Commodification of news under capitalist model creates barriers to access in form of paywalls, ads, data harvesters, and so on. Western media, driven by profit imperatives, increasingly treats news as a luxury good rather than a public utility. Paywalls lock critical reporting behind subscription fees, while ad-driven revenue models bombard readers with intrusive trackers and disruptive marketing prioritizing profit over access.
On the other hand, Chinese state-supported media model sidesteps these barriers by decoupling news accessibility from commercial pressures. I find myself reading outlets like Global Times or China Daily precisely because they provide clean, accessible articles without the junk. These platforms ensure information reaches a wider demographic, including marginalized groups who are priced out of Western media ecosystems. The structural advantage here is undeniable because Chinese media is unburdened by the need to “sell” audiences to advertisers or shareholders.
The west champions “free press”, but the reality is that access is often restricted through financial and technological gatekeeping, while China’s approach leads to practical accessibility that’s not possible under capitalist model. As a result, I expect that Chinese media will become increasingly more dominant globally due to being easily accessible.
It might not take off in the west where there’s too much propaganda against China for people to turn to Chinese sources, but that’s not the case for the global majority.
Can you recommend such sources? I’m trying to expand my news sources and use more palpable options. Of course US trash is not something that I’m interested in.
In addition to Global Times and China Daily, there’s Xinhua, People’s Daily they also have a nice app. These are the papers I tend to check regularly.
Thank you. I will definitely check them out.
Their articles are often a lot shorter, too. A lot of their press releases just state the facts, the actual news. No colouring, no editorialising, no agenda. Sometimes just a couple paragraphs.
It’s interesting to compare it to English-language newspaper archives from 100 years ago, before Western Media got weaponized.
It’s interesting to compare it to English-language newspaper archives from 100 years ago, before Western Media got weaponized.
As soon as they made the printing presses they weaponized them, way longer than 100 years.
Heres an example;
That’s a really good point. At first I had the impression that western media was doing more depth in its coverage, but then I realized that the reason articles tend to be longer is cause there’s a bunch of spin and propaganda wrapped around a few morsels of actual information.
Yeah. Whenever I teach newspaper reading to students I go into local digital archives and grab an article from the day 100 years ago. At first I thought it would just be interesting for students to see a snapshot of their city in the past, but the articles back then were just generally shorter and more information-dense.
I haven’t really thought about this until you mentioned it, but it’s really convenient how we can use archives to watch the evolution of the media under capitalism. We also might be hitting a new inflection point with LLMs now because they’re starting to be able to do a decent job at looking up and summing content. This might kill the whole model for writing long winded articles since nobody will actually be reading them. The media might have to go back to short and easily digestible form to stay relevant.
That makes a lot of sense. I read Chinese media outlets like CGTN and Global Times and I’ve never once gotten a paywall. Chinese websites will never tell me to pay subscription fees.
Meanwhile we have western media outlets demanding subscription fees to read their propaganda. So much for “free press”.
On the other hand, Chinese state-supported media model sidesteps these barriers by decoupling news accessibility from commercial pressures.
The same could be said of the BBC, DW, France24 and many others. They’re still trash. Being state supported is nice, but the interests of that state are key.
I’d like to add that western communist parties are doing a very lacklustre job in fighting for hegemony in the digital media/news space. It is depressing that single-person channels like First Thought somehow are better at constant free news coverage than the PSL or other English-language ML parties.
It might not take off in the west where there’s too much propaganda against China for people to turn to Chinese sources, but that’s not the case for the global majority.
Most Chinese news platforms are still mostly only in English, which isn’t accessible for non-westerners. And national bourgeois media is happy to only translate what supports their interests. I’d rather they support the building of national left-wing press structures abroad.
You’re right that western state funded outlets enjoy the same benefits as well, I do find that it tends to lag behind corporate media a lot of the time though. And very much agree that the interests of the state are important to keep in mind just as it is when parsing the framing when reading corporate media.
I very much agree that western communist parties are absolutely terrible at communication. As @v_pp points out, PSL does a fairly decent job though. It would be nice to see more of that happening.
A funny tidbit I heard about the major party in my country is that they don’t want to waste resources competing with bourgeois media, LOL
So much for reaching the people where they’re actually at. No surprise organisations that embrace social media tend to grow much faster.
lol a very serious party to be sure
PSL actually has very good media production with BreakThrough News, including the recent release of the documentary “The Encampments”.
Oh, I didn’t know breakthrough news was theirs. I thought they only owned Liberation News, which usually lags behind the news cycle by a lot.
Capitalists paywalling their own propaganda, some problems really do fix themselves.
What I noticed is that they paywall the actual journalism, and keep the propaganda content free to go viral.
NJR, Current Affairs, 2020: The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free
You mean that the American media oligarchy cannot depend on bribery for their operation. The Capitalists should be hypocritically misusing taxpayer’s money to bribe the fake news. Even without the taxpayer’s money, they have the illegal funding from the sabotaged reparation to Indigenous groups for the 150 years of fake school death camps. The European immigrant war criminals are the one who decide on the terms and processes for the reparation to Indigenous people for the ongoing federal reserve concentration camps, fake school death camps that continued in secret, and child trafficking from the child abduction in the fake cultural assimilation policy. Where could they gain the money to frame the Native American chiefs, who do the most to solve the altrocities and savage indoctrination by European immigrants, for the ongoing war crimes by the European immigrants?
haha indeed
I hadn’t thought about that but you’re right.
When you post articles from China I will mostly read them. But when they’re Western I will mostly see the headline and move on, unless someone includes the archive link (I don’t know how to get those), because I figure that there will be a paywall. I never actually drew the materialist conclusion though.
Thanks for all your posts, by the way!!
To get to an archive version with no paywall I have https://archive.md/ bookmarked. If I hit a paywall I want to get past I just grab the URL and throw it in to archive.md and 99% of the time they have it with no paywall. If you want to share it just grab the “Archive.md/numbers and letters” URL and share that.
Thanks, Comrade! That was actually very easy to do, I appreciate the explanation!
I bookmarked it now too.
Very interesting observation!!
I’d like to add that the true free press was always on the side of the workers, for example in the Russian Revolution IIRC there were many communist publications that were vital to the revolution.
Going a bit tangential but in general, truth itself is on the side of the workers; if all idealist ideologies fall, all people would see what the true material and dialectical world looks like and what we can do about it.
absolutely
I think my ISP hinders accessing Chinese websites in general. They take very long to load.
I use a VPN 99% of the time and many Chinese websites don’t allow that
