Underlying global efforts to counter fake news, psychological warfare and manipulation of public opinion is a far more fundamental battle: the global campaign by civilizationalists, illiberals, autocrats and authoritarians to create a new world media order that would reject freedom of the press and reduce the fourth estate to scribes and propaganda outlets. The effort appears to have no limits. Its methods range from seeking to reshape international standards defining freedom of expression and the media; the launch and/or strengthening of government-controlled global, regional, national and local media in markets around the world; government acquisition of stakes in privately-owned media; advertising in independent media dependent on advertising revenue; funding of think-tanks; demonization; coercion; repression; and even assassination. The effort to create a new media world order is closely linked to attempts to a battle between liberals and non-liberals over concepts of human rights, the roll-out of massive Chinese surveillance systems in China and beyond and a contest between the United States and China for dominance of the future of technology. The stakes in these multiple battles could not be higher. They range from basic human and minority rights to issues of transparency, accountability and privacy, human rights, the role of the fourth estate as an independent check on power, freedom of expression and safeguards for human and physical dignity. The battles are being waged in an environment in which a critical mass of world leaders appears to have an unspoken consensus on the principles of governance that should shape a new world order. Men like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Victor Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, Mohammed bin Zayed, Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, Win Myint and Donald J. Trump have all to varying degrees diluted the concepts of human rights and undermined freedom of the press. If anything, it is this tacit understanding among the world’s foremost leaders that in shaping a new world order constitutes the greatest threat to liberal values.
