news media
Proposed changes to Moldova's broadcast regulations are creating a free-speech conundrum. The amendments are primarily meant to counter propaganda from Kremlin-friendly Russian broadcast outlets, but they also could end up placing curbs on journalists' ability to cover the Moldovan government.
Instead, the Kremlin has become increasingly sophisticated in its media strategy. Even as it continues to enforce conformity of coverage at home, it criticizes conformity abroad. Moreover, it borrows from the playbook of its former Cold War enemy, the U.S., to shape public opinion—in part by concocting a powerful story of Western spin.
In the past, the biggest problem was: How do we get information to these people who either have none, or few ways to access it? Now, as the BBC report notes, the main problem isn’t scarcity of information, it’s a scarcity of reliable information.
People now live in an information rich environment. Yet in the realm of foreign policy, people may be exposed to an entire array of different, and even contradicting, realities produced by different actors and their framing of events.
If we really knew what is going on in the Kremlin backrooms, where Russia’s information war is being planned, we in the West would be shocked, writes author Peter Pomerantsev in Politico magazine.
Putin’s propaganda machine is fighting a desperate PR battle—at home and abroad—for control of the narrative of its war against Ukraine. Setbacks make the battle for German public opinion even more crucial, a battle that is now being conducted on the front pages of the German press.
![Photo reprinted courtesy or Richard Lee via Flickr public opinion](https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/sites/default/files/styles/275x168/public/uploads/XMf946NQWCxedQf3_UH0Jy2MhuhQJ_neuwk9gNI0WfE.jpeg?itok=PgLXosVh)
At the center of this week's public diplomacy news is the power and relevance of public opinion in today's globalized world.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman's criticism of the international media coverage of terror attacks in Israel was "inappropriate," the Foreign Press Association said Wednesday.