Hanoi - Readers of the newest website of Vietnam's government-controlled press can't complain of any hidden bias in reporting. Propaganda magazine, the official organ of Vietnam's Committee for Propaganda and Training, launched its website (www.tuyengiao.vn) Monday, featuring articles about Ho Chi Minh Thought and a visit by representatives of the Russian Communist Party.
But while the magazine's name, Tuyen Giao, translates literally as "propaganda," that word in Vietnam does not have the negative connotations it has in non-Communist countries.
Many of the articles in Tuyen Giao concern the kind of well-meaning social causes that might appear in publications by UNESCO or NGOs like Oxfam.
Indeed, in Vietnam, public-service campaigns on everything from HIV prevention to wearing motorbike helmets are termed "propaganda." The division between politics and other kinds of social activism is less clear than in multiparty democracies.
"In the Vietnamese context, 'propaganda' simply means persuasive communications," said Steve Mills, Vietnam director for the American NGO Family Health International. "In Western countries, advertising, or any type of persuasive communication, falls under the same rubric as what Vietnamese call 'propaganda'."
The lack of distinction between propaganda supporting the Communist Party and propaganda for non-political social causes reflects the absence of a clear non-governmental sector, or what Western countries would call "civil society."
After Ho Chi Minh's Communists won independence for North Vietnam in 1954, they followed the same blueprint as Communist parties throughout the world, incorporating every economic and social institution into the party or government. The system was extended to South Vietnam after Hanoi won the Vietnam War in 1975.
In the late 1980s, social and cultural controls loosened with the introduction of the "Doi Moi" program of economic reforms.
Two decades later, more than half of Vietnam's economy is private, and civic institutions like churches, football clubs, and NGOs are thriving. But while these groups often act independently, they still must have some legal connection to the government.
Vietnam's press is increasingly open, with newspapers competing to pursue critical stories in order to win readership and advertising. But officially, every newspaper must be sponsored by a recognized government body.
The popular, hard-hitting investigative papers Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre are officially issued by the Vietnam Youth Federation and the Communist Youth League of Ho Chi Minh City, both part of the Communist Party.
The press may clash with the leadership, as the editors of Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre did in May, when two of their reporters were arrested for covering a corruption story too aggressively. But they must also obey Vietnam's Press Law, which forbids publishing "contents opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and undermining the entire people's unity bloc."
The government determines what is "in accordance with the interests of the country." Editors meet regularly with representatives of the state's Ideology Committee to discuss which stories the government wants emphasized and which are off-limits.
The country's press law is scheduled for revision in 2009 to cope with the integration of business and media, but government officials said media organs are not to be private businesses.
Meanwhile, other areas of Vietnamese information culture are becoming increasingly open and commercialized. In the past two years, major film distributors have arrived in Vietnam, and Hollywood releases - including the latest installment of the Rambo series - are shown with only minor cuts.
Vietnamese filmmakers, as well as artists and songwriters, must still submit their work to censors for review, putting local artists at a disadvantage.
"We face the censorship issue in many different layers, down to the bottom layer, which is that Vietnamese artists have a kind of psychological sickness of self-censorship," said artist and curator Tran Luong. "In order to survive, you become dumb."
Luong said the major problem is the lack of legal transparency. "It's a very unclear environment with the law, and everything is very mysterious. Every official layer can show their own regulation and make you explain your work."
Artists said government officials still took a simplistic, didactic view of the arts, preferring they serve as moral or political instruction - in short, propaganda.
Tuyen Giao magazine agrees, judging by one article on the first day of its website: "There are different levels of intellectuals but all of them have a common ideal: serving the country and catering to the people," it said.
Such propagandistic attitudes "sneak into every little layer, into the smallest details" of Vietnamese culture, Luong said. "It's very interesting. Very ugly, but also very interesting."
