.
• Take strong and immediate action against any violations of media freedom globally through press statements, phone calls, meetings, letters, and the imposition of targeted sanctions on perpetrators. This includes speaking out against violence against journalists and authorities’ failure to identify and prosecute attackers, restrictions on media access, blocking of websites, and censorship on particular topics.
• Stand up publicly for the value of a free press, and support civic education that will inform the next generation. Press freedom is one of the most fundamental pillars of American democracy, and constitutional protections in the United States are stronger than in any other country in the world. Citizens could easily forget this amid media mudslinging and incendiary commentary. Political leaders and teachers should reiterate the extent to which we all benefit from professional journalists who hold those in power to account.
• Ensure that foreign policy and assistance prioritizes support for democratic principles, including media freedom, as the foundation of national security and economic prosperity. The goal of foreign assistance is to bring recipient countries to the point that they no longer need it. In that sense, it is shortsighted for donor governments to invest funding overseas without shoring up press freedom. National security and economic prosperity are strongest in nations where democratic rights are protected, and a free press is a key watchdog of democracy. Foreign aid specifically focused on bolstering independent media by providing technical training and emergency assistance is especially needed given the threats journalists currently face. Countries that have experienced recent expansions in press freedom, such as Angola, Ethiopia, Malaysia, and Ecuador, are particularly vulnerable to backsliding and require special focus.
• Support social media as an alternative outlet for free expression in repressive environments. Innovative alternatives to state-controlled media regularly spring up on social media, including recently in Venezuela, Armenia, and Sudan. Related technology can be used to circumvent censorship and keep reporters anonymous where needed. Donor agencies should provide funding for technology that increases journalistic freedom.

The Implications for Democracy of China’s Globalizing Media Influence

• The Chinese government, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and various proxies have rapidly expanded their influence over media production and dissemination channels abroad. As a result, the CCP has enhanced its ability to interfere aggressively in other countries, should it choose to do so.

Chinese authorities influence news media content around the world through three primary strategies: promoting the CCP’s narratives, suppressing critical viewpoints, and managing content delivery systems.

• These efforts have already undercut key features of democratic governance and best practices for media freedom by undermining fair competition, interfering with Chinese diaspora communities, weakening the rule of law, and establishing channels for political meddling.
• Actions by policymakers and media development donors in democracies will play a critical role in coming years in countering the potential negative impact of Beijing’s foreign media influence campaigns.

Media coverage of China’s increasing global presence has often focused on the country’s rapidly growing economic impact, and potentially negative implications for foreign countries. These anxieties, while deserving of sober consideration and policy responses, threaten to overshadow the risks to democracy posed by the expanding global influence of the authoritarian CCP—including through its efforts to harness media outside China to advance the party’s agenda. The CCP has developed the world’s most multilayered, dynamic, and sophisticated apparatus of media control at home, while vastly expanding its ability to influence media reporting, content dissemination, public debate, and in some cases, electoral politics, outside China. And where the potential for undermining press freedom has not been activated yet, the groundwork is being laid for future influence, if—or more likely when—Beijing decides to deploy it.

The expansion of the CCP’s foreign media influence is a global campaign, and the United States is among its targets. The results have already affected the news consumption of millions of Americans. Moreover, the varied and aggressive ways in which the CCP seeks to influence media narratives abroad undermine democratic governance and electoral competition in other countries, including US allies like Taiwan. The cumulative effects of these efforts, if unchecked, could have far-reaching implications for democratic governance, press freedom, and US influence worldwide.

The Many Facets of Communist Party Overseas Media Influence

The CCP’s global media influence campaigns are multifaceted. Traditionally, they have sought to promote positive views of China and a benign perspective of the CCP’s authoritarian regime; encourage investment in China and openness to Chinese investment and strategic engagement abroad; and suppress or curtail negative coverage of China’s political system. In recent years, a new narrative has presented China’s authoritarian governance style as a model for developing countries, and in some cases simultaneously challenged the attractiveness of both democracy and US international leadership.

Promoting CCP narratives

In a 2016 speech, CCP leader Xi Jinping told state media, “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles.”[1] Even prior to Xi’s ascension to the top of the Communist Party, the Chinese government had begun investing billions of dollars to expand the global reach of state media outlets. Through a variety of news distribution partnerships and through social media, Chinese state media content now reaches hundreds of millions of people in numerous countries and languages. Efforts to more deeply penetrate foreign media markets and spread preferred CCP narratives show no sign of ebbing. A November 2018  Financial Times  investigation found that the Chinese state-run television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) provides free content to 1,700 foreign news organizations.[2] Between September and November 2018 alone, China’s official Xinhua News Agency signed news exchange agreements with wire services in Australia, Belarus, Laos, India, and Bangladesh.

The CCP also embeds its narratives in foreign media through proxies and allied figures, including Chinese diplomats, friendly media owners and journalists, and foreign politicians with business interests in China. For example, New Zealand member of Parliament Todd McClay, who attended a CCP-organized dialogue in 2017, recently referred to reeducation camps in Xinjiang as “vocational training centers,” echoing the terminology used by the Chinese government to justify the detention and political indoctrination of over one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. Similarly, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder—who has profited after leaving office by aiding German companies in their contacts with Chinese officials—dismissed the mass detentions as “gossip” in a 2018 interview with Reuters. In the developing world in particular, the CCP’s foreign propaganda efforts appear to have had some effect in boosting or retaining a positive image of China, and Xi Jinping personally.[3]

Suppressing critical viewpoints

The CCP and its agents, allies, and proxies also work to suppress critical coverage of China abroad. Chinese diplomats downplay negative coverage of China in op-eds and media appearances, particularly on topics like mass detentions in Xinjiang or the troubles facing China’s economy. Diplomats have repeatedly engaged in outright harassment of journalists in order to curb criticism, as in early 2019, when Chinese diplomats in Sweden and Russia intimidated reporters who had written critically about the country’s economy, or in support of democracy in Taiwan.[4] The Chinese government and its proxies also discourage investigative journalism into the dark underbelly of modern China or the CCP’s overseas political influence efforts by obstructing the work of foreign correspondents in China, and threatening foreign journalists with costly defamation suits in courts based in their home countries.

The CCP has also successfully co-opted media owners, who then marginalize critical reporting in their own outlets, notably in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and outlets serving the Chinese diaspora. Occasionally, this extends to English-language media,[5] as occurred in September 2018 when a partially Chinese-owned newspaper in South Africa discontinued a weekly column after its author wrote about abuses in Xinjiang.[6] Indirect pressure is also applied via proxies—including advertisers, satellite firms, technology companies, and foreign governments—which take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing, while undermining the financial viability of news outlets critical of the CCP.[7] Separately, cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to central Chinese authorities but serve the party’s aims have taken place.

Managing content delivery systems

Finally, over the past five years, technologies that deliver content to news consumers have opened new avenues for Chinese government influence abroad. In Africa, the Chinese television distribution firm StarTimes—which has become a key player in the transition from analog to digital television in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and elsewhere—holds the power to determine which stations its viewers can access. Although privately owned, StarTimes has benefited from a close relationship with the Chinese government and occasional subsidies. Meanwhile, Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat instant messaging service, which is ubiquitous in China, now reaches an estimated 100 to 200 million people outside the country. Recent evidence suggests these communications are increasingly monitored and censored according to Chinese government standards.

Chinese state media’s increasing number of news distribution deals, Chinese diplomats’ aggressive acts of media suppression, and the institutionalization of Chinese content delivery systems abroad point to escalations in the ability—and willingness—of Chinese officials to undermine independent news coverage abroad, and ultimately weaken the watchdog role played by media in democratic settings.

Implications for Democratic Governance and Media Freedom Globally

The strategies Chinese officials, state media, and other actors employ to exercise influence over media around the world have the potential to undermine key features of democratic governance and best practices for media freedom. In some cases, this potential is already being realized.

Flouting transparency

Chinese state media publications distributed in other countries routinely omit any mention of government links that would signal their origin to uninitiated news consumers. Indeed, it is precisely because news consumers in many countries are typically not attracted to or convinced by Chinese government propaganda that layers of obfuscation are employed to distance content from its authoritarian origins.

Chinese state media thus employ deceptive taglines in their advertising. The  People’s Daily , for example, touts itself to potential foreign followers of its Facebook page as “the biggest newspaper in China,” making no mention of the fact that it is the CCP’s official mouthpiece. Such disingenuous self-identification extends to paid print advertorials. The state-run  China Daily ’s “China Watch” supplement, which has been published in mainstream media outlets across 30 countries[8] —including in the  Washington Post, New York Times , and the  Sydney Morning Herald —rarely includes explicit mention of the Chinese outlet’s official ties.

In many cases, this lack of transparency extends to the economic arrangements surrounding various activities, be it how much  China Daily  is paying for each advertorial, how many and which journalists travel to China on government-paid trips, or what financial benefits news exchanges provide to each party.

These CCP efforts to conceal the origin, scale, and nature of Chinese state media involvement abroad compromise the integrity of resulting public debate, and erode cultures of transparency at outside media operations.

Undermining competition

The CCP executes a variety of strategies that undermine fair competition between state-owned or friendly news outlets and critical ones, often reducing the latter’s financial viability.

Chinese government obstruction or imposition of penalties on outlets viewed as critical, in addition to limiting their audience, can prompt stock losses and dent income from advertising. The 2012 blocking of the Chinese-language web edition of the  New York Times , for example, resulted in lost advertising revenue and a 20 percent overnight drop in the paper’s stock value. Chinese government representatives also pressure businesses not to place advertisements in critical outlets. As a result of such efforts, Hong Kong’s  Apple Daily  lost advertising contracts from players in the lucrative real estate industry and two London-based investment banks. In 2019, the paper’s remaining advertisers have faced strident public denunciations from former Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung, currently the vice chairman of a mainland government advisory body.[9] Damaging cyberattacks by China-based actors against overseas Chinese or international media—a regular occurrence for some key targets—also impose financial costs on cash-strapped outlets, which must pay for clean-up and prevention efforts.

The Chinese government and its partners have also found ways to provide other advantages to Chinese state media abroad relative to competitors. For example, after overseeing the transition from analog to digital television in a number of countries in Africa, StarTimes has prioritized Chinese state media channels in its package offerings at the expense of independent international news stations. In Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, television packages that include channels like BBC World Service cost more than basic versions with local channels and Chinese state media. More generally, as Beijing has expanded its aid and investment in foreign media sectors, it has tended to favor state-owned outlets over independent, private competitors, mirroring the media landscape in China.[10] In other instances, apparent behind-the-scenes pressure by Chinese officials has resulted in critical media outlets like the US-based New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) being deprived of press credentials to newsworthy venues—like the UN General Assembly[11] —while Chinese state-media have retained reporting access.

Interfering with diaspora communities

Twenty years ago, many Chinese in the diaspora got their news from relatively independent papers or broadcasting operations based out of Hong Kong or Taiwan. Today, Chinese state media or pro-Beijing private outlets are more influential, and thus more able to encourage diaspora voters to hold perspectives similar to Beijing’s and to back policies in their home countries that are advantageous to the CCP.

In the United States, the CCP’s ability to influence media consumed by Chinese Americans is particularly evident in the cable television market, which CCTV dominates relative to the Taiwanese station ETTV and the US-based NTDTV.[12] Reports of behind-the-scenes Chinese pressure on US cable companies and the online popularity of stations like NTDTV relative to CCTV indicate that something other than market forces are at play in shaping this hierarchy.[13] Chinese officials also cultivate partnerships with stakeholders in privately owned, US-based Chinese-language media outfits.[14]

CCP authorities exert enormous influence over the Chinese-language Australian media, where most such publications, with notable exceptions run by dissident communities, are pro-Beijing.[15] The few independent diaspora publications face direct obstructions to their operations by Chinese officials, as occurred last year, when diplomats from the Chinese consulate in Sydney bullied a local council into banning the  Vision China Times  from sponsoring a Chinese New Year event and convinced at least ten businesses to pull their advertisements.[16] CCP interference in Canada’s media market was exposed by the separate firings of two journalists at the  Global Chinese Press  after they published content deemed by executives to be displeasing to Beijing. In New Zealand, the CCP’s long-term efforts to co-opt diaspora outlets—and with them coverage of local politics—has left the diaspora in a state, according to one Chinese scholar, where “the Chinese community can only realistically aspire to political representation by its own members through individuals approved by Beijing.”[17]

CCP control of news distribution outside China is further increasing as WeChat’s popularity expands in the diaspora, and as politicians correspondingly use the service to communicate with Chinese diaspora constituents. In Canada, WeChat censors deleted a member of Parliament’s message to constituents praising Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement protesters, manipulated dissemination of news reports related to Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, and blocked broader media coverage of Chinese government corruption and leading officials. In the United States, Chinese Americans have seen WeChat posts silenced in group conversations about local Asian American political issues. In Australia, a recent study of news sources available to the Chinese diaspora found negligible political coverage of China on the WeChat channels of Chinese-language news providers. Incredibly, between March and August 2017, none of the WeChat channels published a single article on Chinese politics, despite the run-up to the important 19th Party Congress that fall.

Establishing channels for political meddling

Although Chinese government efforts to use media influence for electoral meddling have been limited, important incidents have recently emerged. In Taiwan, several examples of “fake news” stories and doctored images originating in China tainting the reputation of the Taiwanese government have spread widely on social media, with some picked up and reported as fact by Taiwanese news stations.[18] Some observers believe such activities—alongside other factors—had an impact on local elections in November 2018 when the ruling party, which is disfavored by Beijing, suffered a number of surprising losses.[19] In April 2019, Taiwanese media reported that suspected Chinese government agents had made quiet offers to buy popular pro-Taiwan Facebook pages ahead of next year’s general elections.[20] Recruitment advertisements for live streamers with pro-unification views have also emerged online.

The run-up to the 2018 midterm elections in the United States also saw CCP-backed efforts to reach American voters—in particular, soybean farmers. In July, the China Global Television Network (CGTN), the foreign-facing arm of China’s state-owned broadcaster, released a two-minute animated video about the impact of bilateral trade tensions on the US soybean industry, concluding with the question, “Will voters there turn out to support Trump and the Republicans once they get hit in the pocketbooks?” In September, the print edition of the  Des Moines Register  included a China Watch supplement with articles describing how a trade war would harm American soybean farmers—content far more targeted and politicized than is typical for the China Watch insert. While the impact of these efforts was limited, they reflect willingness by Chinese state media to use established avenues of content dissemination in an effort to influence American voters.

