ABSTRACT
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not like to mince words. When she appeared before the US Foreign Policy Priorities Committee in March 2011, she said the US was losing an ‘information war’ against the likes of Al Jazeera, Russia Today and CCTV (China Central Television) (Crovitz, 2011: n.p.). She also told the committee: ‘We are in an information war and we are losing that war. I will be very blunt in my assessment. Al Jazeera is winning. China has opened up a global English and multi-language TV network’ (Crovitz, 2011: n.p.). Her statement was made against the background of increasing budget cuts to American and British international broadcasters, such as the Voice of America and BBC World Service. The Voice of America planned to eliminate its entire Cantonese-speaking reporting staff as well as half of its Mandarin-speaking reporters. BBC World Service, which is funded by the British Foreign Office, has also seen its budget slashed (Nelson, 2013). The Australian government also closed down its overseas television network in the Asia-Pacific region and sacked more than 50 per cent of its Chinese-speaking reporters (ABC, 2014a).
