State funded propaganda sources often post good and informative articles amongst their more pointed propaganda. RT, Russia Today, does this often too. The point at hand is the nature of the "news" source itself.
Until 2013, Radio Free Europe was banned in the US as being propaganda. People like Middle East expert Juan Cole voiced their concerns about removing this ban way back in 2012:
Congress Wants the Department of Defense to Propagandize Americans
Two congressmen are attempting to insert a provision in the National Defense Authorization act that would allow the Department of Defense to subject the US domestic public to propaganda. The bipartisan amendment was introduced by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.
Nothing speaks more urgently to the creeping fascism of American politics than the assertion by our representatives, who apparently have never read a book on Germany in the 1930s-1940s or on the Soviet Union in the Stalin period, that forbidding DoD and the State Department from subjecting us to government propaganda “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.” And mind you, they want to use our own money to wash our brains!
As Will Rogers observed, “This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.”
I love our guys and gals in uniform, but they can be extremely obnoxious in any discussion about US government policy that ‘gets off point’ or ‘doesn’t serve the mission.’ At Washington think tank events, I’ve seen them repeatedly close down discussions among e.g. State Department foreign service officers. You don’t want most of the DoD types providing information to us, because it won’t be in any way balanced.
Of course, having a Pentagon propaganda unit at all is highly anti-democratic. The best defense of the truth is a free press. It should also be remembered that nowadays everything in Washington is outsourced, so government propaganda is often being turned over to Booz Allen or the American Enterprise Institute, which have a rightwing bias.
http://www.juancole.com/2012/05/congress-wants-the-department-of-defense-to-propagandize-americans.html
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