These examples primarily involved propaganda and disinformation spreading on non-Chinese owned social media platforms like Facebook, LINE, and YouTube. But the growing use of the China-based WeChat application by both diaspora communities and non-Chinese speakers in countries like Malaysia, Mongolia, and Australia, creates a fertile foundation for future CCP electoral meddling. As Australian professor John Fitzgerald recently noted, “We are entering uncharted territory. WeChat was not designed to work in a democracy.”

Undermining the rule of law

When attempting to restrict the operating space for independent diaspora or offshore Chinese media, Chinese officials have undermined the rule of law in other countries by maliciously harnessing court systems and flouting conflict-of-interest and other standards meant to ensure honest business practices.

Chinese officials have applied pressure on critics in foreign media through those countries’ own court systems, and at times have pressured local officials to aid them. In Southeast Asia, several cases have emerged involving the Sound of Hope radio network. Based in the United States and founded by practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual group, which is banned in China, the station broadcasts uncensored news about rights abuses and corruption in China, among other debate-based and cultural programming. In Thailand, police, reportedly at the urging of the Chinese government, recently detained a Taiwanese national who had helped facilitate the station’s broadcasts into China. The case was ongoing as of May 2019 and marked the third of its kind in the region; two similar cases have taken place in Indonesia and Vietnam—the latter resulting in two men being imprisoned.

Journalists and news outlets reporting critically about Chinese government actions or pro-Beijing officials outside mainland China also face threats of or actual defamation lawsuits. Leung, the former Hong Kong executive who has been denouncing  Apple Daily  advertisers, has brought a defamation suit in Hong Kong against a journalist with a separate outlet who wrote about his possible links to organized crime. In the Czech Republic, lawyers representing the powerful Chinese energy and financial conglomerate CEFC sent letters threatening lawsuits over articles linking the firm’s owner to Chinese military intelligence.[21] In 2018, Chinese Australians with ties to the Chinese government filed defamation suits against two media companies over a high-profile investigative documentary examining the CCP’s political influence in Australia.

In other instances, Chinese investments in foreign communications sectors have raised concerns about conflicts of interest, corruption, and questionable bidding practices. In Taiwan, attempts by a company owned by a China-friendly media tycoon to purchase stakes in a major cable company sparked fears that such cross-ownership would cause cable providers to advantage pro-Beijing stations at the expense of independent or pro-independence ones. (Following vigorous public debate, the deal was rejected by regulators.[22]) In Zambia, a partnership between the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and Chinese service provider StarTimes to create a joint venture—TopStar—reportedly violated domestic laws against any single media entity having licenses for both content transmission and content creation. The deal was also made without approval from either ZNBC’s board or Zambia’s parliament, leading to suspicions of corruption.

Future Trajectory

Having an economically powerful authoritarian-led state rapidly expand its influence over media production and dissemination channels in other countries is a relatively new phenomenon. The current impact of Chinese media influence operations on democratic institutions and practice remains relatively limited, although it disproportionately affects diaspora communities. Nevertheless, the sheer scale, economic clout, and expanding network of relationships involved highlights the CCP’s enhanced ability to interfere aggressively abroad, should it choose to do so. In addition, Beijing has demonstrated a willingness to ignore or violate outright diplomatic norms, human rights protections, and laws of foreign countries to achieve its ends.

However, the ability of the CCP to achieve its desired goals through its foreign media influence campaigns is still contested. Critical reporting about Chinese government actions within and outside of China appears with regularity, reaching large audiences. A number of independent Chinese-language media in Hong Kong, the United States, and elsewhere have become more professionalized and influential over the past several years. Civil society groups, media owners, and former officials in countries where Chinese influence is expanding have begun to speak out and urge their governments to uphold good governance standards when considering Chinese investment in communications infrastructure.

Looking ahead, individuals and organizations wishing to explore principled responses to the threat to global freedom and democracy posed by China’s globalizing media influence should focus on investigating and exposing stealthy and deceptive activities, increasing the sophistication and scale of policy debates, and upholding local legal standards.

The following recommendations for policymakers in democratic nations will help counter the potential negative impact of Beijing’s foreign media influence campaigns:

• Increase transparency. Foreign governments should adopt or enforce policies that enhance publicly available information about Chinese media influence activities in their countries. This could include reporting requirements for spending on paid advertorials, ownership structures, and other economic ties to Chinese government actors. In the United States, the Department of Justice should expand recent such requests to CGTN and Xinhua to other state-media or linked outlets, especially the Chinese-language CCTV.
• Sanction diplomats. When Chinese diplomats and security agents overstep their bounds and attempt to interfere with media reporting in other countries, the host government should vigorously protest, conveying that such behavior may violate diplomatic protocols. If the act in question repeats or is particularly egregious, the host government should consider declaring offenders persona non grata.
• Scrutinize international WeChat censorship and surveillance. Foreign parliaments should hold hearings to better understand the scope, nature, and impact of politicized censorship and surveillance on Tencent’s WeChat platform, then explore avenues for pressuring the company to uphold the rights to free expression and privacy of users living in democratic countries. Politicians who choose to use WeChat to communicate with constituents should monitor messaging closely to detect any manipulations, register accounts with international phone numbers when possible, and republish messages on parallel international social media platforms.
• Support independent overseas Chinese media. Media development funders should make sure to include exile and diaspora media in funding, training, and other assistance opportunities for Chinese-language media. Foreign governments should proactively engage with such media, providing interviews and exploring other potential partnerships, while resisting pressure from Chinese diplomats to marginalize them. Funders should provide technical and financial support for responding to cyberattacks.

A New Toolbox for Co-opting the Media

• In their recent attempts to control the media, antidemocratic leaders in fragile democracies have deployed a new toolbox that includes economic, legal, and extralegal means to silence critical journalists and bolster friendly news outlets.
• In Hungary, the governing Fidesz party has all but consolidated its control over the media, and has built a parallel reality where government messages and disinformation reinforce each other.
• In Serbia, the process of co-optation has not yet been fully successful, but an environment of intimidation and harassment inhibits journalists’ day-to-day work.
• Beyond these two countries, a lack of trust in the media, the onslaught of fake news, increasing political polarization, and the lack of a profitable business model all grind down press freedom, laying the groundwork for co-optation by ill-intentioned political actors.

In April 2018, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party won their third parliamentary supermajority, securing 49 percent of the vote and trouncing the fragmented opposition. A year earlier, Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vučić won an outright victory in his bid for that country’s presidency, taking 55 percent of the vote in the first round and preempting the need for a presidential runoff for the first time in Serbia’s history.

Orbán and Vučić have both moved to dismantle institutional checks and balances and centralize power in their own hands; they have also benefited from European support and ineffectual domestic opposition. But it is their domination of the media that has underwritten their success.

Over the past few years, a new toolbox has emerged that illiberal leaders in fragile democracies deploy to control and co-opt the press, with the aim of ensuring their stay in power. This toolbox leaves out tactics like censorship, force, or outright intimidation of journalists. Instead, it contains a collection of methods used to harness structural conditions. Once successful co-optation has taken place, media are incorporated into the system as building blocks that prop up those in power.

The illiberal toolbox for co-opting the media contains a variety of legal, extralegal, and economic strategies for applying pressure to critical outlets, and supporting friendly ones.

Hungary serves as the primary example where this co-optation has been successful. And while Vučić and his allies have yet to consolidate control over Serbia’s media, they are following in Orbán’s footsteps. Both countries declined from Free to Partly Free in Freedom House’s most recent  Freedom in the World  report.[1]

But it is not just Hungary and Serbia where media co-optation by ill-intentioned political leaders can threaten democracy. Globally, independent media foster public discussion and political participation that is grounded in well-informed opinions. These practices are essential to democracy, and today they are under strain. While the public sphere has expanded exponentially in the new millennium, this expansion has brought with it confusion, economic disruption, polarization, and an increasing level of distrust toward the institutions that underpin democracy. Of these institutions, the media are under particular duress.

The illiberal toolbox is particularly effective because it exploits the weaknesses of today’s media environment, including the decline of trust in the press, and the crisis of the old business model. It takes place gradually and stealthily, and after a point it is difficult to reverse. This makes the media in many countries vulnerable—and by extension, threatens the very basis of democracy by undermining an essential check on unbridled government power.

The Toolbox

Tilting the market.

The application of financial and economic pressure is an effective means for co-opting outlets. This technique takes advantage of the changing media business model, which has left many outlets cash-strapped. Governments can also plausibly deny responsibility for this strategy’s effects, as it relies on players on the market and in institutions supposedly outside the government’s control.

Hungary’s Fidesz has perfected the use and abuse of market forces to take over media, and has extended its political power as a consequence. The near total consolidation of the media in progovernment hands accelerated starting in 2016. That year, the leading daily  Népszabadság  was shut down overnight in a hostile maneuver, and its publisher sold to Lőrinc Mészáros, a gasfitter-turned-oligarch and childhood friend of Orbán.[2]  Népszabadság , like most other outlets in Hungary, had been struggling financially, but as the country’s most-read daily it was among the few publications that had a realistic chance of turning its fortunes around.

Mészáros later built a media empire through the direct or indirect acquisition of television channels, dailies, weeklies, online media, and all of Hungary’s regional newspapers.[3] He has since become Hungary’s second-richest man, increasing his wealth 300 times in the span of three years thanks to his political connections.[4] At the end of 2018, however, Mészáros and other government-friendly businessmen suddenly decided it was time to give up their holdings, offering all outlets for free to KESMA, a progovernment media conglomerate. KESMA unifies more than 400 media products, and exhibits in plain sight the astonishing domination of government-friendly media in Hungary.[5]

The degree of ownership consolidation seen in Hungary has yet to take hold in Serbia. However, a recent privatization drive handed several outlets to owners friendly with the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).[6] Individual acquisitions by people close to the government occur as well. In late 2018, the brother of a top SNS official purchased two national television channels; he also owns three online portals, a radio station, and nine cable channels.[7]

An even more worrying form of financial pressure in Serbia is the harassment of media by the tax authorities. In 2017, the weekly  Vrjanske novine  received daily visits, which coincided with its publication of an interview with a former head of the tax authority; its owner ultimately announced that the paper could no longer withstand the pressure, and it ceased operations. In 2018, the news site Juzne Vesti, known for its critical reporting in the south of Serbia, was subjected to its fifth months-long tax investigation in five years.[8]

Wielding the law

Governments occasionally deploy laws and regulations to intimidate or interfere with journalists, or to drain them of their resources. But the illiberal toolbox rarely contains instruments for the sort of blunt-force legal repression, such as censorship, that would prompt immediate condemnation by neighboring democracies and media monitors. Instead, it is the politicized implementation of technical laws that puts pressure on independent outlets.

For example, Hungary’s media authority, set up by the government in 2011 and stacked with Fidesz loyalists, has used its powers to selectively refuse licenses to independent or opposition-leaning outlets. In 2012, the authority initiated what became a lengthy legal battle with the left-wing Klubradio channel, denying it a license and refusing to implement court decisions in the station’s favor over a period of more than two years.[9] Regulators struck again in 2016, when the authority refused to renew the broadcasting license of the country’s most popular radio station, Class FM. After a protracted court case, Class FM’s frequency was awarded to a progovernment outlet in 2018.[10] The decision was a significant blow to Hungary’s radio market, leaving the country with only government-affiliated national stations.

Similarly, Serbia has also undermined press freedom through politicized manipulation of the law. Defamation has been decriminalized, and the country’s media laws are otherwise in line with international obligations. But politicians have continued to file costly defamation suits seeking exorbitant civil damages. In early 2018, for example, minister without portfolio Nenad Popović sued the investigative portal KRIK in four separate lawsuits in the space of one month, for 1 million dinars ($9,500) each.[11]

And while Serbia’s media regulators do not display overt hostility to independent media as in Hungary, they lack the capacity to implement Serbia’s otherwise well-formulated media laws. The Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media is only partially staffed and is operationally dysfunctional, having notably failed to call out governing party dominance of the media landscape during election campaigns. In February 2019, it failed to act when two television stations aired a slick video that mocked opposition leaders, and that had first appeared on the governing SNS’s YouTube channel, even though Serbia’s laws prohibit political advertising outside elections.[12]

Keeping them in line and on their toes

Harassment can also take more direct forms, such as physical attacks and threats. But thuggish attacks are generally absent from the illiberal toolbox. Instead, political leaders signal that hostility toward journalists is permissible, including by standing down in the wake of aggression against them rather than insisting on a timely and effective follow-up, or by deploying proxies to delegitimize their work. In this way, they cultivate an atmosphere of fear and impunity in which journalists know that scrutiny of power is fraught with risk.

Serbia’s media environment is much tougher on journalists doing their day-to-day work than is Hungary’s. Smears and verbal harassment from politicians and online accounts are omnipresent, and attacks by government-friendly tabloids are a regular occurrence. Media workers are frequently called “traitors” and “foreign mercenaries.” In early 2018, a journalist association’s front door was plastered with flyers that read, “Miserable Association of Enemies of Serbia;” meanwhile, some journalists claim they are under surveillance by state security.[13] In late 2018, the home of a 70-year-old investigative journalist was torched. That attack was egregious enough to prompt a response—a ruling party official was detained and stripped of his position for allegedly ordering it. However, that such a severe, apparently premeditated attack took place at all underscored the widespread perception in Serbia that independent journalists operate at their own risk.

Though outright harassment is rare in Hungary, the government makes sure journalists know their place. A 2019 press conference by Orbán was notable for its inclusion of critical journalists for the first time in years. In addition, Orbán has not given an interview to Hungary’s most-read online news site, Index.hu, since 2007, and has referred to it as “fake news.” The government spokesperson also regularly engages in attacks meant to damage journalists’ credibility; in 2018, he called a journalist working for a foreign outlet a “despicable SJW [social justice warrior]” on Twitter.

Cutting checks

Establishing and supporting a progovernment media empire is as important a tactic in the illiberal toolbox as pressuring critical media. Such support can take many forms, including the preferential awarding of state advertising contracts, special financing schemes, and privileged treatment by tax authorities.

