i feel like people take a look at the biased coverage of certain issues in their news and think that there is no difference between that and the kind of propaganda people are told about in history classes

like, i get it, it is not a good thing that when some terrible incident happens, most news organizations take the statements of the police or their own military without further questioning

but y'all do understand there is still a big difference, right? when people talk about soviet or chinese propaganda, or the world-wars-era propaganda from everyone, including their side, it's not just "the government tells you how to report things", it's also "and if you report them a different way, you go to prison for being a traitor"

let's be honest, it would be unreasonable to entirely get rid of bias in media -- if journalists started harshly questioning every single source of information, nobody would want to tell them anything at all and less inquisitive sources would get the "first scoop" instead

and, of course, police departments and militaries, just like any other organization, want the people to sympathize with them -- it's not evil to try to tell "your side of the story", it's just how the world works, because nobody is omniscient and everyone's operating with a limited understanding of things

in fact, here's another hot take: the vast majority of people who work morally-questionable jobs don't wake up every morning and go "ah, i love being evil and killing/oppressing innocents" -- sometimes they're misled into thinking that the other side is more evil, sometimes they begrudgingly tolerate the job because that's how they feed their family, and so on

of course, we should appreciate investigative journalists who reveal important information and determine what's actually correct or not without being afraid to ruffle a few feathers, but saying that everyone who isn't that is automatically a propagandist is just absurd, because by that margin most news would be some form of propaganda