Having a free and independent press is extremely important and if a country doesn't have that I'm automatically skeptical of their claims. China and Russia only have state-backed reporting.

Reporting on Ukraine is pure wartime propaganda. Western and Russian sources both do it. Look at how often Western sources cite the Ukrainian ministry of defense and no one else in their reporting. You see western sources claiming russia is losing or that there's a six figure death toll on the Russian side and then documents get leaked and whoopsie it's actualy less than 20,000. It's hard to blame anyone for not knowing what the hell is really going on because it's intentionally obfuscated from basically everyone except the militaries involved.

However this type of thing happens at a larger scale than just the Ukraine war. I mean look at the "uigher files" that contain like actors from hong kong and shit lol. If you think just Russia and China exaggerate in their news you're not looking hard enough at our news.