In Hungary, the use and abuse of state advertising has reshaped the media market. While state advertising takes up only about one-sixth of all advertising, it has grown exponentially in the past few years.[14] In 2018, state ad spending was five times more than under previous governments a decade earlier, with a whopping 85 percent of contracts awarded to government-friendly companies. Since 2014, several new progovernment outlets have been set up, with some tripling or quadrupling their profits in the span of a few years without any indication of an increased audience. The progovernment weekly  Figyelő , which published a list of government critics in 2018 deemed “Soros mercenaries” (referring to the billionaire and philanthropist George Soros), has increased its income from government advertising tenfold since its takeover by a government ally in 2016; by 2018, three-fourths of its ad money came from state contracts.[15]

State advertising plays an important role in supporting progovernment media in Serbia as well, and there are additional innovative methods available for the government to channel money to friendly media. Project co-financing, through which the state chips in to help media projects that serve the public interest, has been used to allocate money to progovernment outlets. This abuse was highlighted by the European Commission in its 2018 report on Serbia, which also criticized the nontransparent nature of the co-financing processes.[16] Friendly outlets have also benefitted from selective tax enforcement, while smaller, critical outlets have suffered harsh penalties.[17]

Building a parallel reality

Finally, creating a loyal media empire is not enough—the outlets have to be put to use in a strategic way, and the illiberal leaders of Hungary and Serbia are masters of constructing a grand narrative and crafting a new reality. Flooding the media landscape with their own political messages allows those in power to dominate the political agenda, divert public discussion away from sensitive issues, and ultimately control and manipulate the public sphere.

The public media are an important part of this narrative building. State-owned or state-controlled news agencies dwarf their private competitors in both Serbia and Hungary. Serbia’s Tanjug news agency was formally closed as part of a privatization drive, yet it continues to operate through support from public coffers.[18] The market domination of Hungary’s state newswire, MTI, is guaranteed through its subsidized low price.[19] And while public broadcasters in Serbia and Hungary have always been supportive of governments in power, the tone and nature of that support has dramatically shifted in recent years. Whereas previously they were more or less professional outlets with a slight bias, now they are government mouthpieces.

In Hungary, the government and progovernment media have turned into a major source of parallel reality narratives. In early 2018, the progovernment daily  Magyar Idők  claimed that 2,000 “mercenaries” were working for Soros in Hungary; the number—which appeared to originate with a malicious sting operation conducted by a shadowy group and aimed at discrediting Soros-affiliated NGOs—was later repeated by Orbán himself.[20] Soros has featured in numerous other false news items, including a headline the government-friendly TV2 ran in 2017 that read, “Soros would have killed his own mother.” Moreover, employees of the public broadcaster have admitted to receiving instructions from the prime minister’s offices on how to cover sensitive issues, such as migration.[21] In 2019, a leaked video recording showed a reporter from the state broadcaster instructing a progovernment expert on what to say.[22]

Besides identifying the “enemy” through issue framing and agenda setting, the illiberal toolbox also contains elements of positive narrative building. Serbia’s President Vučić is indefatigable when it comes to talking to friendly media. Ahead of the 2018 local elections, reporting on the president, the SNS, and the government received four times more airtime than did the remaining 23 electoral lists combined.[23]

A Model Ready for Export

In Serbia, the prospect of EU membership, which brings with it increasingly stringent rule-of-law monitoring, can still provide an incentive for change. But once successful co-optation has taken place, as in Hungary, it is very difficult to reverse. And after consolidating media in Hungary, Fidesz is now taking steps to expand its influence transnationally: party allies acquired media in Macedonia and Slovenia in 2018,[24] and early 2019 saw the creation of an English-language newswire based in London apparently established to spread Orbán’s illiberal agenda.[25] Perhaps not surprisingly, the first non-Hungarian news agency to quote the new wire was Serbia’s Tanjug.

While illiberal co-optation does not eradicate independent journalism, it harnesses institutional weaknesses and market conditions to severely limit its reach and impact. Media consumers can still access quality journalism produced by small, public-minded teams of reporters, but in light of increasing government control of the media landscape, these outlets are fighting an uphill battle. The illiberal toolbox works because it discourages and obscures independent reporting, funnels limitless resources into the creation and maintenance of a loyal media juggernaut, and makes sure journalists know their place in the new system.

Both in Central Europe and outside it, the press is suffering from a crisis of trust and a crisis of the old business model. In the United States and in Europe, the profound change that came with the spread of online news and the collapse of the traditional advertising market has sent outlets and owners scrambling for profits by prioritizing content that spurs outrage. The growing prominence of fake news and disinformation has further fed into political polarization, contributing to a cycle of decreasing trust. In the United States, fewer than half the population say they trust the media; the figure is around one-third in Italy and the United Kingdom, and only one-fourth in Turkey or Russia.[26] Rates of trust in the media seem to move together with those of trust in government—explaining part of the current crisis.[27]

The lack of trust, the onslaught of disinformation and tabloidized half-truths, and the elusiveness of a profitable business model all grind down media freedom and prepare the ground for potential illiberal takeover. When crafty and talented political leaders emerge with an appropriate agenda, it could be simply a matter of time before democracies buckle under the pressure.

Rays of Hope

But not all is bleak. Positive examples already suggest that a change has started on the demand side, as more people are willing to pay for news that they find valuable, as well as on the supply side, with journalists launching innovative models that concentrate on quality news analysis. Democratic governments are also catching up and have moved into the debate—though sometimes somewhat awkwardly—proposing regulatory involvement to tackle thorny issues around fake news and disinformation.

Citizens and lawmakers are protesting media abuses, particularly those by public broadcasters. In Serbia, protesters in March 2019 stormed the headquarters of the public broadcaster RTS after it failed to report on earlier protests and denied airtime to opposition leaders. In Hungary, opposition lawmakers in December 2018 occupied the headquarters of the state broadcaster, with the support of demonstrators outside.

Democratic countries must work to build a media environment that prioritizes independent and accurate reporting and guarantees access to quality information for all segments of the population. This will not only prevent illiberal co-optation, but will also shore up institutions and strengthen and support democracy at home.  

The following recommendations for policymakers in democratic nations will help counter efforts by ill-intentioned political actors to co-opt media:

• Recognize and speak out against illiberal tactics. False assertions aimed at damaging legitimate journalism—including claims that the media are biased or part of the opposition, or that independent journalism and articles uncovering wrongdoing present a security threat—are often accepted at face value. Officials from democratic countries should stay on alert for such illiberal tactics, carefully research false claims, and use their findings to refute them. Policymakers and high-level officials in democratic countries should continue to speak out against laws, practices, and rhetoric that negatively impact media freedom.
• Closely watch vulnerable media markets to prevent illiberal co-optation. The crisis facing the traditional business model has affected practically all media markets globally, but the impact has not been uniform. Countries where the recent populist upsurge is coupled with a media market that suffers from systemic problems—such as the deep intertwining of political and economic interests as seen in Romania or Italy—are particularly vulnerable to illiberal co-optation. Policymakers should identify and expose the methods taken from the illiberal toolbox and urge democratic governments to combat their use in vulnerable markets. Foreign assistance, where applicable, should include efforts to shore up press freedom.
• Provide tailored assistance to journalists in countries where the political leadership has co-opted the media. As co-optation progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult for local journalists to counter government domination. Democratic governments and media funders need to actively reengage to halt this deterioration and preserve local incubators of good journalism. Both in Hungary and Serbia, the reengagement needs to be strategic: financial support and grant programs should prioritize long-term resilience, rather than solely rewarding the leanest and most creative solutions. Private foundations deciding to support media in these countries should consult local sources to keep their money from ending up with state-controlled outfits.
• Counter the strategic use of lawsuits and regulatory action against media. Political leaders are increasingly abusing laws and relying on hostile decisions by regulatory authorities to silence and intimidate investigative journalists and other critics. But it is not just an illiberal tactic—Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are becoming a widespread tool to silence critical voices globally. While anti-SLAPP laws exist in several countries, judges are often unfamiliar with the practice and its increasing use against journalists. Policymakers should further the adoption of local anti-SLAPP laws and, with the help of press freedom organizations, educate both the judiciary and local journalists about them. Policymakers should also monitor decisions implemented by media regulators to ensure that media freedoms are not being squelched through hostile technical means.

Why Social Media Are Still Worth Saving

• Social media dramatically expand access to information and freedom of expression, and in repressive and troubled countries they remain a lifeline to journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens attempting to exercise their democratic rights.
• Dismissing social media as a cesspool of lies and vitriol plays directly into the hands of authoritarians looking to increase state hegemony over the information landscape.
• The governments most guilty of pumping out misleading propaganda and surreptitiously manipulating social media through paid trolls and automated accounts are often the same ones that propose to solve the problem by restricting civil liberties.
• In order to tackle disinformation without curbing freedom of expression, government regulation should concentrate on certain aspects of companies’ conduct, not the speech of their users.

For years before the recent uprising against authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bashir, Sudanese girls had shared pictures of their romantic crushes in a Facebook group dedicated to digging up dirt on local boys—a sort of crowdsourced background check. But as security agents escalated their crackdown on the nascent antigovernment protest movement in September 2018, the network mobilized to identify and deter abuses by state security personnel. “You can post any photo for any person of the National Intelligence and Security Service,” said Azaz Elshami, an activist in the Sudanese diaspora, “and they will give you who he is, where he lives, his mobile number, family, all that.” The process was so effective that agents of the much-feared NISS had to wear masks in public to avoid identification.

However, it became clear during the protests that the same digital tools could be manipulated by the government to spread disinformation. In January, when Sudanese police used live ammunition against the demonstrators, a news site maintained by the Sudanese diaspora reported the death of three individuals, including 16-year-old Mohamed al-Obeid. Local journalists rapidly shared his image on social media, and it soon spread to international media outlets. As activists attempted to ascertain more details about the boy’s identity, suspicion grew, until ultimately it became clear that the image depicted the aftermath of police violence in far-off Brazil. Sudanese activists concluded that the fraudulent image was the work of a team of NISS internet trolls known for disseminating smears and falsehoods.

“It was a trap,” one citizen journalist tweeted, “orchestrated to discredit us all.”

Sudan’s revolution, like the Arab Spring before it, has showcased both the positive and the negative potential of social media. At a time when the harmful aspects of these platforms are being exposed and debated around the world, the fact that they have also delivered vital benefits should not be forgotten. They have fostered a rise in citizen journalism and activism and allowed independent reporters to continue reaching news consumers in environments where traditional outlets have fallen under government control, and their transnational nature has provided a measure of protection against state censorship. The challenge for policymakers, technology companies, and civil society today is to prevent malicious state and nonstate actors from poisoning the digital sphere while protecting and enhancing the conditions and qualities that allow the internet to bolster media freedom and advance democracy.

In Sudan, the Democracy Movement and Press Freedom Will Rise or Fall Together

Featured profile: reem abbas.

Journalist, writer, and award-winning blogger Reem Abbas is covering human rights and politics in Sudan at a critical juncture in its history. In April, after four months of massive protests, Sudan’s authoritarian president Omar al-Bashir was removed from power in a palace coup. The events brought about the end of a 30-year reign marred by the violent repression of dissidents, including journalists. While Sudan’s political fate remains uncertain, al-Bashir’s removal has granted journalists like Abbas a reprieve from the repressive environment he cultivated.

While the proliferation of social media allowed Abbas some freedom to disseminate independent reporting on her blog and among her 34,000 Twitter followers, she was never free from the threat of reprisals while al-Bashir was in power. “I was always fearful because of the stories I’d written,” Abbas says. Social media blocks during the protests, though routinely circumvented, served as another reminder that critical voices were not welcome in Sudan.

Now, Abbas feels far safer, and is more able to work without facing practical impediments. She can write freely and confidently. Perhaps most valuably in her eyes, she can name her sources without fear that they will face retaliation.

Yet Sudan’s newly liberalized media environment brings with it significant responsibilities. “We need a lot of capacity building for us to actually be able to deliver and do justice to this uprising, and to the people who fought for this country,” Abbas says. Furthermore, the media market was stunted under al-Bashir, and is not designed to support independent journalism. Outlets are under resourced, and like many of her peers, Abbas must support herself through consulting positions while still making time to write. She worries that the polarization of news outlets poses an obstacle to the development of sustainable independent journalism.

Nevertheless, Sudan’s opening environment offers Abbas and her colleagues the promise of pursuing their passion with fewer constraints. “When I’m writing about a topic,” she says, “I’m living it, and I’m breathing it; I really want to give voice to the people I’m interviewing.”

The Internet as a Refuge for Media Diversity

Almost from its inception, the internet offered new media spaces unspoiled by government intrusion. Blogs, online news outlets, and social media platforms provided alternatives to progovernment television, radio, and print outlets. Even in a place as repressive as Saudi Arabia, liberal poets challenged religious dogma, and young bloggers chronicled the mental gymnastics of embracing foreign pop culture while upholding Saudi customs. This ballooning of freedom was eventually deflated by state authorities who cracked down on critical thinking and “un-Islamic” ideas. While individuals in many countries remain uninhibited in their ability to publish facts and opinions, they may face punishment for what they publish—freedom of speech does not always extend to freedom after speech.

Nonetheless, in countries facing drastic and sudden declines in press freedom, the internet can be an important redoubt. Almost 150 news outlets have been closed in Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt, with hundreds of journalists facing spurious charges of supporting terrorism. As a result, many media professionals have moved online. Prominent journalist Ünsal Ünlü runs a podcast from his home office, while start-ups like Dokuz8 are testing new models of digital-first reporting. Those who have been forced to leave Turkey altogether, such as Yavuz Baydar and Can Dündar, have broadcast independent news from overseas on new platforms like Ahval and Özgürüz. Though officially blocked, their coverage remains accessible on most social media services and via virtual private networks (VPNs) that enable users to skirt government censorship.

Meanwhile, governments around the world have continued to extend strict press laws and audiovisual codes to the online realm in an attempt to bring online media to heel. A bill now under consideration in Pakistan, whose press freedom environment is highly restricted, would impose a licensing regime on online journalists and news outlets. Authorities in Uganda in March 2018 issued new requirements obliging online publishers, news platforms, and radio operators to obtain authorization from the country’s Communications Commission. Amendments to Belarus’s Media Law in December 2018 expanded the definition of traditional media to include online outlets and related websites, resulting in the blocking of several independent news sites that had enjoyed relative editorial freedom. In Egypt, similar legislation adopted in August 2018 has provided a legal basis for blocking dozens of websites belonging to human rights organizations and news outlets. The upstart  Mada Masr , a progressive news site created by young journalists who were pushed out of  Egypt Independent  in 2013, was among the targets.

