Strengthening the role of the press in monitoring and social criticism to protect the Party's ideological foundation

Therefore, strengthening the role of the press in monitoring and social criticism is extremely necessary, especially in the current period.

Pioneering in monitoring and criticism

One of the basic and important functions of the press is to monitor and criticize society. This function has been effectively promoted by the Vietnamese revolutionary press in the work of protecting the Party's ideological foundation. In particular, since Resolution No. 35-NQ/TW dated October 22, 2018 of the Politburo "On strengthening the protection of the Party's ideological foundation, fighting against erroneous and hostile views in the new situation", press agencies have increasingly joined the fight with a pioneering spirit.

Journalist Do Phu Tho - Former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the People's Army Newspaper said that in recent times, many newspapers and magazines have opened special pages and columns on "Protecting the Party's ideological foundation", "Struggling to refute false and hostile arguments"; columns on protecting and developing Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh's thought and bringing the Party's Resolution into life...

Strengthening the role of social supervision and discrimination of the press to protect the ideological foundation of form 1 — Strengthening the role of the press in monitoring and social criticism to protect the Party's ideological foundation. Photo: reporter working at the 2023 National Press Conference

In addition, many newspapers and magazines have opened columns such as "Commentary-criticism" of Nhan Dan Newspaper, National Defense Magazine; "Struggle to refute false and hostile arguments" of Communist Magazine; "Anti-peaceful evolution" of People's Army Newspaper, VietnamPlus, People's Police; Protecting the Party's ideological foundation of the Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper... People's Army Newspaper organized and launched the contest "Protecting the Party's ideological foundation in the new situation"...

Many press agencies have even set up a group of reporters to monitor and update current events to combat information, refute false and hostile views... with special attention to bad information on social networks. Typically, Vietnam Television opened a column called "Confrontation" specializing in protecting the Party's ideological foundation, fighting against false and hostile views, and broadcasting periodically once a month.

In fact, these columns of the newspapers have mentioned a variety of rich contents, in which the most prominent are articles analyzing, commenting, and criticizing untrue, fabricated information, and wrong views of hostile forces and political opportunists; refuting words and actions that lack goodwill, aiming to lower the leadership role of the Party, divide the Party from the masses... Thereby contributing to protecting the Party's foundation and ideology.

Identifying social supervision and criticism as an important task, many local press units also deployed propaganda content, contributing to making people deeply and correctly aware of the Party's viewpoints, policies, and guidelines, the State's policies and laws, raising the sense of responsibility of cadres, party members and the masses, to unify in action, turning policies and guidelines into revolutionary movements and actions.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Vu Anh - Director, Editor-in-Chief of Thai Nguyen Radio and Television Station shared that, recently, the Station has opened a new section "Identification" in the News program, with a frequency of 1 issue/month, to strengthen propaganda, fight against wrong and hostile viewpoints, and distorted arguments of hostile forces. In addition, the Station has organized the production of many topics, columns, programs, and works related to this field, such as: columns "National Assembly and People's Council Deputies with Voters", "Responding to Voters' Suggestions", "Policies and Life", "Bringing the Party's Resolution into Life", "Great Solidarity", "Patriotic Emulation", "Journey to Improve PCI"; live radio program "Traffic Rush Hour"; along with talk shows, exchanges, interviews... on radio, television and updated on digital platforms. In addition to propaganda in the common language, the above contents are also conveyed through ethnic minority language programs, including: Tay-Nung; Dao and Mong; English and Chinese news; some programs are translated into English, Chinese, and Korean; foreign propaganda and information are enhanced to international friends...

Changing tactics and methods of combat to monitor and criticize more effectively

Looking directly at the reality of recent times, although the press has made great efforts to strengthen the work of social supervision and criticism to protect the Party's ideological foundation, the reality of Vietnamese press activities in recent times shows that not all press agencies or journalists have always done the right thing and done well the function of social supervision and criticism. Frankly, even the awareness of some cadres, reporters and editors of press agencies about the fight against erroneous and hostile views and protecting the Party's ideological foundation is still not regular, complete and profound.

