The Maoist School of American Journalism

Let's start with four statements widely recognized as accurate all along the opinion spectrum, from far-Left to far-Right.

1. America's Cancel Culture Revolution is led by Black Lives Matter (BLM).
2. BLM was, allegedly, organized by three black women who self-identify as Marxist-Leninists.
3. The U.S. legacy media--AKA "mainstream media"--characterizes the BLM/Antifa riots as "largely peaceful".
4. The Democratic Party, the largest, national, political organization supportive of the Cancel Culture Revolution, claims to be helping bring about "Social Justice." 

So, was there a time in the 20^th Century where we witnessed a precursor of this symbiotic alignment between (A) a radical political ideology, and (B) a movement to erase a nation's culture, that was (3) promoted by multiple, major outlets for disseminating "news" to the populous? 

In 1949, Chinese news was captured by the Communist Party

Yes. This one comes to mind:  "In his ‘Letters to Journalist Comrades' of January 12, 1958, Mao [Zedong] listed three functions of journalism, each of which is concerned with the hortatory rather than the reportorial function of the press: the first is ‘to mobilize and organize all people into a powerful force to realize…the various great tasked prescribed by the Party.' The second is ‘to integrate the creativeness of the masses with their emotions and energy.' The third and ‘most important' function is the critical one: ‘to present convincing arguments to attack the various shades of opportunism, conservation, and destructive capitalism.'" ¹(bolding added) In 1949, Chinese news was captured by the Communist Party (CCP) as it became the primary propaganda apparatus for the CCP.   Here's a short summary of how that happened.  "‘The role and power of newspapers consist in their ability to present the [Chinese Communist] Party's line, its specific policies, goals and work methods, to the masses in the most effective and rapid of ways.' This is how Chairman Mao Zedong, in 1961, explained why journalists and intellectuals had to take their orders from the Communist Party. After creating propaganda media during the years of resistance, Mao introduced the Leninist press model in Beijing and the rest of China. As the French academic Alain Peyraube wrote: ‘The political and ideological role (…) of the main mass media (print media, radio, TV, posters, cinema) is primordial.' From the creation of the People's Republic in 1949 onwards, the media are seen ‘not only as a collective propagandist and political agitator but also as an organiser' of society."  "Sixty years [now 64] later, the Communist Party of China continues to be attached to Mao's theory of the ‘mass line.' The CCP's leaders rule the masses. As they are not elected by the people, they are accountable not to the people but to the Party. When the theory is applied to journalism, the press becomes the means of communicating from top to bottom, the Party's tool for "educating" the masses and mobilising popular will in support of socialism." ²(bolding added)

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In America, the Dean of our version of Maoist Journalism is Former President Barack Obama

Today's America's legacy news outlets focus on dissing a renegade President, while criticism of the Democrat candidates for senior leadership is muted.  Their efforts are supplemented by daily polling results that are, at best, suspicious.  At worst, manufactured. Here, for example, is what that symbiotic alignment of the elements of propaganda look like in America with regard to current events in China.  While unprecedented flooding, both up- and down-stream from the gigantic Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, reaches catastrophic levels, the breaking news in the U.S. is another "bombshell" book about Trump with a one-day, news-cycle life span. Significant fires in the American West are running second place.   Dallas WBAP News radio, owned by Cumulus Media, breathlessly reports that the U.S. has more virus deaths than any other country--thereby signaling that they, too, believe the news from China where the reported death toll flat-lined months ago.  Those same Chinese news outlets report that the death toll from the horrific flooding along the Yangtze and its tributaries remains less than 300, as whole cities wash away. (For some reason, YouTube permits the scope of the disaster underway in China to be chronicled by sources that go unnoticed within the U.S. "news" industry.)  Because many American "reporters" are graduates of the Maoist School of Journalism, we citizens are among the least informed consumers of "news" among the peoples of the developed nations in the West.  Decades after his death, the Dean of Chinese Journalism remains Mao Zedong.  In America, the Dean of our version of Maoist Journalism is Former President Barack Obama.

Footnotes

1. Liu Shaoqi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Lowell Dittmer, p. 218, © 1998, M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
2. Sixty years of news media and censorship