China's hard power and hurt feelings – Nikkei Asian Review (asia.nikkei.com)

For quite some time, popular media has been the West's strongest weapon, influencing people the world over with (mostly) American ideals through Hollywood and -later- Internet. Recently, this powerful machine has been turned against its makers, with Russia pouncing on click-bait happy news sites and social media, and China buying their influence in main stream media. But free media has become such a big part of Western identity, I wonder if there is an easy way out of this. Expecting the large corporations involved to police/defend themselves is definitely not the answer.