Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

"We are in an information war, and we are losing that war. I'll be very blunt in my assessment," said former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, once commenting on the new wave of information and media warfare.

Her indication was clearly toward the rise of state-funded news channels such as CCTV, Press TV and Russia Today.

What makes it more interesting is that the aforementioned networks are based in the Global East, and they come under heavy criticism for being propaganda networks due to the West's disagreements with Iran, China and Russia.

So much so that if you, as a journalist, have worked for RT and Press TV in particular, you carry a black spot on your CV. Such has been the influence of Western media over the common news consumers and job market in creating a negative image of non-Western-owned news networks.

Above all, should we expect a completely objective media outlet in this modern age?

Mediastan, a documentary produced by Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange in 2013, beautifully sums up how modern media works with a particular bias and agenda, irrespective of its origin and ownership.

Although without flare or production intricacies, this documentary, made with a hand-held camera and trailing the journey of young journalists in Central Asia, explains how even small states in the region are bound by limitations when it comes to publishing sensitive cables.

One of the high points of Mediastanwas the exposé of The New York Times and The Guardian, generally perceived as among the most objective papers, on how they manipulated Wikileaks cables to present the story with a certain agenda.

The term revolution has become so common that Western media was reporting every event in the Middle East, big or small, involving violent protests against the state as revolutions.

The Free Syrian Army, which allied with terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State, was also initially regarded as a revolutionary outfit, and thus it was deemed necessary to support it.

The term invasion in recent times became synonymous with the Russian moves in Ukraine.

Invasion literally means an aggressive entry of troops of one country in another for the purpose to liberate, establish control or conquer. But in the case of Ukraine, it is hard to give an objective opinion on Russia's military presence. The common media discourse, especially in the EU and the US, conveniently uses the term invasion to explain Russian actions.

With this loss and plurality of media voices and along with rise of alternative media, the two Western news networks are trying their best to focus on content used for maligning their adversaries, rather than reporting what needs to be reported.

A common saying goes that propaganda is only countered with propaganda. So if a country faces a constant propaganda bombardment, what options does it have? Obviously creating its own means of countering that propaganda.

The author is a program consultant and editor at the Centre for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad. farooq@crss.pk