On The Government's Control Of The Press In Modern Armed Conflicts

With a rapid progress of modern transmission technology and its wide penetration to military field, media has been endowed with war function, and has become a more and more important kind of power which should not be neglected in modern force conflicts. The public opinion warfare has been a new operational pattern. Modern mass media can not only transfer information to people in order to guide public opinion, but also provide information to support government's decision-making, and further more affect it when we make a comprehensive survey to several high-tech local wars or regional force conflicts around year 2000. So, it is very important that government should control press, to some extents, the success of the public opinion warfare is up to the success of press control.The principles should be upheld by government in modern conflicts, such that the national interest is absolute authority, the CPC should control press, it should has impersonality and reality, it should act on our own, it should differentiate outside and inside. Furthermore, the basic regulars of media transmission also should be obeyed: taking the opportunities, promoting healthy tendencies so as to strive for international support; grasping vitals and attacking atrocity so as to weaken the enemy's morale; taking the reins information, tending to advantages and keeping away disadvantages so as to build up good visualize of media; according to the truth,convincing people by reasoning so as to lay stress on transmit art; overmastering opponents by techniques, suppressing opponents by force so as to control opponents' transmission.In practice, the government should hold three important links about how to control press in modern force conflicts: making clear the aim of the public opinion warfare, constituting organization system under strict control, bring up high qualities staff members.