With its slick graphics, smiling young news anchors, and round-the-clock coverage, RT is like any other news channel. But there is one major difference, aside from the content; RT, which stands for Russia Today, is paid for by the Kremlin.

When I come across a statement about “winning the hearts and minds” of this or that group, I usually roll my eyes because the phrase is usually being tossed out without regard to underlying requirements or even reality.

Never did I think it would be Kim Jong Il who would get me to open a Twitter account. North Korea turned me around. Who can resist Dear Leader Kim’s propaganda arm churning out crazed statements in 140 characters?

For decades Xinhua has been an unavoidable presence in China. It has a monopoly on official news and the regulatory power to complicate life for other media outfits. But as China has grown in wealth and international stature, Beijing has tired of feeling overlooked or maligned by the Western press.

About 30 non-commercial TV stations around the U.S. are airing “MHz Network Worldview,” which includes programs from Al Jazeera English, the Kremlin’s “Russia Today” and other foreign state-controlled instruments of propaganda.

One thing that the new Pontifical Council must do is open up a way for the Church to speak to the world without being misunderstood. This means, in essence, proper public relations, or what the Americans call “public diplomacy”, and more cynical Europeans call propaganda.

President Barack Obama inherited two major public diplomacy problems. The first was the obvious crisis in America's communication with the world and the attendant decline in America's global standing. The second was the identification of the process of public diplomacy with the administration of George W. Bush. It was a paradox. The administration could not summon the cure without reminding people of one of the causes of the disease. The linking of Bush with Public Diplomacy was not wholly fair. The term was brought into its modern use in the U.S.