Any news has a usage for whatever political agenda there is in the US administration.
If country X is going to help the administration, the bad news will fade out, when country x is suppose to be shown in bad light, all the dirt will come back to the surface non stop on every possible news channel.
> Any news has a usage for whatever political agenda there is in the US administration.
If the previous administration was not sufficient proof to you that this is clearly wrong, then what proof could dissuade you?
Obama ran on ending wars in Iraq and afghanistan, and then he got in and those options disappeared. Trump did similarly.
So what would it look like if the US had been run for decades primarily by unelected agencies, and the us media served them, not whoever happened to get elected?
He mostly ran on ending Iraq, he called Afghanistan 'the good war'.
The reality is that these politicians could do far more but they just don't care enough about it.
For Trump for example the America First people in the administration were pushing that, but those people were kicked out and Trump in order to get along with the party just let them do their thing in Afganistan.
Obama was the same, in order to get out of Iraq he authorized the surge in Afghanistan.
The 'deep state' you are talking about exists, but they are supported by lots of people in congress and lobbies and the president, whatever he ran on has to negotiate with those interests to get anything done.
There is a very infamous book, Manufacturing Consent, that explains this isn't true. Sure the president isn't calling up the CEO of CNN and telling him what to air, but when push comes to shove the media companies will all get in line.
That fact that international media is easily accessible is a good counter-balance to this problem. In addition, you are starting to see the desires of the public changing - e.g. you much more frequently read/hear anti-American articles/opinions from the American progressive news media.
This might be true, but specially about countries that don't have a media presence the main source of news about that country is white house press releases. The same goes for news about civil wars and such.
The way Syria war was reported, outside of a few good journalists who did amazing reports, was basically just standard US government play book.
The reality is journalist are lazy, and its easy to just pick up the narrative pushed by the US government and the associated standard think thanks.
The only time in history the media didn't control the government was Trump's presidency.
Non hegemony between media and government isn't stable. Free press in democratic countries practically means control of the media over the government.
There isn't a single politician who got elected without extensive media coverage. There exist very few politicians that can withstand hostile media coverage, and that hostility can be completely debased from reality and it wouldn't matter.