China’s Deputy Ambassador in Harare, Zhao Baogang, stopped by the newsroom of the state-owned newspaper The Herald to meet with Editor Caesar Zvayi. That same day, the newspaper published an editorial that elevated China-Zimbabwe relations from “All-Weather Friends” to “Cast in Stone.”

Although enhancing relations with state-owned newspapers of friendly governments is really not that surprising, the key thing to remember here is that online all of this gets mixed together into an enormous jumble where it becomes increasingly difficult for unsophisticated news consumers to distinguish between what is state-led propaganda, copy/paste news and what is actual original journalism.