[landonxjames]

I’m generally less worried about explicit interference like this (which mostly seems to eventually be found out) than I am about the more insidious and ingrained Propaganda Model [0] proposed by Chomsky and Herman in Manufacturing Consent. In their own words:

> Structural factors are those such as ownership and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means. The propaganda model also incorporates other closely related factors such as the ability to complain about the media’s treatment of news (that is, produce “flak”), to provide “experts” to confirm the official slant on the news, and to fix the basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personnel and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population.1 In our view, the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them as advertisers, that serve as primary definers of the news, and that produce flak and proper-thinking experts, also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies. We believe that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis. These structural factors that dominate media operations are not allcontrolling and do not always produce simple and homogeneous results.

The media, despite all of its supposed diversity, is really just a dialogue between powerful entities, but it strictly avoids criticizing or even acknowledging the foundational principles of the structures that give it power.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

[joe_the_user]

I don't think you need to choose which of these things to "worry about". Instead, I think it's important to mention that direct CIA interference is just the most obvious part of the system of propaganda and if such interference ceased, the propaganda problem would remain.

And more broadly, the press has traditionally served US interests because it's an institution of US society and shares interests with other US institutions. The idea that there could be a purely unbiased press itself something of an American invention - historically, the press has always had a place in on political spectrum.

That not saying the propagandistic quality of the modern press isn't to worry. It's gone a bit from an argument for our side to a manipulation for our side. How bad that still depends on how bad you think the given sides are. The standard argument during the Cold War was "however bad we might act, the other side is worse, so we need to effective". Now, one can find some equivalent if you to defend the situation.