International Platforms as a Buffer against Censorship

While many local governments are clearly intolerant of an unfettered online news sector, major international technology platforms serve as an important buffer against such censorial tendencies.  Mada Masr , for example, continues to post content directly to its Facebook page, while Turkey’s Medyascope runs a YouTube channel.

Due the rollout of strong encryption technology by most companies, governments can no longer order internet service providers to bar access to specific content  within  a tech platform, such as an individual account or group page. This has resulted in a growing imbalance between large tech companies and many governments, which must persuade executives or administrators based overseas to remove a given post. Many US-based companies deliberately refrain from setting up operations in more repressive countries where their employees could face punishment for failing to adhere to a government request that would violate the human rights of their local users.

Perhaps the most powerful media tool provided by such international platforms is live streaming. The feature is now built into many mobile applications and social media services, allowing anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection to double as an amateur television crew with global reach. Particularly in countries where leaders or political factions dispute facts on the ground, live streaming provides a higher degree of credibility than any other media form. Unlike with a news article or photograph, it is difficult to dispute the timing, location, and creator of a live stream. The format is also highly transparent and interactive. Anyone watching a live stream can type questions or comments that are automatically superimposed within the video for all to see, including the streamers themselves, who often respond to comments in real time.

Bloggers and journalists in Belarus and Armenia have used Facebook Live and other live-streaming services to challenge the government’s claims on the size or goal of antigovernment protests, and to document security forces’ often heavy-handed response. In Venezuela, activist media start-ups like Efecto Cocuyo (“Firefly Effect”) use the live-streaming platform Periscope to provide an alternative to the dominant progovernment news outlets. Their journalists cover press conferences by opposition figures, the proceedings of local legislatures, and large protests that state media equate with armed riots or refuse to acknowledge.

More traditional media players in democracies have engaged in their own experiments along these lines. Public broadcasters from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States teamed up to develop a Turkish-language news channel that will air exclusively on YouTube. The stated goal of the channel, +90, is to “provide independent and accurate information that promotes free speech and a multitude of perspectives on current affairs.” Since it is based overseas, Turkish authorities upset over its coverage would need to convince the Silicon Valley–based hosting company to censor a US government–funded news service.

But international social media platforms are not exactly immune from government pressure. In Vietnam, a one-party state where the authorities maintain a tight grip on information flows, a network of democratic activists based inside and outside the country run a Facebook page that provides an independent take on the repressive regime to some 1.3 million followers. While Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg mentioned in congressional testimony that the company refrains from establishing a physical presence in repressive countries in order avoid complying with political censorship, the platform did remove at least seven stories from the activist group in question, Việt Tân, in early May, citing “local legal restrictions.” The posts covered the health condition of Vietnam’s president at a time when the authorities had issued a strict media blackout on the subject. Reuters “broke” a story on the president’s illness over 10 days after Việt Tân had initially covered it.

Activists in autocratic countries are concerned that companies like Facebook could move toward complying more consistently with government orders for financial or legal reasons. Vietnam recently passed a cybersecurity law, closely modeled on China’s, that requires companies to store data about Vietnamese users on servers located within the country. If major international platforms were to obey, the private communications of local users would be within the reach of Vietnamese security agencies, who consider nonviolent political activism to be a threat to national security. Already, Việt Tân has been branded a terrorist organization for its insistence on peaceful democratic reform away from one-party rule.

If You Can’t Censor Them, Exploit Them

There is a dark side to the freedom that digital media offer. To the extent that various online platforms and applications have created an information space beyond anyone’s authoritative control, malicious state and nonstate actors are exploiting it to advance their respective agendas.

The messaging service WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, is a case in point. Unlike Facebook proper and Twitter, where the default privacy setting for users is “public,” WhatsApp messages are designed for more private communications. They are end-to-end encrypted, meaning not even the company itself has access to them, only the intended recipients. Administrators of group chats must “invite” new participants, ensuring a degree of vetting. Thus in the dozens of countries where WhatsApp usage is high, large swathes of the online media landscape have become, effectively, hidden from view.

These qualities—increased trust and decreased transparency—have been used by malevolent actors to deepen social divisions and even illegally influence elections. In the 65 countries covered by Freedom House’s  Freedom on the Net 2018  report, 32 had instances in which paid progovernment commentators intervened on social media, including WhatsApp, usually to smear the political opposition or critical journalists.

In Brazil, an investigation by the newspaper  Folha  revealed that business groups had illegally contributed to the successful 2018 campaign of far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro by funding some $3 million in mass messages on WhatsApp. The groups also collected phone numbers through a third-party service, which is prohibited under Brazilian electoral laws.

In India, where doctored images and fake news abounded on various platforms during the April–May general elections, Facebook announced that it had removed over 1,000 pages for violating policies on spam and “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Political parties circulate propaganda and misleading claims about one another, religious minorities, and critical journalists. Hindu nationalists in particular have grown adept at spreading false rumors that characterize opposition parties as favoring Muslims over the general population. The so-called cyber army of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party claims to have 1.2 million volunteers.

Tech platforms may also be weaponized by religious and ethnic extremists to incite violence against minorities. In the aftermath of the Easter terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka this year, the country’s authorities blocked Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Viber as a precaution against further violence. False information about the attackers’ identities and potential additional attacks had already begun to spread on social media.

But blocking access to communication tools is a blunt and ultimately ineffective instrument for stemming disinformation and other false news, which can continue to spread via word of mouth and even mainstream media; social media, meanwhile, can be useful in debunking erroneous reports. For example, in Sri Lanka the authorities disseminated a photo of a woman on national television, alleging that she was involved in the Easter attacks. They realized only later, after internet users traced the photo to a US-based student, that it was a case of mistaken identity.

How and How Not to Regulate

Despite their great utility and positive potential in repressive environments, online media and major technology companies in particular have come under harsh criticism for their management—or failure to manage—problems like disinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence, all of which threaten the fabric of democratic societies. Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been accused in the United States of colluding to censor conservatives, while European policymakers and the public at large are pushing back against the perceived ways in which tech platforms have disrupted the media ecosystem. A survey of 27 countries around the globe found that trust in social media was lowest in North America and Europe, where distorted online content has been credited with aiding the rise of right-wing populist demagogues.

The best remedy for bad or erroneous speech remains more and better speech, not enforced silence. Yet on today’s online platforms, undemocratic and illiberal actors seem to have a louder megaphone. Studies have shown that dubious information intended to spark outrage gains greater visibility on social media than more sober, truthful content. The platforms’ own algorithms appear designed to amplify content that generates high levels of engagement, even if the result is a rush to ever greater extremes. These dynamics mean that content disseminated by a very small but coordinated and radical network of individuals or accounts—including those orchestrated by undemocratic parties or regimes—can easily overshadow the views of the more moderate majority.

In light of these and other problems, the technology sector does need greater regulation. But defenders of democracy should be wary of any push for state regulation that aims to define acceptable and unacceptable speech and entails a reduction in freedom of expression. It is instructive that the very governments most guilty of pumping out misleading propaganda and surreptitiously manipulating social media through paid trolls and automated “bot” accounts are often the ones that propose to solve the problem by restricting civil liberties.

Instead, governments should find other ways to improve companies’ performance. Policymakers could establish independent multistakeholder bodies to evaluate companies’ content moderation practices for transparency, proportionality, and the effectiveness of appeal processes. Such bodies can also set minimum standards for the detection and elimination of coordinated inauthentic activity, such as paid trolls and bot accounts, as well as guidelines for political advertising during election campaigns. In addition, public officials should regulate other aspects of the sector through the lens of antitrust laws and privacy protections, since they have important consequences for freedom of expression in a democracy. The overarching goal of such regulation should be to protect and augment the constructive role that online communication platforms can play in all societies.

Social media are a crucial part of the modern media ecosystem. They dramatically expand access to information and freedom of expression, and in repressive and troubled countries they remain a lifeline to journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens attempting to exercise their democratic rights. Rather than surrendering these services to the malevolent forces that have exploited their weaknesses, democracies must fight back in a way that is consistent with their own long-standing values.

For governments:

• Concentrate on conduct, not content. Antitrust actions can help stimulate competition, making platforms more likely to improve their services in response to public pressure. Regulatory interventions can also be used to strengthen users’ privacy and control over their own data, and to bolster safeguards against hacking and other cybersecurity threats. Election laws should be amended where necessary and vigorously enforced to ensure transparency in online campaign activities and prevent covert foreign interference. When it comes to speech, policymakers should establish independent multistakeholder bodies to evaluate companies’ content moderation practices for transparency, proportionality, and the effectiveness of appeal processes. These bodies could also set minimum standards for the detection and elimination of coordinated inauthentic activity, such as paid trolls and bot accounts.
• Ensure that all internet-related laws and practices adhere to international human rights law and standards. National governments should establish periodic reviews to assess whether their laws and practices regarding online speech conform to the principles outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Any proposals to regulate social media should be examined in light of their likely impact on freedom of expression, particularly as it relates to women, ethnic and religious minorities, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people, and other vulnerable groups.
• Support research and information sharing. Public officials should provide resources to universities, nongovernmental organizations, and investigative journalists working to understand, detect, and share instances of coordinated inauthentic activity, particularly by state and quasi-state actors. Specific grants can be designed to strengthen civil society’s outreach to tech platforms, especially in countries of the global south.

For companies:

• Ensure fair and transparent content moderation practices. In order to fairly and transparently moderate public posts within their platforms and services, private companies should do the following: (1) Clearly and concretely define what speech is not permissible in their guidelines and terms of service. (2) If certain speech needs to be curbed, when appropriate, consider less invasive actions before restricting it outright, for example warning users that they are violating terms of service and adjusting algorithms that might unintentionally promote disinformation or incitement to violence. (3) Ensure that content removal requests by governments are in compliance with international human rights standards. (4) Publish detailed transparency reports on content takedowns—both for those initiated by governments and for those undertaken by the companies themselves. (5) Provide an efficient avenue for appeal for users who believe that their speech was unduly restricted.
• Engage in continuous dialogue with local civil society organizations. Companies should seek out local expertise on the political and cultural context in markets where they have a presence or where their products are widely used. These consultations with civil society groups should inform the companies’ approach to content moderation, government requests, and countering disinformation, among other things.
• Label or eliminate automated “bot” accounts. Recognizing that bots can be used for both helpful and harmful purposes, and acknowledging their role in spreading disinformation, companies should strive to provide clear labeling for suspected bot accounts. Those that remain harmful even if labeled should be eliminated from the platform. Although today’s technology allows reasonably high accuracy in bot recognition, companies should also establish transparent remedial mechanisms to remove the bot designation from any account that may have been mislabeled.

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Threats to freedom of press: Violence, disinformation & censorship

The free flow of ideas: Freedom of the press, the journalists on the frontline

The way we see the world and act on it depends on the information we have. This is why freedom of expression and freedom of the press are fundamental rights, and the free flow of ideas is a key driver of vibrant societies and human progress. UNESCO works to reinforce the tools, skills and conditions that make these rights real.

Peter R. De Vries was on his way to a car park, walking past crowds of people enjoying post-work drinks in the heart of Amsterdam. It was the early evening of 6 July 2021 and the veteran crime journalist had just left a nearby TV studio, where he had appeared as a talk show guest. 

De Vries was a household name in the Netherlands, where his own TV show had run for 17 years, working with crime victims’ families, pursuing unsolved cases and exposing miscarriages of justice. The journalist had recently refused police protection after receiving death threats. A year earlier, he had agreed to act as an adviser to the key prosecution witness against the suspected head of a cocaine trafficking gang. 

As De Vries walked to his car, several bullets were fired at him. He died from his injuries nine days later. 

Threats and violence against journalists

De Vries’ death prompted outpourings of condemnation and anger in Europe. Yet, many journalists and reporters around the world today risk their lives to uncover the truth. Every four days a journalist is killed in the world. In 2020 alone, according to UNESCO, 62 journalists were killed just for doing their jobs. Between 2006 and 2020, over 1,200 media professionals lost their lives in the same way. In nine out of ten cases, the killers go unpunished.

In many countries investigating corruption, trafficking, human rights violations, and political or environmental issues puts journalists’ lives at risk.

62 journalists killed in 2020,

just for doing their jobs: UNESCO

Crimes against journalists have an enormous impact on society as a whole, because they prevent people from making informed decisions.

To help create the kind of environment journalists need to perform their vital work, UNESCO has set up several initiatives, including a global plan of action for the safety of journalists, in order to support Member States to establish or improve mechanisms for prevention, protection and prosecution to bring justice to cases of murdered journalists. One key aspect of UNESCO’s work is first and foremost to report and publicly condemn all cases of killing of journalists. UNESCO also produces training materials and best practices to help improve journalists’ skills and knowledge on international standards for freedom of expression, investigative journalism and reporting on conflicts.

For the past 40 years, UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC)   has focused on targeting the most pressing issues concerning communication development around the world. It helps keep journalists safe, supports the development of media in countries where it is most needed, promotes freedom of expression and public access to information.

UNESCO's initiatives

Fostering Freedom of Expression

Women journalists facing risks and abuse

Across the world, journalists face countless threats every day, ranging from kidnapping, torture and arbitrary detention to disinformation campaigns and harassment, especially on social media. Women journalists are at particular risk. 

According to UNESCO research, 73 per cent of women journalists surveyed said they had been threatened, intimidated and insulted online in connection with their work. Often, the failure to investigate and address online attacks has real-life consequences for women journalists, affecting their mental and physical health. In some cases, online threats can escalate to physical violence and even murder, as the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 demonstrated.

#JournalistsToo:

For many years, Caruana Galizia had been the most prominent investigative journalist in Malta. She had worked as a columnist and editor in various newspapers. She later set up the website Running Commentary, where she published some of her most significant investigative journalism, exposing tax abuse and corruption in Malta and abroad. Harassment, threats and attempts to silence the journalist had been a constant presence throughout her career.

Online threats and violence against women journalists are designed to belittle, humiliate and shame them, as well as induce fear, silence and discredit them professionally. To respond to increasing threats against women journalists, UNESCO has published a research paper aimed at associations, politicians and governments: The Chilling . It seeks to promote discussion about effective legislative and organizational initiatives that are designed to protect women journalists.

