China and Propaganda:

If we are talking about media and propaganda then it is hard to not talk about Chinese media and its state-sponsored propaganda. Propaganda is a hidden aspect in democracies, but it takes one of the key roles in communist states like China. China likes to control its media, letting them report only the stuff they want the population to see and believe in.

China has recently confirmed plans to merge its state television and radio stations to create a new broadcaster that will be one of the largest propaganda platforms in the world. Chinese state media reported the merger of China Central Television (CCTV), China Radio International, and China National Radio under a single network to be named Voice of China.

Although China’s constitution affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, 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 to their political or economic interests. 

It has been stated in the past that 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.”

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.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, censorship of all forms of media has tightened. In February 2016, Xi announced a new media policy for the 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.”

This is even worse than the media in democracies who at least have a choice to follow their ideologies. China, being a communist state, doesn’t allow any kind of freedom to its media. Competing with world media, it has tried to establish a worldwide news agency on the level of Big 4 of Transnational news agencies but even they’re not allowed to report anything even remotely against the state. 

A typical news story in China goes through multiple layers of checking for any kind of dissent. It is safe to say Chinese media have news writers and newsreaders, not journalists and reporters.

This also results in biased reporting of events and situations among the Chinese populace who are led to believe differently about its neighbors and their policies. There is virtually no opposition party in China, if there are any, they are not given any kind of power, thus making media extremely biased in favor of one person and his visions. 

Xi Jinping has total control over the media and now that his term has been virtually extended till his death, we can only expect worse.
The Cultural Revolution in China resulted in a generation of the Chinese population that is unaware of the world around it. Almost all major websites of the world are banned in China and their Chinese equivalent is present there. 

Any kind of dissent is a very serious offense in the country and there is no freedom to write or publish anything against the government or leadership. In between all this, if even the media is not fair, then we can only hope.

Current Situations in India and rest of the World:

To say Indian media is biased or propagandist, based on just the above incidents would be a big statement. But over the years, a pattern has been observed in the way media report certain events and certain people that give rise to such beliefs. There are claims of media bias from all opposing camps regarding several issues.

The BJP supporters accuse some newspapers of anti-Narendra Modi bias while the Congress supporters accuse the others of being the mouthpieces of BJP and RSS. Often the news articles are paid advertisements by the political parties.

An analysis by The Hoot, a South Asian media watchdog, found that although it is difficult to trace the complex paths of media ownership in India, political parties and individuals with political affiliations own and control increasing sections of the press. 

According to a 2012 report by Business Standard, more than a third of news channels in India are owned by politicians or political affiliates, who use their channels as “political vehicles” to influence the course of local elections.

In his recent article in Caravan magazine, senior journalist Parthasarathy explored the political ownership of media during the past few years. “Owning a news entity has become a practical necessity for political parties in India,” Parthasarathy explained.

This is particularly evident in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where regional politicians and their family members have launched television channels that are used for political purposes. 

Channels like Sun TV, Kalaignar TV, and Makkal TV, which all launched in 2000 and which are owned by local politicians or their families, have used news broadcasts to provide favorable coverage to one party or another. Some of these channels have also refrained from coverage of issues that may cast the party with which they are affiliated in a negative light. 

For example, during the run-up to the last major election, in 2014, Sun and Kalaignar avoided coverage of alleged atrocities against Tamils in nearby Sri Lanka, in an effort to shield from criticism the regional party to which they are tied, according to Parthasarathy.

This phenomenon is not limited to Tamil Nadu. It is evident across much of South India in states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and in places like Punjab in the north, where ex-Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s family owns three news channels, Parthasarathy said. There too, cable distribution systems have blocked telecasts of anti-Badal stories, according to news reports.

While the political ownership is particularly stark in broadcast media, it occurs in the print media as well. The Sun Group, for example, owns two newspapers and a few magazines in addition to its TV channels. (Galhotra, n.d.)

No wonder propaganda is on rising so much these days, adding to this the bias that media has developed over the years, the situation these days, over the world is stressful and not how it should be. Be it the reportage of Syria or Palestine or Crimea or other war-torn areas of the world, the aim is not to report the pain and suffering of people, but to form an opinion, a view that is beneficial to their personal gains. 

Leading into the Iraq Wars, media in the USA showed Saddam Hussain and his Iraq in an extremely bad light, with all kind of claims and evidence to support them, they made the population feel it is necessary to attack, but we can still see the aftermath of that and how bad a decision it was.

Propaganda has become an important tool for the political parties these days, and now that it is so much easier to spread their propaganda, they have started using it more blatantly than ever, it’s not even discreet anymore. Media houses today are privately owned by people who are in some way related to this political outfit or other or succumb to this ideology or other.