It's not hard to find information about the influence Russia or China may have on our news media, if you consider the elephant in the room - TikTok.
The publication 360 - one world, many voices, explained a concept which was different to a your usual platform such as TikTok. The article explained a phenomena known as troll farms. These may exist in China.
These organised farms produce and send misleading reports on social media. They specialise in "automated delivery and maximum damage against their targets, usually political leaders," 360 stated.
There was a lot of commotion in the US when a federal grand jury indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers, because they supposedly hacked into the system to try and swing the 2016 election a certain way.
What these things suggest to me, is that foreign entities would interfere less in media and politics, if Australia and other western world countries pushed grassroots issues and media from a local level, right through to the federal context. If we do this, it will be much harder for countries outside of the Five Eyes (The USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to infiltrate our news.
Why, for example, would Russia or China want to hack into the local council out the back of Bourke! All they may learn is that rampaging, hungry Currawongs and Ibises went on the attack. They removed rubbish from several garbage bins, in a state of severe agitation. They left smelly trash all over the beautifully manicured footpaths and street curbs, in the search for food. Counsellors on the local council fought about the issue and in the end the Mayor won the battle and refused to pay for properly secured lids on the bins! It was a big win for Ibises and Currawongs everywhere!
What the hell would Russia and China do with this information? Get their own Currawongs and Ibises and train them to be carrier pigeons and remove secret documents from Federal Parliament in Canberra and fly to Russia and drop the documents from their beaks, into the lap of Vladimir Putin! I don't think so, somehow!
I believe we should base our news media, our government and our national agenda on these local issue principals. We can push them to the top of the heap in Canberra and base our entire system of being on this ideal of grassroots issues first. If we do this we will live in a world where all the people are considered. Russia and China will find it too difficult to work out why they should hack into something about the local surf club claiming that the surf at Swansea yesterday was flatter than a 10 day old beer and similar to surfing on Narrabeen Lake!
If we push this information up to national level, it may mean extra federal funding to research the best beaches for surfing. As a result, we get funding for the infrastructure needed to build Olympic standard facilities for spectators at these nominated beaches. Meanwhile, Russia and China will not be able to decode our Australian humour about surfing on Narrabeen Lake and surf as flat as a 10 day old beer! Russia and China may have difficulties understanding why such information is important and so they won't care to hack into it. In the meantime, we may win the gold medal in the surfing at the olympics and Russia and China may get silver or bronze or nothing. The Russians will not be able to work out why their spying on our Olympic committees and expenditure on athletes did not work. They will not understand that they needed to think locally!
The answer to stop foreign interference in western world news and politics should be very simple - train the currawongs and ibises to be carrier pigeons and these birds will drop in Vladimir Putin's lap, information about certain beaches being as flat as a 10 day old beer and like surfing on Narrabeen Lake! In other words, if we build our important issues from the bottom up, foreign entities won't know what to do ― Joseph Walz
Footnote: My line about surfing on Narrabeen Lake and the surf as flat as a 10 day old beer comes from the mid 90s. It was about Barton Lynch and his team mates describing the surf at an international surfing competition in the UK. It featured as part of an article in the Manly Daily. Yes, local news wins every time!