Training judges and prosecutors to defend press freedom

Caruana Galizia’s biggest fear was that her example of physical threats, online harassments and libel lawsuits might discourage other journalists from speaking out. At the time of her death, Caruana Galizia was facing 48 libel suits. Award-winning journalist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa also faced several lawsuits before being found guilty of libel in the Philippines in 2020.

What you are seeing is death by a thousand cuts for press freedom and democracy. It joins the messaging that was pushed out on social media that “journalists equal criminals.

Ressa and a former colleague at the news site she founded, Rappler, were convicted of cyber libel by a court in Manila after they published an article linking a businessman to illegal activities. During her career, Ressa has been arrested and has been subject to a sustained campaign of gendered online abuse, threats and harassment, which at one point, resulted in her receiving an average of over 90 hateful messages an hour on Facebook.

Often based on meritless or exaggerated claims, these lawsuits are brought in order to pressure a journalist or human rights defender, rather than to vindicate a right.

That is why judges and prosecutors play an important role in protecting journalists from threats and harassment, as well as promoting prompt and effective criminal proceedings when attacks occur.

When attacks against journalists go unpunished, the legal system and safety frameworks have failed everyone.

In recent years, UNESCO has trained nearly 23,000 judicial officials, including judges, prosecutors and lawyers, through several workshops on media and journalist law, training courses and online webinars, in partnership with universities and educational institutions like the Knight Center for Journalism at the University of Austin, Texas (USA). Training focuses on international standards related to freedom of expression and the safety of journalists, placing a particular focus on issues of impunity. In 2021, UNESCO’s online conference The role of the judiciary and international cooperation to foster safety of journalists – What works? explored effective ways in which judges, prosecutors and lawyers, as well as regional human rights courts and judicial training institutes, can combat impunity for crimes against journalists.

The fight against misinformation and censorship

The threats to freedom of expression and democracy also come from misinformation and censorship. The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing pandemic of misinformation have demonstrated that access to facts and science can be a matter of life and death.  In the first three months of 2020, almost 6,000 people around the world were hospitalized because of coronavirus misinformation, according to a paper published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene . During this period, researchers say at least 800 people may have died due to misinformation related to COVID-19.

In May 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic, the Knight Center, with the support of UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO), launched an online course on how to empower journalists, communication workers and content creators countering the phenomenon of disinformation related to the pandemic. The course attracted nearly 9,000 students from 162 countries. ‘2020 was surely the most important year for the fact-checking community,’ said journalist Cristina Tardáguila, who was the course instructor and has been involved in global initiatives against disinformation as associate director of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Journalism in a Pandemic: Covering COVID-19 Now and in the Future is an online self-directed course available in eight languages:  Arabic ,  Chinese ,  English ,  French ,  Hindi ,  Portuguese ,  Russian and  Spanish . 

Journalists covering the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines have received support through a live webinar, Covering the COVID-19 Vaccines: What Journalists Need to Know.  The recording is now available in 13 languages : Arabic, Bambara, Chinese, Dari, English, French, Guarani, Hindi, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Wolof.

The media can also take an important part in understanding complex issues such as climate change and fighting the misinformation that surrounds it. In the face of climate change, journalists have the ability to enlighten the public and be the link between scientists and citizens by highlighting the urgency of the situation, but also tell stories that are positive and inspire solutions.

Getting the Message Across: Reporting on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific

UNESCO has supported the publication of a handbook for journalists covering climate change. Journalists are key to ensuring that stories of destruction as well as of resistance are shared, in order to get the message across about climate change and avoid misinformation.

The power of community radios

The struggle to protect journalists and promote freedom of expression is just one of the pillars helping build knowledge societies that have the power to transform economies and communities. Universal access to information and knowledge as well as the respect for cultural and linguistic diversity are essential to building peace, sustainable economic development and intercultural dialogue.

The Syrian Hour is a UNESCO-funded project that produces a bi-weekly radio programme, aired on Yarmouk FM radio station in Irbid, northern Jordan, where there is a large Syrian refugee population. 

Syrian Hour

The programme trains young Syrians in radio broadcasting skills to host the shows while the shows themselves provide vital information and support to displaced Syrian refugees residing in Jordan. Majd Al Sammouri is one of the young people being trained to host The Syrian Hour. 

The first paths of my dreams were at the Faculty of Media and Mass Communication at the University of Damascus, a road I thought was lost forever after finding refuge in Jordan. Yarmouk FM was the compass that put me back to the streets of my dreams.

Many Syrian refugees who fled the war to Jordan still lack awareness about their security, liberty and protection rights and what is available to them in terms of food-assistance, education, health or psychosocial support. Often, their precarious refugee status makes them too afraid to approach authorities and humanitarian organizations.

Majd and his young colleagues provide much-needed reliable information and support to the refugee community.

Community radio is a powerful tool because it has the potential to reach out to people with little or no access to information. It is an efficient mechanism for educating and informing people living in remote areas about key issues such as health, education and sustainable development.

UNESCO is supporting and promoting community radios as a means to facilitate social communication and support democratic processes within societies.

Community radios are also being used to promote oral traditions. For example, in Bandafassi, Senegal, the community radio broadcasts stories and proverbs, traditional music and the history of the various villages. This is one of the many small steps towards building pluralistic and diverse media that provide free impartial information options to empower the public to make their choices towards peace, sustainability, poverty eradication and human rights.

UNESCO is supporting and promoting community radios

Fostering freedom of speech.

UNESCO works to foster free, independent and pluralistic media in print, broadcast and online. Media that adhere to this model enhance freedom of speech as well as contribute to peace, sustainability, poverty eradication and human rights.

#TruthNeverDies

#TruthNeverDies is a campaign developed jointly by UNESCO and communication agency DDB Paris to commemorate the  International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists  on 2 November.

Women Make the News 

Women Make the News is a global initiative aimed at raising awareness on issues relating to gender equality in and through the media, driving debate and encouraging action-oriented solutions to meet global objectives.

#HerMomentsMatter  

#HerMomentsMatter is a continuation of UNESCO’s World Radio Day campaign and aims to promote fairer coverage of women athletes. Women represent just 7 per cent of sportspeople seen, heard or read about in the media, while only 4 per cent of sports stories focus primarily on women. 

Remote Radio Week

Community media, whether broadcast or online, are key to ensuring media pluralism and freedom of expression. They are also an indicator of a healthy democratic society.

In partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO has launched a free online training for radio stations to develop their capacities to broadcast remotely.

AI and Facial Recognition webinar

This webinar about artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition, organized by UNESCO, touches on the pressing issues of facial recognition and the concerns it raises about the widespread adoption of AI and human rights. As AI is developing rapidly, it is important to understand its developments, which may have profound and potentially adverse impacts on individuals and society.

Webinar on Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition

World atlas of languages.

The World Atlas of Languages is an unprecedented initiative to preserve, revitalize and promote global linguistic diversity and multilingualism as a unique heritage and treasure of humanity. The project aims to stimulate new research and innovation, create demand for new language resources and tools, help support language policy and legislation, and forge new partnerships and collaboration in the global community to open up access to information.  

World Digital Library

Launched in 2009, the World Digital Library is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, with the support of UNESCO, and contributions from libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions and international organizations around the world. The WDL seeks to preserve and share some of the world’s most important cultural objects, increasing access to cultural treasures and significant historical documents, to enable discovery, scholarship and use.

UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize

Created in 1997, the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize honours an individual, organisation or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and, or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger. It is named after Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia on 17 December 1986.

UNESCO / Guillermo Cano

World Press Freedom Prize

Related items

• Information and communication

Special Issue: Propaganda

This essay was published as part of the Special Issue “Propaganda Analysis Revisited”, guest-edited by Dr. A. J. Bauer (Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Creative Media, University of Alabama) and Dr. Anthony Nadler (Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Ursinus College).

Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques

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This essay argues that the recent scholarship on misinformation and fake news suffers from a lack of historical contextualization. The fact that misinformation scholarship has, by and large, failed to engage with the history of propaganda and with how propaganda has been studied by media and communication researchers is an empirical detriment to it, and serves to make the solutions and remedies to misinformation harder to articulate because the actual problem they are trying to solve is unclear.

School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK

Introduction

Propaganda has a history and so does research on it. In other words, the mechanisms and methods through which media scholars have sought to understand propaganda—or misinformation, or disinformation, or fake news, or whatever you would like to call it—are themselves historically embedded and carry with them underlying notions of power and causality. To summarize the already quite truncated argument below, the larger conceptual frameworks for understanding information that is understood as “pernicious” in some way can be grouped into four large categories: studies of propaganda, the analysis of ideology and its relationship to culture, notions of conspiracy theory, and finally, concepts of misinformation and its impact. The fact that misinformation scholarship generally proceeds without acknowledging these theoretical frameworks is an empirical detriment to it and serves to make the solutions and remedies to misinformation harder to articulate because the actual problem to be solved is unclear. 

The following pages discuss each of these frameworks—propaganda, ideology, conspiracy, and misinformation—before returning to the stakes and implications of these arguments for future research on pernicious media content.

Propaganda and applied research

The most salient aspect of propaganda research is the fact that it is powerful in terms of resources while at the same time it is often intellectually derided, or at least regularly dismissed. Although there has been a left-wing tradition of propaganda research housed uneasily within the academy (Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Seldes & Seldes, 1943), this is not the primary way in which journalism or media messaging has been understood in many journalism schools or mainstream communications departments. This relates, of course, to the institutionalization of journalism and communication studies within the academic enterprise. Within this paradox, we see the greater paradox of communication research as both an applied and a disciplinary field. Propaganda is taken quite seriously by governments, the military, and the foreign service apparatus (Simpson, 1994); at the same time, it has occupied a tenuous conceptual place in most media studies and communications departments, with the dominant intellectual traditions embracing either a “limited effects” notion of what communication “does” or else more concerned with the more slippery concept of ideology (and on that, see more below). There is little doubt that the practical study of the power of messages and the field of communication research grew up together. Summarizing an initially revisionist line of research that has now become accepted within the historiography of the field, Nietzel notes that “from the very beginning, communication research was at least in part designed as an applied science, intended to deliver systematic knowledge that could be used for the business of government to the political authorities.” He adds, however, that

“this context also had its limits, for by the end of the decade, communication research had become established at American universities and lost much of its dependence on state funds. Furthermore, it had become increasingly clear that communication scientists could not necessarily deliver knowledge to the political authorities that could serve as a pattern for political acting (Simpson, 1994 pp. 88–89). From then on, politics and communication science parted ways. Many of the approaches and techniques which seemed innovative and even revolutionary in the 1940s and early 1950s, promising a magic key to managing propaganda activities and controlling public opinion, became routine fields of work, and institutions like the USIA carried out much of this kind of research themselves.” (Nietzel, 2016, p. 66)

It is important to note that this parting of ways did  not  mean that no one in the United States and the Soviet Union was studying propaganda. American government records document that, in inflation-adjusted terms, total funding for the United States Information Agency (USIA) rose from $1.2 billion in 1955 to $1.7 billion in 1999, shortly before its functions were absorbed into the United States Department of State. And this was dwarfed by Soviet spending, which spent more money jamming Western Radio transmissions alone than the United States did in its entire propaganda budget. Media effects research in the form of propaganda studies was a big and well-funded business. It was simply not treated as such within the traditional academy (Zollman, 2019). It is also important to note that this does not mean that no one in academia studies propaganda or the effect of government messages on willing or unwilling recipients, particularly in fields like health communication (also quite well-funded). These more academic studies, however, were tempered by the generally accepted fact that there existed no decontextualized, universal laws of communication that could render media messages easily useable by interested actors.

Ideology, economics, and false consciousness

If academics have been less interested than governments and health scientists in analyzing the role played by propaganda in the formation of public opinion, what has the academy worried about instead when it comes to the study of pernicious messages and their role in public life? Open dominant, deeply contested line of study has revolved around the concept of  ideology.  As defined by Raymond Williams in his wonderful  Keywords , ideology refers to an interlocking set of ideas, beliefs, concepts, or philosophical principles that are naturalized, taken for granted, or regarded as self-evident by various segments of society. Three controversial and interrelated principles then follow. First, ideology—particularly in its Marxist version—carries with it the implication that these ideas are somehow deceptive or disassociated from what actually exists. “Ideology is then abstract and false thought, in a sense directly related to the original conservative use but with the alternative—knowledge of real material conditions and relationships—differently stated” (Williams, 1976). Second, in all versions of Marxism, ideology is related to economic conditions in some fashion, with material reality, the economics of a situation, usually dominant and helping give birth to ideological precepts. In common Marxist terminology, this is usually described as the relationship between the base (economics and material conditions) and the superstructure (the realm of concepts, culture, and ideas). Third and finally, it is possible that different segments of society will have  different  ideologies, differences that are based in part on their position within the class structure of that society. 

Western Marxism in general (Anderson, 1976) and Antonio Gramsci in particular helped take these concepts and put them on the agenda of media and communications scholars by attaching more importance to “the superstructure” (and within it, media messages and cultural industries) than was the case in earlier Marxist thought. Journalism and “the media” thus play a major role in creating and maintaining ideology and thus perpetuating the deception that underlies ideological operations. In the study of the relationship between the media and ideology, “pernicious messages” obviously mean something different than they do in research on propaganda—a more structural, subtle, reinforcing, invisible, and materially dependent set of messages than is usually the case in propaganda analysis.  Perhaps most importantly, little research on media and communication understands ideology in terms of “discrete falsehoods and erroneous belief,” preferring to focus on processes of deep structural  misrecognition  that serves dominant economic interests (Corner, 2001, p. 526). This obviously marks a difference in emphasis as compared to most propaganda research. 

Much like in the study of propaganda, real-world developments have also had an impact on the academic analysis of media ideology. The collapse of communism in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of neoliberal governance obviously has played a major role in these changes. Although only one amongst a great many debates about the status of ideology in a post-Marxist communications context, the exchange between Corner (2001, 2016) and Downey (2008; Downey et al., 2014) is useful for understanding how scholars have dealt with the relationship between large macro-economic and geopolitical changes in the world and fashions of research within the academy. Regardless of whether concepts of ideology are likely to return to fashion, any analysis of misinformation that is consonant with this tradition must keep in mind the relationship between class and culture, the outstanding and open question of “false consciousness,” and the key scholarly insight that ideological analysis is less concerned with false messages than it is with questions of structural misrecognition and the implications this might have for the maintenance of hegemony.

