[tehjoker]

In the "west" currently, you are not allowed to publish anything looking favorably "east" in a serious way on mainstream networks. You have to call everything a "dictatorship". You are (maybe not anymore soon?) allowed to publish things at the margins of society that few will read or watch, hence the claim of free speech within a wider propaganda system.

Sometimes they allow things to rise and present themselves as alternative media, but the ones that get wide broadcast (millions of views etc) almost always have a built-in limit that supports US interests implicitly, particularly with respect to foreign policy.

[nozzlegear]

I don't think this is true at all, but I guess maybe we can get wishywashy about how you define "mainstream networks." Taking a couple examples from some quick googling for essays written by one of my favorite economists/commentators, Noah Smith:

1: China Is a Communist Success Story. Kinda. (2015) — He talks about how China’s state-owned enterprises and central planning have achieved huge economic growth, and says that while central planning has its limitations, China’s approach shows that it can work to a certain extent.

2: Xi Jinping vs. Macroeconomics (2023) — he analyzes Xi's shift of Chinese resources from the real estate sector to advanced manufacturing, and concludes that it's an attempt to address economic imbalances by promoting high-tech industries. Smith suggests that under certain ideological frameworks (like China's), that kind of policy could be seen as a sound response to economic challenges.

¹ https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-30/china-is-...

² https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/xi-jinping-vs-macroeconomics

[tehjoker]

There are exceptions, but this phenomenon is well documented. I would also ask if you really think these two pieces are really representative of the opinion in the mass media, which I would barely characterize Smith as.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/78912/manufacturing...

https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Reality-Politics-News-Media...

[myrmidon]

> In the "west" currently, you are not allowed to publish anything looking favorably "east" in a serious way on mainstream networks

"Not allowed" by whom? There is a big difference between silencing journalists and a branch of the entertainment industry self-selecting for some current "meta-consensus" (dependent on their target consumers).

Personally, I think calling Putin a dictator is stretching it a bit, but I have come to realize that honest, independent media is an absolutely essential cornerstone of an "actual" democracy: As soon as political leaders can prevent their mistakes from being reported to their voters, the whole thing becomes a farce.

You see a similar facet of this problem in the US, but not because governments have secured media control, but because the media landscape has completeley stratified (with a very strong partisan bias), and a lot of voters are basically never exposed to reporting "from the other side" at all (and are saturated with appropriate "outrage-bait" all day instead).

If you are talking about Russia, then I'd say that highly critical/adversarial reporting in the west is to be expected; this is basically "play imperialist games, win imperialist prices". Just compare WW2 era US messaging/reporting on axis power (before it even got involved itself).

But I'm curious about your perspective. What do you think should the US press say about the "east" that it does not?