After watching Russian news for the past few days, I can say without any exaggeration that a regular viewer is far better positioned to understand the world around them than someone who watches Fox News. While Russian news has a clear pro-Putin bias, most stories are informative.
You could catch the one news item intended to make the West look bad. And there's always a story that makes Putin look good. But beyond those, most of the news items wouldn't be out of place on a 2nd-tier American news network. The only fantasy is about Russia's global standing.
What you don't see on Russian TV is the framing of each story as being a part of an overarching narrative glorifying Putin. Most news is just news. The propaganda (for the most part) is an ad hoc addition. Compare that to Fox News, where a majority of news items relate to Trump.
For example, Russian TV either won't cover anti-Putin protests or claim the West pays the protesters. The rest of the news will be fairly accurate. Here, Fox spins elaborate conspiracies and spends the entire broadcast going after anyone seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump.
Russian media might actually be the wrong comparison group for Fox News. The level of sycophancy, alternate reality-building, & lack of interest in the most basic of facts is closer to what you see in a full-autocracy, like Saudi Arabia or N. Korea, rather than in a partial one.
In fact, compare the top stories on Xinhua or any other Chinese news agency with those of Fox News. See which spends more time glorifying the leader. See which provides a more accurate portrayal of the rest of the world (note, I'm not saying Chinese media does a good job).
What's even more damning is that TV stations in autocracies have no choice but to run their absurd news stories. Fox News makes that choice willingly. Some combination of the profit motive and extreme tribalism end up a more powerful motive than holding a gun to someone's head.
By the way, I highly recommend this piece about critical journalism in Russia and China by Maria Repnikova. It does a great job of describing the red lines in each country and what critical journalists (i.e., not Fox) see as their primary role in society. ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny/c…