Postmodern conspiracy

Theorizing pernicious media content as a “conspiracy” theory is less common than either of the two perspectives discussed above. Certainly, conspiratorial media as an explanatory factor for political pathology has something of a post-Marxist (and indeed, postmodern) aura. Nevertheless, there was a period in the 1990s and early 2000s when some of the most interesting notions of conspiracy theories were analyzed in academic work, and it seems hard to deny that much of this literature would be relevant to the current emergence of the “QAnon” cult, the misinformation that is said to drive it, and other even more exotic notions of elites conspiring against the public. 

Frederic Jameson has penned remarks on conspiracy theory that represent the starting point for much current writing on the conspiratorial mindset, although an earlier and interrelated vein of scholarship can be found in the work of American writers such as Hofstadter (1964) and Rogin (1986). “Conspiracy is the poor person’s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age,” Jameson writes, “it is a degraded figure of the total logic of late capital, a desperate attempt to represent the latter’s system” (Jameson, 1991). If “postmodernism,” in Jameson’s terms, is marked by a skepticism toward metanarratives, then conspiracy theory is the only narrative system available to explain the various deformations of the capitalist system. As Horn and Rabinach put it:

“The broad interest taken by cultural studies in popular conspiracy theories mostly adopted Jameson’s view and regards them as the wrong answers to the right questions. Showing the symptoms of disorientation and loss of social transparency, conspiracy theorists are seen as the disenfranchised “poor in spirit,” who, for lack of a real understanding of the world they live in, come up with paranoid systems of world explanation.” (Horn & Rabinach, 2008)

Other thinkers, many of them operating from a perch within media studies and communications departments, have tried to take conspiracy theories more seriously (Bratich, 2008; Fenster, 2008; Pratt, 2003; Melley, 2008). The key question for all of these thinkers lies within the debate discussed in the previous section, the degree to which “real material interests” lie behind systems of ideological mystification and whether audiences themselves bear any responsibility for their own predicament. In general, writers sympathetic to Jameson have tended to maintain a Marxist perspective in which conspiracy represents a pastiche of hegemonic overthrow, thus rendering it just another form of ideological false consciousness. Theorists less taken with Marxist categories see conspiracy as an entirely rational (though incorrect) response to conditions of late modernity or even as potentially liberatory. Writers emphasizing that pernicious media content tends to fuel a conspiratorial mindset often emphasize the mediated aspects of information rather than the economics that lie behind these mediations. Both ideological analysis and academic writings on conspiracy theory argue that there is a gap between “what seems to be going on” and “what is actually going on,” and that this gap is maintained and widened by pernicious media messages. Research on ideology tends to see the purpose of pernicious media content as having an ultimately material source that is rooted in “real interests,” while research on conspiracies plays down these class aspects and questions whether any real interests exist that go beyond the exercise of political power.

The needs of informationally ill communities

The current thinking in misinformation studies owes something to all these approaches. But it owes an even more profound debt to two perspectives on information and journalism that emerged in the early 2000s, both of which are indebted to an “ecosystemic” perspective on information flows. One perspective sees information organizations and their audiences as approximating a natural ecosystem, in which different media providers contribute equally to the health of an information environment, which then leads to healthy citizens. The second perspective analyzes the flows of messages as they travel across an information environment, with messages becoming reshaped and distorted as they travel across an information network. 

Both of these perspectives owe a debt to the notion of the “informational citizen” that was popular around the turn of the century and that is best represented by the 2009 Knight Foundation report  The Information Needs of Communities  (Knight Foundation, 2009). This report pioneered the idea that communities were informational communities whose political health depended in large part on the quality of information these communities ingested. Additional reports by The Knight Foundation, the Pew Foundation, and this author (Anderson, 2010) looked at how messages circulated across these communities, and how their transformation impacted community health. 

It is a short step from these ecosystemic notions to a view of misinformation that sees it as a pollutant or even a virus (Anderson, 2020), one whose presence in a community turns it toward sickness or even political derangement. My argument here is that the current misinformation perspective owes less to its predecessors (with one key exception that I will discuss below) and more to concepts of information that were common at the turn of the century. The major difference between the concept of misinformation and earlier notions of informationally healthy citizens lies in the fact that the normative standard by which health is understood within information studies is crypto-normative. Where writings about journalism and ecosystemic health were openly liberal in nature and embraced notions of a rational, autonomous citizenry who just needed the right inputs in order to produce the right outputs, misinformation studies has a tendency to embrace liberal behavioralism without embracing a liberal political theory. What the political theory of misinformation studies is, in the end, deeply unclear.

I wrote earlier that misinformation studies owed more to notions of journalism from the turn of the century than it did to earlier traditions of theorizing. There is one exception to this, however. Misinformation studies, like propaganda analysis, is a radically de-structured notion of what information does. Buried within analysis of pernicious information there is

“A powerful cultural contradiction—the need to understand and explain social influence versus a rigid intolerance of the sociological and Marxist perspectives that could provide the theoretical basis for such an understanding. Brainwashing, after all, is ultimately a theory of ideology in the crude Marxian sense of “false consciousness.” Yet the concept of brainwashing was the brainchild of thinkers profoundly hostile to Marxism not only to its economic assumptions but also to its emphasis on structural, rather than individual, causality.” (Melley, 2008, p. 149)

For misinformation studies to grow in such a way that allows it to take its place among important academic theories of media and communication, several things must be done. The field needs to be more conscious of its own history, particularly its historical conceptual predecessors. It needs to more deeply interrogate its  informational-agentic  concept of what pernicious media content does, and perhaps find room in its arsenal for Marxist notions of hegemony or poststructuralist concepts of conspiracy. Finally, it needs to more openly advance its normative agenda, and indeed, take a normative position on what a good information environment would look like from the point of view of political theory. If this environment is a liberal one, so be it. But this position needs to be stated clearly.

Of course, misinformation studies need not worry about its academic bona fides at all. As the opening pages of this Commentary have shown, propaganda research was only briefly taken seriously as an important academic field. This did not stop it from being funded by the U.S. government to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars a year. While it is unlikely that media research will ever see that kind of investment again, at least by an American government, let’s not forget that geopolitical Great Power conflict has not disappeared in the four years that Donald Trump was the American president. Powerful state forces in Western society will have their own needs, and their own demands, for misinformation research. It is up to the scholarly community to decide how they will react to these temptations. 

• Mainstream Media
• / Propaganda

Cite this Essay

Anderson, C. W. (2021). Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-64

Bibliography

Anderson, C. W. (2010). Journalistic networks and the diffusion of local news: The brief, happy news life of the Francisville Four. Political Communication , 27 (3), 289–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2010.496710

Anderson, C. W. (2020, August 10). Fake news is not a virus: On platforms and their effects. Communication Theory , 31 (1), 42–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa008

Anderson, P. (1976). Considerations on Western Marxism . Verso.

Bratich, J. Z. (2008). Conspiracy panics: Political rationality and popular culture. State University of New York Press.

Corner, J. (2001). ‘Ideology’: A note on conceptual salvage. Media, Culture & Society , 23 (4), 525–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344301023004006

Corner, J. (2016). ‘Ideology’ and media research. Media, Culture & Society , 38 (2), 265 – 273. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443715610923

Downey, J. (2008). Recognition and renewal of ideology critique. In D. Hesmondhaigh & J. Toynbee (Eds.), The media and social theory (pp. 59–74). Routledge.

Downey, J., Titley, G., & Toynbee, J. (2014). Ideology critique: The challenge for media studies. Media, Culture & Society , 36 (6), 878–887. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714536113

Fenster (2008). Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture (Rev. ed.). University of Minnesota Press.

Herman, E., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Pantheon Books. 

Hofstadter, R. (1964, November). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine.

Horn, E., & Rabinach, A. (2008). Introduction. In E. Horn (Ed.), Dark powers: Conspiracies and conspiracy theory in history and literature (pp. 1–8), New German Critique , 35 (1). https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-2007-015

Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism . Duke University Press.

The Knight Foundation. (2009). Informing communities: Sustaining democracy in the digital age. https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Knight_Commission_Report_-_Informing_Communities.pdf

Melley, T. (2008). Brainwashed! Conspiracy theory and ideology in postwar United States. New German Critique , 35 (1), 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-2007-023

Nietzel, B. (2016). Propaganda, psychological warfare and communication research in the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. History of the Human Sciences , 29 (4 – 5), 59–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695116667881

Pratt, R. (2003). Theorizing conspiracy. Theory and Society , 32 , 255–271. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023996501425

Rogin, M. P. (1986). The countersubversive tradition in American politics.  Berkeley Journal of Sociology,   31 , 1 –33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41035372

Seldes, G., & Seldes, H. (1943). Facts and fascism. In Fact.

Simpson, C. (1994). Science of coercion: Communication research and psychological warfare, 1945–1960. Oxford University Press.

Williams, R. (1976).  Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society . Oxford University Press.

Zollmann, F. (2019). Bringing propaganda back into news media studies. Critical Sociology , 45 (3), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920517731134

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

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Media Censorship in China

• China has one of the world’s most restrictive media environments, relying on censorship to control information in the news, online, and on social media. 
• The government uses libel lawsuits, arrests, and other means to force Chinese journalists and media organizations to censor themselves. Thirty-eight journalists were imprisoned in China in 2017.
• China blocks many U.S. websites, including Facebook, Instagram, and some Google services, though the Chinese public has found ways to circumvent the so-called Great Firewall.

Introduction

The Chinese government has long kept tight reins on both traditional and new media to avoid potential subversion of its authority. Its tactics often entail strict media controls using monitoring systems and firewalls, shuttering publications or websites, and jailing dissident journalists, bloggers, and activists.  Google’s battle  with the Chinese government over internet censorship and the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s awarding of the 2010 Peace Prize to jailed Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo have also increased international attention to censorship issues. At the same time, the country’s burgeoning economy relies on the web for growth, and experts say the growing need for internet freedom is testing the regime’s control.

Official Media Policy

China’s  constitution  affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, but the opacity of Chinese media regulations allows authorities to crack down on news stories by claiming that they expose state secrets and endanger the country. The definition of state secrets in China remains vague, facilitating censorship of any information that authorities  deem harmful  [PDF] to their political or economic interests. CFR Senior Fellow Elizabeth C. Economy says the Chinese government is in a state of “schizophrenia” about media policy as it “goes back and forth, testing the line, knowing they need press freedom and the information it provides, but worried about opening the door to the type of freedoms that could lead to the regime’s downfall.”

• Censorship and Freedom of Expression
• Digital Policy

The government issued in May 2010 its first  white paper  on the internet that focused on the concept of “internet sovereignty,” requiring all internet users in China, including foreign organizations and individuals, to abide by Chinese laws and regulations. Chinese internet companies are now required to sign the “ Public Pledge  on Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry,” which entails even stricter rules than those in the white paper, according to  Jason Q. Ng , a specialist on Chinese media censorship and author of  Blocked on Weibo . Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, censorship of all forms of media has tightened. In February 2016, Xi announced new media policy for party and state news outlines: “All the work by the party’s media must reflect the party’s will, safeguard the party’s authority, and safeguard the party’s unity,” emphasizing that state media must align themselves with the “thought, politics, and actions” of the party leadership. A China Daily essay emphasized Xi’s policy, noting that “the nation’s media outlets are essential to political stability .”

How Free Is Chinese Media?

In 2016, Freedom House ranked China last for the second consecutive year out of sixty-five countries that represent 88 percent of the world’s internet users. The France-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders ranked China 176 out of 180 countries in its 2016 worldwide  index of press freedom . Experts say Chinese media outlets usually employ their own monitors to ensure political acceptability of their content. Censorship guidelines are circulated weekly from the Communist Party’s propaganda department and the government’s Bureau of Internet Affairs to prominent editors and media providers.

Certain websites that the government deems potentially dangerous—like Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and some Google services—are fully blocked or temporarily “blacked out” during periods of controversy, such as the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre or Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement protests in the fall of 2014.  Specific material  considered a threat to political stability is also banned, including controversial photos and video, as well as search terms. The government is particularly keen on blocking reports of issues that could incite social unrest, like official corruption, the economy, health and environmental scandals, certain religious groups, and ethnic strife. The websites of Bloomberg news service, the  New York Times , and other major international publications   have periodically been blacked out, their journalists harassed and threatened, and visa applications denied. In 2012, Bloomberg and the New York Times both ran reports  on the private wealth of then Party Secretary Xi Jinping and Premier Wen Jiabao. Restrictions have been also placed on micro-blogging services, often in response to sensitive subjects like corruption, including 2012 rumors of an attempted coup in Beijing involving the disgraced former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai. Censors are also swift to block any mention of violent incidents related to Tibet or China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority group, and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

The Censorship Groups

More than a  dozen government bodies  review and enforce laws related to information flow within, into, and out of China. The most powerful monitoring body is the Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department (CPD), which coordinates with General Administration of Press and Publication and State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television to ensure content promotes party doctrine. Ng says that the various ministries once functioned as smaller fiefdoms of control, but have recently been more consolidated under the State Council Information Office, which has taken the lead on internet monitoring.

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The Chinese government employs large numbers of people to monitor and censor China’s media. Experts refer to an October 2013 report in a state-run paper, the Beijing News , which said more than two million workers are responsible for reviewing internet posts using keyword searches and compiling reports for “decision makers.” These so-called “public opinion analysts” are hired both by the state and private companies to constantly monitor China’s internet. Additionally, the CPD gives media outlets editorial guidelines as well as directives restricting coverage of politically sensitive topics. In one  high-profile incident  involving the liberal Guangdong magazine  Southern Weekly , government censors rewrote the paper’s New Year’s message from a call for reform to a tribute to the Communist Party. The move triggered  mass demonstrations  by the staff and general public, who demanded the resignation of the local propaganda bureau chief. While staff and censors reached a compromise that theoretically intended to relax some controls, much of the censorship remained in place.

