The fact that they still call it the Propaganda Department instead of something more soothing like Communications Department demonstrates how useless these dummies are. Take the Americans for example. Once the CIA became a well known false flag organization dealing in assassinations and regime change, they created new organizations such as the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) to carry out the same tasks under a much more friendly sounding name and thus image.
If China's "PROPAGANDA" Department were actually any good, they would take the current Libyan crisis as an opportunity to expose Anglo-Saxon world order, aka. "Western" hypocrisy over its double standards, PROPAGANDA and aggressive war mentality. Just in the last month, we've heard Gaddafi fled to Venezuela, then the story was that he fled to Zimbabwe, then his family fled overseas, then the rebels were overtaking Tripoli, etc, etc....all proven to be lies reported in the free and fair "Western" media but yet 99.9% of which was not retracted even after they were discovered as lies. The entire rationale for the U.N. no-fly zone is based on accusations of indiscriminate government mandated killing of civilians, not rebels, of which there is NO real proof. The Russians just last week stated that the provided "proof" of these civilian atrocities never happened as described once they studied ground conditions from their satellite images and is much more indicative of bombing of rebel forces. What China should do is point this out and make it plainly understood that the Libyan no-fly zone is a blatant attempt to oust Gaddafi from power under the pretense of Humanitarianism when it's really because the Libyan rebels were losing and because of oil.
It is this sort of news that would serve China's image makers well because it would clearly demonstrate the terrible credibility of China's detractors. Do we ever see this sort of reporting from China? I would say once every blue moon and even then the report is often tinged with impotent statements like "It is unfair"...."hurt the feelings of the Chinese people"...etc. Somebody said China's reporting style is mostly defensive rather than offensive. I would describe it as not actually reporting at all. Real reporting REPORTS news, rather than responds to news.