In addition, currently, the force of writers defending the Party's ideological foundation and fighting against erroneous and hostile viewpoints is still small, especially among young writers, and has not met practical requirements. Some articles on preventing and combating "peaceful evolution" and defending the Party's ideological foundation have not clearly defined the target audience to fight against, eliminate hostile people or entice and persuade uninformed comrades and compatriots to go astray...

Even the phenomenon of degradation in political ideology, ethics, lifestyle, violation of professional ethics, violation of the law by some cadres, editors, reporters of press agencies tends to increase, significantly affecting the "fighting strength" of the press force on this front. In particular, there has been a situation where some journalists take advantage of the name of social criticism to mock, attack the correct guidelines, policies, and solutions of the Party and State.

On the local press side, there is still a lack of boldness in performing the function of social supervision and criticism, for many reasons, including difficulties in accessing information, or due to limited knowledge, skills, and working conditions of reporters and editors, and lack of deep understanding of the field of social supervision and criticism, so there is a lack of comprehensive view, sometimes grasping information and reflecting on phenomena without clearly understanding the nature of the problem...

Not to mention, in reality, on the front of protecting the Party's ideological foundation, we are also facing many difficulties and challenges. Hostile, reactionary, and opportunistic political forces have been changing their tactics to increase their sabotage activities against the revolution in all fields, including sabotage in the ideological and cultural fields, aiming to disintegrate and reduce the trust in the Party and the socialist regime among the Vietnamese people.

Faced with the above situation, Colonel Do Phu Tho, former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the People's Army Newspaper, said: "Press agencies must reorganize their teams, change tactics and methods of combat to effectively perform the press's functions of monitoring and social criticism to contribute to protecting the Party's ideological foundation."

Offering many very specific solutions to solve this problem, journalist Do Phu Tho said that, first of all, it is necessary to build a truly strong Party committee and Party organization in press agencies. Continue to innovate the Party's leadership method and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of State management of the press in the direction of ensuring that the press develops in accordance with the Party's political and ideological orientation.

In addition, he also proposed that it is necessary to diversify the content, forms, measures and means of press activities to promote the effective role of the press in monitoring, social criticism and fighting to protect the Party's ideological foundation. Linking the work of monitoring and social criticism with the fight to refute false and distorted arguments to protect the Party's ideological foundation.

In addition, it is also necessary to mobilize the combined strength of journalists, in combination with collaborators and informants to promote the role and function of the press in monitoring social criticism and fighting against false and hostile arguments, protecting the Party's ideological foundation.

In addition, it is urgent to build a team of specialized press cadres to fight against negative manifestations, corruption and waste, fight against hostile and erroneous viewpoints, and protect the Party's ideological foundation. It is necessary to focus on building this team with the courage, intelligence, capacity, methods and skills of journalism, with depth of thinking, broad vision, the ability to promptly grasp newly emerging issues, and good writing style and technique to write profound and convincing articles that clarify and firmly protect the Party's ideological foundation.

At the same time, press agencies need to continue to innovate and effectively implement programs and columns to monitor and criticize society, protect the Party's ideological foundation, fight against fake news, untrue information, wrong and hostile viewpoints, and contribute to orienting and guiding official information according to the Party's viewpoints and guidelines...

It can be said that social supervision and criticism to protect the Party's foundation is a very important task of the press. In particular, in the current period, it can be seen that the press has proactively participated in social supervision and criticism, actively contributing to the formulation of the Party's guidelines and policies; the State's policies and laws; fighting against hostile and erroneous arguments, protecting the Party's ideological foundation. Continuing to make more efforts in the coming time, the press must both improve its "resistance" and continue to have the right direction, join hands, join forces, and further improve its "fighting power" in this work.

Cloud River

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