'to pry on' means to scan closely, to eavesdrop ... while 'to play on' means to extrapolate, to elaborate on, to expand, or even to come out with variants of themes.



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Note added at 9 mins (2004-05-27 12:01:39 GMT)
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A better option could be -

Hence, the national Media and international agencies can fabricate their own stories on issues such as ...

OR

Hence, the national Media and international agencies can obfuscate on issues such as ...

Here, the idea that the media might be upto something crooked gets underlined.

Hth.

prey (up)on = make a victim of; make harmful use of for one's own purposes; exert a baneful, wasting, or destructive influence (up)on
(New Shorter Oxford)

In this context, I´d probably use "focus on issues such as..."
Good luck!

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Note added at 16 mins (2004-05-27 12:08:30 GMT)
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Without more context, it is impossible to know what exactly you are trying to say, because \"play on\" and \"pry on\" have totally different meanings, as nbhairav explains. That´s why I chose a neutral expression.

As the responses indicate, play and pry are unclear. Have you possibly given yourself the answer in these plain words? Or do you want to continue with a clause ... by playing up (or down) issues such as...?

I think you need to reword it...


The Challenge of Peace... will raise issues as to whether these conflicts are crises of identity for the people or for their élites who politicize these issues for their own agenda. ...
www.wsp-international.org/cop5/cop5.htm - 101k

"play on" means to try to exploit something for your own purposes: e.g. "The tabloid press in the UK plays on elderly people's fear of crime...", i.e. the newspapers carry sensationalist stories to try to create a climate of fear so they can call for the return of capital punishment... you usually "play on" a fear, anxiety or weakness in the other person, so depending on what your text is about, it could be perfectly OK here.


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Note added at 2004-05-27 15:26:31 (GMT)
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but \"pry on\" doesn\'t make sense - you \"pry into\" other people\'s business/affairs, i.e. try to find out somebody else\'s\' secrets...

In the context of prying (inquiringly) I would have said 'pry', 'prying into', 'pry about' exist but not prying on, but pry on does seem to have come into existence in journalistic circles - whether because of clever coinage by journalists, playing on the way it sounds like spying, or because other users have used it because it sounds like spying on and journalists have picked it up. Some might deplore it, and I'm not rushing into using it - but if it probably didn't exist, it does now, at least in journalistic circles....

From a rather good writer:

Written evidence to the House of Commons
Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport
The Sword Of The Press
A Memorandum submitted by Mr Jonathan Virden

"The press hangs over each individual like the Sword of Damocles. It can be instantly catastrophic, without the possibility of return to the previous state of affairs. It dangles by a thread over every citizen and there seems to be little effective balance to prevent repetition.
Can privacy be a right? Probably not fully so in a modern society, where evil cohabits with the good, the ordinary and the original.
And yet apprehension exists. Fear is always present. That which causes great hurt to someone else may happen to you. The media pack regularly besieges someone's home or the homes of friends or relations, for days on end, with endless pestering and destruction of flowerbeds.....
.....Public interest also means the aspect of the attention of the media to the detail of what is going on, both good and, more usually bad. No society pretending to be free should curb the freedom of an investigative press to search among the daily activities of individuals and organisations,

to pry on what was done, by whom and when. It is a fundamental safeguard of democracy, supported through the ultimate judgement of the good sense of most people. But this restraint comes only in the legal framework which surrounds the activities of all who publish anything. And that comes slowly...."

www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ cm200203/cmselect/cmcumeds/458/458w109.htm

Boston Globe
Infiltration of files seen as extensive
Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 1/22/2004

"WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe"

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/22/infilt...

Globe, Too Hot; Times, Too Cold
Roll Call gets the stolen Democrat files scandal just right.
By Jack Shafer
[criticizing the grammar of the "unique coinage", as well as the coverage]
"That ends the back story and returns us to the journalism of the New York Times' Neil* A. Lewis and the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage. Yesterday, Jan. 22, Savage published a story, "Infiltration of Files Seen as Extensive: Senate Panel's GOP Staff Pried on Democrats," written with burning phosphorus. Even the hed screeches. I'm in no position to point the grammatical finger, but can you really treat an intransitive verb this way? One can pry. But can one "pry on" somebody? I suspect that the original hed accused GOP staffers of having "Spied" on Dems, and somebody nixed it as too strong and settled on this unique coinage."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2094333/

Of course this use doesn't help the asker, on the information given, but if the situation had been a bit different, and the translation needed to have a journalistic style.....










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Note added at 4 hrs 50 mins (2004-05-27 16:43:14 GMT)
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Jonathan Virden\'s essay
www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmse...

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Note added at 5 hrs 28 mins (2004-05-27 17:21:13 GMT)
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(Jonathan Virden & Charlie Savage may not have worried about a grammatical justification or history of use in the language, but if they had wanted one:
OED
\" intr. To look, esp. to look closely or curiously; to peep or peer, to look narrowly; to peer inquisitively or impertinently; to spy.
c1350
Will. Palerne
5019 Burgeys with here burdes..weyteden out at windowes..
to prie on e puple at priked in e stretes.\"

as well as what I would expect, prying into. So maybe it is new now, and just for journalists, but if it is it is a reappearance.\"