China’s television network and news wire service have long worked as intelligence gathering operations around the world and in the United States. The American government just did something about it.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced that the China Global Television Network (CGTN) and the Chinese Xinhua news service must now report to the U.S. government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). This is a big move. A move that was a long time coming.

My book, “Spin Wars & Spy Games: Global Media and Intelligence Gathering,” is a primer on how news organizations operate in the world and how non-Western journalistic organizations take advantage of open societies like the United States. While Western journalists are usually neither spies nor diplomats, the same cannot be said about both Russian and Chinese global news networks. READ MORE