The Yankee propaganda machine is smooth and suave so we hardly realize it exists. It makes the Chinese look heavy handed by comparison, and our Overton window is much wider than theirs. But don't confuse that suavity and width with the absence of propaganda.
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/16/hitler-in-holly...
[1] http://www.poynter.org/2014/covering-china-for-foreign-and-d...
[2] https://cpj.org/blog/2015/03/how-china-uses-j-visas-to-punis...
[3] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/27/chinese-jour...
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks-we...
Want to get access to high ranking officials? Same thing.
Instead of throwing anyone in jail it's a matter of strangling them of access so competitors gets important information first or gets to be the ones askin their questions.
Occasionally it doesn't work. Like when a newspaper gets hold of something important enough to be willing to risk their access (such as the Snowden documents). But for tilting the day to day reporting of politics these methods have been honed to a level where they are remarkably effective.
An American reporter can freely be critical of the government. They can even publish Snowden documents, which put the government in a very bad light. Nobody even considers harassing them, let alone jailing them. (In fact, legally, they can't.) This fact is huge; it is an essential difference.