Exerting Control

The Chinese government deploys myriad ways of censoring the internet. The Golden Shield Project, colloquially known as the  Great Firewall , is the center of the government’s online censorship and surveillance effort. Its methods include bandwidth throttling, keyword filtering, and  blocking access  to certain websites. According to Reporters Without Borders, the firewall makes large-scale use of  Deep Packet Inspection technology  to block access based on keyword detection. As Ng points out, the government also employs a  diverse range of methods  to induce journalists to censor themselves, including dismissals and demotions, libel lawsuits, fines, arrests, and forced televised confessions.

“To the degree that China’s connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating.”

As of February 2017, thirty-eight journalists were  imprisoned in China , according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a U.S.-based watchdog on press freedom issues. In 2009, Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo  was sentenced  to eleven years in prison for advocating democratic reforms and freedom of speech in  Charter 08 , a 2008 statement signed by more than two thousand prominent Chinese citizens that called for political and human rights reforms and an end to one-party rule.  When Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize, censors blocked the news in China. A year later, journalist Tan Zuoren  was sentenced  to five years in prison for drawing attention to government corruption and poor construction of school buildings that collapsed and killed thousands of children during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province. Early 2014 saw the government  detain Gao Yu , a columnist who was jailed on accusations of leaking a  Party communiqué titled Document 9 .

The State Internet Information Office tightened content restrictions in 2013 and appointed a  new director of a powerful internet committee  led by President Xi Jinping, who assumed power in late 2012. A  July 2014 directive  on journalist press passes bars reporters from releasing information from interviews or press conferences on social media without permission of their employer media organizations. And in early 2015, the government  cracked down on virtual private networks  (VPNs), making it more difficult to access U.S. sites like Google and Facebook. “By blocking these tools, the authorities are leaving people with fewer options and are forcing most to give up on circumvention and switch to domestic services,”  writes Charlie Smith  [pseudonym], a cofounder of FreeWeibo.com and activist website GreatFire.org. “If they can convince more internet users to use Chinese services—which they can readily censor and easily snoop on—then they have taken one further step towards cyber sovereignty.” The restrictions mount on a regular basis, adds the  New Yorker’s  Evan Osnos. “To the degree that China’s connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating,” he wrote  in an April 2015 article . “How many countries in 2015 have an internet connection to the world that is worse than it was a year ago?”

Foreign Media

China requires foreign correspondents to obtain permission before reporting in the country and has used this as an administrative roadblock to prevent journalists from reporting on potentially sensitive topics like corruption and, increasingly, economic and financial developments. Under Xi, the ability of foreign journalists and international news outlets to travel and access to sources have shrunk. “The hostile environment against foreign journalists is being fueled by efforts to publicly mark Western media outlets as not only biased, but part of a coordinated international effort to damage China’s reputation ” [PDF], according to PEN America’s 2016 report on the constraints of foreign journalists reporting from China. Eighty percent of respondents in a 2014 survey conducted by the  Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China  said their work conditions had worsened or stayed the same compared to 2013. International journalists regularly face government intimidation, surveillance, and restrictions on their reporting, writes freelance China correspondent  Paul Mooney , who was denied a visa in 2013.

“Some people in China don’t look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.”

Austin Ramzy, a China reporter for the  New York Times , relocated to Taiwan in early 2014 after  failing to receive  his accreditation and visa.  New York Times  reporter Chris Buckley was reported to have been expelled in early January 2013— an incident  China’s foreign ministry said was a visa application suspension due to improper credentials. China observers were also notably shaken by  the 2013 suspension  of Bloomberg’s former China correspondent, Michael Forsythe, after Bloomberg journalists accused the news agency of withholding investigative articles for fear of reprisal from Chinese authorities.

The treatment of foreign reporters has become a diplomatic issue. In response to the  Arab Spring  protests in early 2011, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to continue U.S. efforts to  weaken censorship  [PDF] in countries with repressive governments like China and Iran. In response, Beijing warned Washington to  not meddle  in the internal affairs of other countries. On a December 2013 trip to Beijing, then Vice President Joe Biden pressed China publicly and privately about press freedom,  directly raising the issue  in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and meetings with U.S. journalists working in China.

U.S. Technology in China

In more recent years, China has made it exceedingly difficult for foreign technology firms to compete within the country. The websites of U.S. social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are blocked. Google, after a protracted battle with Chinese authorities over the banning of search terms, quietly  gave up  its fight in early 2013 by turning off a notification that alerted Chinese users of potential censorship. In late 2014,  China banned Google’s email service Gmail , a move that triggered a concerned response  from the U.S. State Department .

In January 2015, China issued  new cybersecurity regulations  that would force technology firms to submit source code, undergo rigorous inspections, and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms. The move triggered an outcry from European and U.S. companies, who  lobbied governmental authorities  for urgent aid in reversing the implementation of new regulations. CFR Senior Fellow  Adam Segal writes  that “the fact that the regulations come from the central leading group, and that they seem to reflect an ideologically driven effort to control cyberspace at all levels, make it less likely that Beijing will back down.”

Circumventing the Censors

Despite the systematic control of news, the Chinese public has found numerous ways to circumvent censors.  Ultrasurf , Psiphon, and  Freegate  are popular software programs that allow Chinese users to set up proxy servers to avoid controls. While VPNs are also popular, the government crackdown on the systems have led users to  devise other methods , including the insertion of new IP addresses into host files,  Tor —a free software program for anonymity—or SSH tunnels, which route all internet traffic through a remote server. According to Congress, between  1 and 8 percent  [PDF] of Chinese internet users use proxy servers and VPNs to get around firewalls.

Microblogging sites like Weibo have also become primary spaces for Chinese netizens to voice opinion or discuss taboo subjects. “Over the years, in a series of cat-and-mouse games, Chinese internet users have developed an extensive series of puns—both visual and homophonous—slang, acronyms, memes, and images to skirt restrictions and censors,” writes Ng.

Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, said in early 2014 that  encryption could help  the company penetrate China. But such steps experienced a setback in March 2014 when authorities cracked down on social  networking app WeChat  (known as Weixin in China), deleting prominent, politically liberal accounts. Soon thereafter, the government  announced new regulations  on “instant messaging tools” aimed at mobile chat applications such as WeChat, which has more than 750 million users and was increasingly seen as replacing Weibo as a platform for popular dissent that could skirt censors. CFR’s Economy says that the internet has increasingly become a means for Chinese citizens to ensure official accountability and rule of law, noting the  growing importance  of social network sites as a political force inside China despite government restrictions.

China had roughly 731 million internet users in 2017. Although there have been  vocal calls  for total press freedom in China, some experts point to a more nuanced discussion of the ways in which the internet is revolutionizing the Chinese media landscape and a society that is demanding more information. “Some people in China don’t look at freedom of speech  as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end,” writes author Emily Parker. Rather, the fight for free expression fits into a larger context of burgeoning citizen attention to other, more pertinent social campaigns like environmental degradation, social inequality, and corruption—issues for which they use the internet and media as a means of disseminating information, says Ng.

Recommended Resources

New York Times reporter Edward Wong discusses the state of journalism in China on this January 2017 episode of the Sinica Podcast.

Freedom House profiles China’s internet freedom scores in its report Freedom on the Net 2016 .

PEN America chronicled the challenge of reporting from China in its 2016 report Darkened Screen: Constraints on Foreign Journalists in China  [PDF].

Researchers analyze the escalation of state-level information control in China after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack in March 2015 in a Citizen Lab report.

CFR Senior Fellow Elizabeth C. Economy discusses the impact of the internet on Chinese social protest in this  Congressional testimony .

Blogger and activist Michael Anti (Jing Zhao) discusses Chinese internet controls in  this TED talk .

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The status of "individuality”

Requirements of self-government.

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• University of Washington Pressbooks - Media and Society: Critical Approaches - Censorship and Freedom of Speech
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• Oklahoma State University - School of Media and Strategic Communications - Defining Censorship
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• Frontiers - Racism and censorship in the editorial and peer review process
• Cato Institute - Shining a Light on Censorship: How Transparency Can Curtail Government Social Media Censorship and More
• American Library Association - First Amendment and Censorship
• censorship - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
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censorship , the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good . It occurs in all manifestations of authority to some degree, but in modern times it has been of special importance in its relation to government and the rule of law .

Concerns relevant to censorship

Censorship, as a term in English, goes back to the office of censor established in Rome in 443 bce . That officer, who conducted the census, regulated the morals of the citizens counted and classified. But, however honourable the origins of its name, censorship itself is today generally regarded as a relic of an unenlightened and much more oppressive age.

Illustrative of this change in opinion is how a community responds to such a sentiment as that with which Protagoras (c. 490–c. 420 bce ) opened his work Concerning the Gods :

About the gods I am not able to know either that they are, or that they are not, or what they are like in shape, the things preventing knowledge being many, such as the obscurity of the subject and that the life of man is short.

This public admission of agnosticism scandalized Protagoras’s fellow Greeks. Such statements would no doubt have been received with hostility, and probably with social if not even criminal sanctions, throughout the ancient world. In most places in the modern world, on the other hand, such a statement could be made without the prospect of having to endure a pained and painful community response. This change reflects, among other things, a profound shift in opinion as to what is and is not a legitimate concern of government.

Whereas it could once be maintained that the law forbids whatever it does not permit, it is now generally accepted—at least wherever Western liberalism is in the ascendancy—that one may do whatever is not forbidden by law. Furthermore, it is now believed that what may be properly forbidden by law is quite limited. Much is made of permitting people to do with their lives (including their opinions) as they please, so long as they do no immediate and evident (usually physical) harm to others. Thus, Leo Strauss has observed, “The quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns concerns eventually, and perhaps even from the beginning, the status of ‘individuality.’ ”

All this is to say that individualism is made much of in modernity. The status, then, of censorship very much depends on the standing of government itself and of legitimate authority, revealing still another aspect of the complicated relation between “the individual and the state.”

One critical source of the contemporary repudiation of censorship in the West depends on something that may be distinctive to modernity, an emphasis upon the dignity of the individual. This respect for individuality has its roots both in Christian doctrines and in the (not unrelated) sovereignty of the self reflected in state-of-nature theories about the foundations of social organization. Vital to this approach is the general opinion about the nature and sanctity of the human soul . This general opinion provides the foundation of a predominantly new, or modern, argument against censorship—against anything, in fact, that interferes with self-development, and especially such self-development (or, better still, “self-fulfillment”) as a person happens to want and to choose for himself. This can be put in terms of liberty—the liberty to become and to do what one pleases.

The old, or traditional, argument against censorship was much less individualistic and much more political in its orientation, making more of another sense of liberty. According to that sense, if a people is to be self-governing, it must have access to all information and arguments that may be relevant to its ability to discuss public affairs fully and to assess in a competent manner the conduct of the officials it chooses. Thus, “ freedom of speech ,” which is constitutionally guaranteed to the people of the United States , first comes to view in Anglo-American legal history as a guarantee for the members of the British Parliament assembled to discuss the affairs of the kingdom.

In the circumstances of a people actually governing itself, it is obvious that there is no substitute for freedom of speech and of the press , particularly as that freedom permits an informed access to information and opinions about political matters. Even the more repressive regimes today recognize this underlying principle, in that their ruling bodies try to make certain that they themselves become and remain informed about what is “really” going on in their countries and abroad, however repressive they may be in not permitting their own people to learn about and openly to discuss public affairs. Whether anyone who thus rules unjustly, or otherwise improperly, can be regarded as truly understanding and hence truly controlling his situation is a question not limited to these circumstances.

“ Freedom of expression ”

The shift from the more political to the more individualistic view of liberty may be seen in how the constitutional guarantees with respect to speech and the press are typically spoken of in the United States. Restraints upon speaking and publishing , and indeed upon action generally, are fewer now than at most times in the history of the country. This absence of restraints is reflected as well in the very terms in which these rights and privileges are described. What would once have been referred to as “freedom of speech and of the press” (drawing upon the language of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ) is now often referred to as “freedom of expression.”

To make much of freedom of expression is to encourage a liberation of the self from the constraints of the community. It may even be to assume that the self has, intrinsic to it or somehow available to it independent of any social guidance, intimations of what it is and what it wants. Thus, liberation may be seen in the desire of most people to be free to pursue their own goals and life plans—which may involve a reliance upon standards and objectives that are solely their own. It is tempting, in such circumstances, to adopt a radical subjectivism that tends to result in a thoroughgoing relativism with respect to moral and political judgments. One consequence of this approach is to identify an ever-expanding array of forms and media of expression that are entitled to immunity from government regulation—including not only broadcast and print media ( books and newspapers ) but also text messaging and Internet media such as blogs , social networking sites, and e-commerce sites.

On the other hand, if the emphasis is placed upon the more traditional language, “freedom of speech and of the press,” the requirements and prerogatives of a self-governing people are apt to be made more of. This means, among other things, that a people must be prepared and equipped to make effective use of its considerable political power. (Even those rulers who act without the authority of the people must take care to shape their people in accordance with the needs and circumstances of their regime. This kind of effort need not be altogether selfish on the part of such rulers, since all regimes do have an interest in law and order, in common decency, and in a routine reliability or loyalty.) It should be evident that a people entrusted with the power of self-government must be able to exercise a disciplined judgment: not everything goes, and there are better and worse things awaiting the community and its citizens.

What is particularly difficult to argue for, and to maintain, is an arrangement that, while it leaves a people clearly free politically to discuss fully all matters of public interest with a view toward governing itself, routinely prepares that same people for an effective exercise of its considerable freedom. In such circumstances, there are some who would take the case for, and the rhetoric of, liberty one step farther, insisting that no one should try to tell anyone else what kind of person he should be. There are others, however, who maintain that a person is truly free only if he knows what he is doing and chooses to do what is right. Anyone else, in their view, is a prisoner of illusions and appetites, however much he may believe that he is freely expressing himself.

There are, then, two related sets of concerns evident in any consideration of the forms and uses of censorship. One set of concerns has to do with the everyday governance of the community; the other, with the permanent shaping of the character of the people. The former is more political in its methods, and the latter is more educational.

