Naomasa298

Let's say a large, powerful country agrees to provide a multi-billion renminbi aid and investment package to a smaller country.

In return for this wodge of cash, the large country demands that the smaller country take action to curb negative portrayals of it in its media. Pressure must be put on editors not to publish articles criticising the large country, and the recipient government must do what it can to portray the doner as a friendly and upstanding country to the people - even if those people generally don't think that way. If these things don't happen, the aid and investment package will be withdrawn or revised.

Do you approve or disapprove of the doner using its financial clout in this way, and basically using aid as a ransom demand?

funakison

Do i disagree with this scenario. A biiiiiiig Yes.

In nations which enjoy free speech, its almost impossible. Politicians suck up to editors not the other way round.

pugsville

cheaper to just buy the journalist or newspaper. I think both pre ww1 and ww2 Germans were paying off french newspapers. It wasnt an expensive undertakng. (effective? not in this case I thought)

Gudenrath

A somewhat tangential scenario actually happened in Denmark in 2008 according to Wikileaks (and it was a public secret in political journalist circles as well, since the sequence of events was so obvious): Then prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen made a deal with Turkey to prosecute the Kurdish tv-station ROJ-tv located in Denmark in return for Turkish support for his Head of Nato nomination.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen became head of NAto and lo and behold ROJ-TV was found guilty acting as a mouth piece for PKK. The appeal case is currently in process.

sylla1

You're probably right; let say former colonies accepting the so-called humanitarian aid from the former masters should probably shut up and say nothing officially unfavorable about their colonial experience.

Jake10

Considering that we come across this concept all the time in day to day life here, such as in bosses giving promotions to workers who are not good but will say what the bosses want, professors giving marks to students who don't know much but will praise the professors at all given chances, and even celebrities who pay people to cheer for them, it is something I tend to ignore. I'm not sure what it says about people who do it, since they care more for what others say about them than how they feel about themselves. I don't agree with it, but I also don't think I can stop it, so it basically comes down to the credibility of what I hear.

mansamusa

Here is an interesting piece on the issue, from the Huffington Post:
Iginio Gagliardone: Are We Getting China-Africa Media Relations Wrong?

"But if we turn to West Africa and we consider, for example, Chinese investments in the media and telecommunication sector in Ghana, a country with some of the "freest media" on the continent, a very different picture emerges. China has recently provided $180 million to help the Ghanaian government's efforts to use new communication technologies to increase the efficiency of the state apparatus, and regularly offers scholarships to Ghanaian journalists who are willing to continue their studies in China. This is part of a broader scheme of agreements that are turning Ghana, where large oil reserves have recently been discovered, into the recipient of one of the most generous assistance packages ever offered by China to an African country. However, according to research we have been conducting at the University of Oxford and that will be published later this year, the increasing role of China appears to have had no effects on Ghana's media system, as China's approach to the media seems to have little appeal for Ghanaian policy makers and media professionals. As a journalist working for the Daily Graphic, Ghana's leading newspaper, pointed out: "People in Ghana do not care too much about which political model China is proposing. It is the people in the West who care more about a rising China.""

Jake10

CCTV news is expanding throughout Africa. I don't know how people in Africa feel about CCTV news, but I know that the people here don't see it as reliable.

mansamusa

Here is putting things in perspective:

Panthera tigris altaica

It is appalling. I would even go so far as too say that there isn't a country that hasn't practiced this at some point in the past hundred years. What country doesn't like receiving favorable press?