The illusion of a "free and fair, independent press" is a brilliant con.
In reality, North Korea's state-run TV news is literally better than ours. How so? Because their population KNOWS it's propaganda, and receives it accordingly.
We think ours is free of control and acts in capitalistic self-interest to beat their competition to expose anything/everything that would be a big story, attracting the biggest audience for bigger commercial gains. Most fail to realize the top-tier capitalists ARE the biggest story, and own and control all governments, all news corps and ALL the biggest stories. People have no problem with the idea of a mafia totally owning/running a city, but don't make the leap to a mafia running the world.