Thanks to contracts with the world’s leading TV news agencies, Chinese State Broadcaster CCTV has managed to buy unfiltered access to global news production. This access is being used to spread disinformation and propaganda on a large scale. Many of the CCTV items analysed are heavily editorialised, contain dubious sourcing and appear to be designed to reinforce China’s foreign policy priorities. The volume of CCTV material being distributed by AP and Reuters appears to be increasing, while the awareness of the phenomenon in newsrooms seems to be low.
There is an increasing danger that disinformation from the Chinese Communist Party might end up on the TV screens of Western audiences, argues Øystein Bogen in the brief ”CCTV – A Trojan Horse In International News Dissemination?”.
Øystein Bogen is a Norwegian journalist, author and documentary filmmaker.