Informed Tankie

but it is worth mentioning that both the USSR back in the day, and China now ha[d][ve] state-owned press, and they also allow[ed] anyone to publish their own press. The USSR was also known to allow its state-owned journalists to publish critiques of the government, and present information in ways that didn't always suit the state. Socialist press was and is far more free than "free" market press.

All of the major news organizations in the West get large portions of their funding from their governments. Some of them also get their funding from the funders of politicians. The vast majority of "independent" journalists will quote those organizations in their publications, meaning "independent" journalism in the West is nothing more than an extension of mainstream media. The only ones who break from this norm are publications that attempt to oppose MSM's reporting.

Six corporations own 90% of news media in the United States. They're NBCUniversal (COMCAST), Disney, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), VIACOM, News Corporation, and AT&T. All of these companies have rich executives who've been known to fund not just individual politicians, but both heads of the American party (I.E. both the Republican and the Democratic parties). Our government is owned by corporations, and those corporations also own our information.

Meanwhile, if you were to go to China and rummage through their news media, you'd see that their media is much more honest about where it comes from, and it's far easier to find the true truth. Sure, sometimes the state-owned media won't publish the full truth, but there are always a few actually independent journalists who're covering the same story, who will publish other views of the situation. That's heaps better than what we have here.