There is substantial scholarship examining how states use anti-foreign propaganda to various ends, including popular mobilization, diversion and scapegoating, and to de-legitimize threats. However, there is less systematic research on anti-foreign propaganda that attacks foreign media. Using the case of China, I show how the state counters external threats by employing anti-foreign media propaganda. To quantify anti-foreign media propaganda, I apply a semi-supervised scaling method to over 20,000 Chinese state media articles from 2003 to 2022 that mention foreign media. I find that hostile framing sharply increased from 2019 and disproportionately targets media outlets from the US and the UK. Further, leveraging a period of tense Sino-British ties for hypothesis testing, I find that anti-foreign media propaganda appears to be activated in response to foreign policy disputes, and can differentiate between targets. By focusing on hostile rhetoric towards international journalists – producers of knowledge for the global information ecosystem – this paper furthers our understanding of information politics in authoritarian settings.