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Effects of Social Media — Censorship In Social Media

Censorship in Social Media

• Categories: Censorship Effects of Social Media Social Media

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Words: 812 |

Published: Apr 29, 2022

Words: 812 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Anat, Z. & Fernadez, W. (2016). Countering violent extremism on social media: An analysis of communication campaigns. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5406-5423. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5345/1718
• DeNardis, L., & Hackl, A. M. (2015). Internet fragmentation: An overview. SSRN Electronic Journal.
• Flew, T. (2015). Communication and social media. Oxford University Press.
• Gibson, R. (2019). Freedom of speech and the limits of social media censorship. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/freedom-of-speech-and-the-limits-of-social-media-censorship-125726
• Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press.
• Hasen, R. L. (2016). Facebook and the new face of media regulation. The University of Chicago Law Review Online, 83, 37-43. https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/83_u_chi_l_rev_online_37.pdf
• Howard, P. N., Agarwal, S. D., & Hussain, M. M. (2011). When do states disconnect their digital networks? Regime responses to the political uses of social media. The Communication Review, 14(3), 216-232.
• Jørgensen, H. (2018). Facebook and democracy: In defence of an extended understanding of freedom of expression. Information, Communication & Society, 21(10), 1388-1403.
• Mossberger, K. (2008). Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Georgetown University Press.
• Stevenson, J. (2000). Freedom of speech: The history of an idea. Penguin.

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• Essay on Censorship

Censorship In Media Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Censorship , Democracy , Family , Media , Children , Politics , Journalism , United States

Words: 2500

Published: 11/13/2019

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Censorship is a suppression of the speech or a given public communication which can be considered harmful, objective, inconvenient, or sensitive to the people as it is determined by the media outlet, government or other controlling body. In the Twentieth century, censorship was seen through examinations of plays, books, radios and television programmes, and news reports for purposes of suppressing or altering ideas that were found to be offensive or objective. Not all censorship is equal and they do not arise from external forces or government. There are different forms of censorship which are not obtrusive and they have to be well examined correctly. This paper analyses explores and explains the censorship in media and its effects to the people.

Types of Censorship

Military censorship- is a process of maintaining military intelligence tactics and intelligence confidential away from the enemies. It’s used to counter the espionage or in other words process of gleaning the military information. Moral Censorship- This is the removal of some materials that are found to be obscene or considered morally questionable. An example is pornography, especially that of child pornography. It is illegal and also censored in many jurisdictions in the whole world.

Political Censorship- It occurs when the government holds back the information from the public. This is usually done in order to exert population control and prevent free expressions which may lead to the formation of rebellion.

Corporate Censorship- This is a processes by which the editors in media outlets intervene in disrupting publishing of the information which portrays their business partners or business in a negative way. The corporate media may also intervene to prevent alternating offers from being exposed to the public.

Religious Censorship- This is a process whereby materials are considered to be objectionable. This usually involves a prevailing religion forcing some limitations to be of less prevalent ones. In other way, a given religion may ignore the works of the other religion if they believe that the content is different from that of their faith.

A policy of banning works and literature outweighs positive effects. When restricting the abilities of a child to reach full intellectual potential isn’t worth a small chance that media, music industry and books can have the effect on the personality, behavior or attitude of a child. It’s evident that churches, schools, parents, the media and the music industry have power to control what American’s youths are exposed to. Censorship has always been of effect to the society. Therefore it has provoked between whether or not some of the things are right or wrong.

Censorship in Media

The government in some parts of the globe controls the media. One can’t publish or broadcast anything that the government may consider to be harmful or immoral, or that may threaten the stability of the country. On the other hand, some democratic countries are the ones that enjoy the freedom of speech. Citizens are free to write and say anything they wish to but by following some carefully exceptions. There is a controlling power that is at work in the market economy called the power of money. In some parts of Northern America, almost all the mainstream publications rely on two income sources: advertisers and subscriptions. Both influence decisions about the content. The readers must or should find these contents to be interesting, relevant, entertaining and tasteful. If it does not have these qualities then subscriptions may fall and also the advertisers may fear this censorship and cancel their accounts if the contents challenges or undermines their messages about selling of their products.

There are various pros and cons of censorship in media. Where freedom of expressions is stressed enough, the pro media censorship agreement may be implied as a sacrilege. People don’t realize that censorship doesn’t imply curbing freedom of expression but it only draws the line between unrestrained deviltry and freedom. It only reminds those people who cross the lines of humanity and morality in the freedom of expression and makes them to fear not to write or publish the things that violets the rights of people. Mass media are of several types which are means of people’s expression around the world. Media censorship must be applied to prevent unrestrained topics which are inappropriate for some age groups or those topics concerning racism. Discretion or censorship in viewers is necessary.

Those children of impressionable ages are exposed to sexually explicit content as well as excessive violence. All these are caused by media exposure which is an instrumental factor for shaping values and opinions in these children. An example which is common is the violence video games that most of them are addicted to. This increases aggressive tendencies in most children. Across the world, various researchers are studying the impacts of media on the developments of children. Use of abusive language and abusive actions can make lasting effects and also result in children’s aggressive tendencies.

According to buzzle.com, censorship in media is necessary for checking three main setback areas. These areas are racism, violence and vulgarity or sexuality explicit content. Also media censorship is necessary in seeing that the media isn’t being used as a toll in attacking the character of someone or humiliating or discriminating people. News channels in India are experiencing censorship regulations because of the body of Indian media industries.

Censorship of Violence in Media

According to most people all media texts are not suitable for many audiences. Therefore, there is need to place some limitations on the content and type of texts which children are exposed to in order for them to fear not to watch and those programmes that are for adults. It’s also agreed that texts that are accessible to a largely and wide non-selecting or involuntary audience like television commercials, terrestrial television before the watershed, music broadcast on radio and billboards should not contain offensive elements. Rules and regulations therefore, have been set to prevent contents of media texts in some situations (Kerina W. 1-3)

Many people would agree that freedom of speech is the basic human right and it should not be compromised or eroded through fear censorship in those nations that call themselves free. Poets, Film-makers, graffiti artists, journalists, musicians and internet site creators should have the rights that expresses what they think is the best without fear of official authorities or from elsewhere. Recently, there is a debate going on about those people who believe the need for censorship such as politicians, governments and parents and also there are those who believe in complete freedom of speech such as teenage audience, media corporations and artists. People should familiarize with different methods of censorship that is used by various media and in particular the issues surrounding texts.

The American Media in recent times has been plagued with many problems like propaganda, sliding profits, plagiarism and scandals about manipulation falling readership in press. Media distortion, omission, bias and inaccuracy in the United States are acknowledged by many people outside the United States of America and it’s slowly being realized inside the United States. However, due to distortion, omission, bias and inaccuracy in the United States mainstream media, it’s difficult for the American citizens to obtain an objective; open view of issues that are involved in the US since US is one of the largest military and economic powers in the whole world. That is why they are usually and naturally involved in different issues.

Censorship is the remarks and cuts of media mainly movies. Media censorship has been used for a long time and it’s supposed to protect people from the happenings in the media like movies which contain sex, horror or violence. According to the government, censorship helps people because it removes scenes that may affect people mentally such as a film that talks about poverty and working class which may trigger the revolution because people’s minds aren’t mentally strong and able to take that it was just a film. People should need fear of censorship in movies in order to protect young children not to watch adult movies which might change them for a long or short period.

Radio was one of the first mean which broadcast news and also entertainment to the audience. It seems now that the Americans are allowing many things to be said via the radio. Inappropriate words are spoken without bleeped out. The Americans enjoys the rights of free speech because their constitution allows it and also they are being protected by the government. Federal Communication Commission is the one that is responsible for maintaining and protecting the integrity of broadcasts by not allowing the obscene contents to be hard publicly (Media-awareness.com, 1-2). Many Americans feels that censorship violets their rights as citizens but it doesn’t violet their rights. The 1st amendment clearly gives the American citizens right of free speech. This means that they are able to say anything their heart desires.

Television censorship in the US has been the issue since its invention. The public holds varieties of stances pertaining censorship. Even if the law is passed regarding censorship, it may not suit every individuals their needs. According to some people, they believe that these censorship violets the rights of individuals in the law and also others believe that it should be available to the family members and not the government. Some people on the other hand strive to maintain the government regulation of censorship. TV censorship is important because it seize the future of the country. The rights of people can be violated if channels are being censored. But if it does not then the generations’ future may change because people will be influenced by explicit behavior which they view on television.

Magoon asserts that those people who are in favor of censorship believe that banning some books is necessary because it protects people. Some of those books could influence negatively or corrupt readers. Thos who oppose censorship believes that banning of books may violate the rights of Americans to free expression which is the U.S. Constitution. Individuals oppose censorship by just asking for materials that people want to have been censored. Students and parents write letters to the school boards and libraries asking for those books banned to be put on shelves. This makes them to buy copies of those banned and share them. Also the newspapers publish some controversial articles that the private companies or government asked them not to print. This may make people to hire lawyers and take them to court. The opposing censorship doesn’t mean that one has to watch or read something that he does not want to watch. It only means that people should choose what they wish for themselves. Librarians and teachers buy books for the school classroom and libraries reading lists. These lists generally, must go through a process of screening before being made available to young people. Those parents who screen the books may recommend not purchasing a given book if it’s found to be of morally objectionable. Though the American Library Association recognizes the rights of parents to control the things that their children read, it also strives in making materials available to all library patrons (60-120)

Media censorship opponents feel that censorship is a great hindrance as the society progresses without boundaries. Thus this makes them to fear that media censorship may led to some secrets of the government and high profile people not to published in the media. In most countries there is freedom of expression and speech to the citizens but there are also other countries that counter the abuse of rights by some people in a way of restricting freedom of this expression and speech. While each country censors media in some ways, the amount of censorship differs. Media censorship is done in different ways. The main criterion in media censorship is age limits of viewing different media. Media censorship sometimes may be a blanket ban on some taboo topics and their definitions can be defined in the country according to the governing authority. While the levels of this media censorship exist, citizens are calling for removal of all kinds of censorship but there are also other people who are looking for bringing in more restrictions to the media (Herbert H. 60-134)

Ncacblog.wordpress.com, real threats of media censorship are successful increasing in suppressing freedom of speech and expression to the media. Violence possibility has entered imagination of the publishers, media and the public at large in generating more and more blocking self censorship. Threats of violence have ensured that such actual violence and threats will be seen to be effective and also used. Those materials that are being disliked will end up to published regardless of fear and threats. The government of some states repeatedly bashes anybody who dares to be against the wisdom of its policies. The government has threatens jail-term for those business leaders and media houses who challenges its work. This has led to figurative wall of self-imprisonment and fear of censorship (1-6)

The media is the people’s mirror and it should be respected. The media plays a very imperative role since it informs members of the public the happenings. Educative programmes, entertainment and religious programmes are among the important contents that the media portray. Governments and their relevant communications departments must champion the rights and protection of the media. It is of paramount importance for the media itself to be responsible in whatever it gives the people. If it is books, only the right content should be published. To some extent, the government should control publishing firms and ensure that they publish materials that are of importance to the people.

Buzzle.com. “Media Censorship: Why is Censorship Good” (2000). 21 April 2011: 1-5.print. Foerstel Herbert. “Banned in the media: a reference guide to censorship in the press, motion” NY: British Library Pub. (1998). 21 April 2011: 60-134. Print. Kekla Magoon. “Media Censorship” US: ABDO Pub. (2010). 21 April 2011: 67-120. Print. Kerina Wilson. “Censorship of Violence in the Media”. (2010). 21 April 2011: 1-3. Print. Media-awareness.com. “Censorship in the Media” Media Awareness Network (2010). 21 April 2011: 1-2. Print. Ncacblog.wordpress.com. “Fear and censorship: Or, how strong is our commitment to free speech?” (2011). 22 April 2011: 1-6. Print.

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Media Control and Censorship of TV Essay

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Media control and censorship of programs shown on TV has been a common practice in the recent days. Media control simply means censorship of the information and ideas that are spread to the public through media outlets. Some of the ways through which media control is exercised include barring the display of obscene images and the use of obscene language.

Media control is exercised in almost every country to prevent these obscenities. It is the responsibility of governments with the help of selected bodies to exercise media control. This essay will discuss the types of controls imposed on the media and the parties involved in exercising the controls.

The first type of control imposed over the media is control of sexual content, content depicting violence, and content encouraging use of drugs. This is an important type of control that ensures children and families are not exposed to obscene material. Control of pornography material to avoid it being shown on TV is important because the material can be easily accessed through the internet.

It is important for control over display of such material to be exercised because it is harmful to children. Unless display of obscene content and other questionable material is controlled, children and families will be affected negatively by the content (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler 156).

The second type of control imposed on the media is the control of information that may put the security of a country at risk. Control of military information is used to guard information which should only be possessed by the military. The media may be used by politicians and other powerful personalities fighting the government to spread information which poses a threat to the security of a country.

For instance, cases have been witnessed where the media is used to spread information causing citizens to start fighting. It is important to have media control over spread of information that may put the security of a country at risk.

The third type of control imposed over the media is religious control. In most countries there are different religious groups who subscribe to different faiths. It is therefore important for all religious groups in a country to be respected. Religious control refers to the control of any information that is considered offensive to particular religious groups.

For example, cases may arise where the dominant religious groups start interfering with the freedom of minority religions. It is important to exercise media control to ensure that there is no spread of information that might cause religious animosity (Gaddy 289).

The controls that are imposed on the media are in the form of laws enacted by the government. Most governments control the content to be spread through the media by enacting laws that regulate it. The ministry of information and communication is then held responsible to ensure that media outlets adhere to the laws that have been enacted. The ministry issues broadcasting guidelines that should be followed by all media outlets. Media outlets that violate the set laws regarding the content they should broadcast risk losing their licenses.

Media control is also exercised through special bodies that are set by the government to regulate the content being spread through media outlets. Some of these bodies are commissions mandated to ensure that all regulations are followed by the media outlets. The commissions are also responsible for monitoring media outlets to ensure that they do not release questionable content. By so doing, the information spread through the media is controlled to ensure that only information suitable to the public is released.

Works Cited

Gaddy, Gary. The Power of the Religious Media: Religious Broadcast Use and the Role of Religious Organizations in Public Affairs .n.d . Web.

O’Shaughnessy, Michael and Stadler,Jane. Media and Society: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2008.Print

• Pornography and Censorship in Society
• Balance of Media Censorship and Press Freedom
• Censorship for Television and Radio Media
• Values Portrayed in Popular Media
• Envisioning the media ten years from now
• Mass Media Impact on Society
• The Effects of Media Violence on People
• “Mind over Mass Media” Steven Pinker Article in New York Times
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Social Media Censorship

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