Fewer Voices, More Control: Vietnam Reshapes Its Media

For decades, the Vietnamese government has kept a tight grip on the press. Now it is seeking to pull the reins even tighter. In early December, under the banner of sweeping administrative reform spearheaded by Communist Party chief To Lam, the one-party state unveiled its most radical media restructuring yet. The plan goes beyond an ongoing initiative to consolidate 180 of 820 press organisations through mergers or closures, and to cut 8,000 jobs primarily affecting editors and reporters by 2025.

Under the scheme, Vietnam Television (VTV) will absorb several smaller state-run broadcasters, becoming the sole national television channel with specialised programming aligned with the Party’s strategic goals. Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and Voice of Vietnam (VOV) will shed non-core functions and focus exclusively on print, digital, and radio news. Ministries will be limited to one official publication each, a restriction made more complex by separate plans to consolidate 14 ministries — encompassing multiple sectors from finance to agriculture — into seven.

The CPV has also ordered the merger or termination of “unnecessary” news organisations registered under other state institutions. While the final tally remains unclear, the authors estimate that the number of Vietnam’s news organisations could shrink by half. The result, the government hopes, will be a leaner, more unified propaganda machine.

At its core, the CPV’s move reflects two intertwined goals: cutting costs across a sprawling state media apparatus and tightening ideological control over narratives. Maintaining hundreds of media entities is an expensive undertaking. State subsidies for the sector cost the government VND7,800 trillion (US$310 million) in 2023. Merging operations, officials argue, will eliminate inefficiencies.

Consolidation will certainly allow the Party to streamline narratives, ensuring that fewer voices stray from the official line. Such deviations, while rare, have occasionally embarrassed the regime. In August 2024, for instance, the Vietnam National Defence Television Channel aired a commentary endorsing an online backlash against Fulbright University Vietnam, a poster child for growing US-Vietnam ties. This narrative clashed with the government’s public support for the university, leading to the channel’s swift retraction of the documentary.

The restructuring also reflects the regime’s struggle to adapt to digital disruption. Social media and online platforms have challenged the party’s traditional grip on information flow. By consolidating resources in fewer outlets, officials hope to build stronger digital capabilities and more sophisticated propaganda operations. Freed-up resources could be funnelled into online influence campaigns, which is a growing priority for authoritarian regimes worldwide seeking to shape public opinion in the digital age.

The state could retain full control over strategic media outlets…while creating some space for genuine critical journalism to survive.

However, such an overly centralised approach could undermine the very dominance the Vietnamese government seeks to sustain, creating new inefficiencies that risk destabilising the Party’s control. Vietnam’s media ecosystem is far from monolithic, notwithstanding its political system. Technically, private media ownership remains forbidden: all media outlets must be affiliated with state entities but many successful newsrooms operate independently. The latter pay for state affiliation while receiving no subsidies.

VnExpress and VietNamNet, two of Vietnam’s most popular online newspapers, exemplify this peculiar arrangement. Though registered under the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Information and Communications, respectively, they operate as independent commercial entities. In this context, the new directive that each ministry can maintain only one publication or newspaper creates an awkward situation. When their parent ministries merge into a planned new digital transformation super-ministry, VnExpress and VietNamNet would theoretically also have to merge (or disappear). While such a forced marriage may seem like an efficient administrative solution, it ultimately risks undermining the party-state’s interests.

Over the past decade, the government’s tightening of the public sphere has induced self-censorship across Vietnamese newsrooms, crowding out already rare instances of critical coverage. VnExpress and VietNamNet have also tiptoed on the censorship minefield to avoid crossing political red lines. Yet their competing coverage has served a useful dual purpose: maintaining the façade of media pluralism while boosting the reach of state narratives. By leveraging new techniques such as long-form storytelling and interactive visuals, both outlets have rendered state-sanctioned narratives more accessible and credible to readers. Merging these outlets would narrow the channels through which state-aligned messages are effectively tailored and distributed, weakening the party-state’s ability to engage diverse audiences, particularly digital-savvy young Vietnamese.

In contrast, the axing of numerous state-level propaganda outlets makes practical sense: why maintain multiple organisations to parrot the Party line? However, the potential human cost presents thorny challenges. Affected personnel will likely resist, making mergers messy. Thousands of journalists will face unemployment in an already tight job market, a politically sensitive prospect for a regime obsessed with stability. The uncertainty could worsen self-censorship, even among outlets that do not receive state funding.

The government could learn from history. During the Doi Moi economic reforms of the 1980s, Vietnam revitalised its economy by embracing market principles within a socialist framework, keeping state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors while allowing private businesses to thrive. A similar approach to media reform could yield benefits. The state could retain full control over strategic media outlets, like VTV or VOV, while creating some space for genuine critical journalism to survive. There was a short-lived period in the 2000s when Vietnam’s critical journalists proactively covered high-level corruption through investigative reports. A freer media would likely bolster the regime’s credibility, act as a watchdog over bureaucracy, and foster a public sphere necessary for true stability and genuine reform.

Vietnam’s leaders have billed the current restructuring as a “New Era” under To Lam. Yet the media shake-up appears more likely to stifle than revitalise the press. The Party’s appetite for control remains undiminished, yet without a clear strategy to balance control with functionality, Hanoi risks turning an already rigid media environment into an unworkable straitjacket.

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