torsdag 25. juni 2020

China is reshaping the global news landscape and weakening the Fourth Estate

Kindergartens, handicrafts markets, high-tech companies, hydroelectric dams ... political indoctrination camps? These are some of the sights international journalists are whisked around when they take part in all-expenses paid tours to China. The motive of these invitations is, in the mantra of Chinese president Xi Jinping, to “tell a good China story” to the outside world.

In the past, that good China story would have been told through clumsy Communist party propaganda broadcast on its state-run news outlets. But during our research for the International Federation of Journalists, we found that Beijing is increasingly outsourcing the storytelling to foreign journalists, who often end up amplifying its messages in their own languages in the pages of their own news outlets.