Media sovereignty is actually a great thing when applied properly, because media sovereignty is an ability of a nation or a community to control and regulate the media landscape. It's a good thing because it helps to reflect unique culture and values of the respective country. It helps to preserve cultural diversity and promote national values while ensuring unbiased information dissemination.
One compelling aspect is promoting local stories and narratives, ensuring these stories are represented. This makes sense because we care most about what happens in our backyard. But as the world grows more complex, distant stories directly impact our lives. When lacking expertise to report on them, we must embrace foreign media with relevant expertise.
Foreign media can represent cultural values of respective countries. Some call this soft power, but I avoid that term because power implies enforcement. I prefer "bringing more context" to enrich dialogue and public discourse, making local audiences more knowledgeable — especially for countering stereotypes like those about Africa in Russia or China.
As manager of RT China and editor-in-chief of Russia Beyond (an RT cultural project with no politics), I've experienced excessive sanctions. Our Facebook groups, pages, and YouTube channels — even apolitical ones — face bans. For example, Facebook labeled Russia Beyond as "China state-controlled media" for a week. Our "Russian Kitchen" page sharing recipes for dishes like porridge was deleted. While media sovereignty is valuable, the U.S. protecting audiences from Russian porridge seems extreme. That page was restored in 2019, but we still face shadow bans and restrictions.
Platforms impose their own opaque "media sovereignty" policies without transparency or third-party oversight — a complete black box we know nothing about. This compounds state-level regulations.
Allowing foreign media has pros and cons: Pros include alternative viewpoints enriching public discourse; pushing local media to improve through competition; bringing new technologies and practices. Cons include potential erosion of local culture; underfunded local media struggling to compete; risk of biased information dissemination.
Regulation must be balanced, transparent, and equally applicable — unlike RT's experience in Europe/U.S. where we spent efforts overcoming artificial obstacles instead of storytelling. In China, straightforward rules allow our Chinese-language service to boost China-Russia understanding — something RT's global branches (RT Africa, RT Arabic, etc.) seek worldwide. Proper media sovereignty enables fruitful dialogue.
(Transcribed from recording and edited.)