Title, I'm a leftist but after reading some things on lemmygrad and here it seems I might have been lied to all my life. I have talked with some people from Cuba and Venezuela (expats) that support the west narrative about poverty and mismanagement. I "believe" that Russia is attacking Ukraine for selfish reasons and that China censors access to foreign information using the Great Firewall, please prove me wrong. Furthermore, it ultimately depends who do you want to believe or there are hard facts from reputable sources that are simply a hidden by the mass media?
EDIT: Thanks everyone for your very civil responses. I'll answer as many as I can!
Access to what information? What do Chinese people, in China, not know or understand? Have you asked them?
There is another force at work that is at least as important: the largesse of different media sources. The idea of sampling varied information and making an informed position is nice, but are you really going to be able to practically do that when 90-100% of the sources you will ever see are massively biased and themselves working with and communicating very little verifiable fact? Despite its pretenses, news media tends to uncritically repeat narratives favorable to those with power over them and their society and simply cannot verify the claims even if they wanted to - or would need to spend 10X more time per article.
I'll describe another angle: pick a topic concerning a foreign power that the US powers that be don't like. Take a sampling of articles about the same event in that topic. Now, check the sources. Which government officials are cited? Is it all of the equally relevant counties? Are the officials from the "bad" countries treated with the same skepticism and language as those from "good" countries? Who else is cited? Are they anonymous? What reason do you have to believe those anonymous sources? Does the paper have a track record of uncriticalky repeating US intelligence personnel to get a "scoop"? Are any people from think tanks cited? Why were those think tanks contacted and not others? Why is the Cato Institite cited so often, or The American Foundation for Eagles and Freedom and Democracy and You Losing Your Pension? Who is on the board of the think tanks cited and what is the history of that think tank? Where does it gets its money? Were think tanks from "bad" country cited? Was there any skeptical investigation by the journalist at all? Did the article do any research at all or is it just a rewriting of someone else's article?
Lots of questions to investigate, but the answers will have a pattern: uncritical repetition of US State Department talking points, seeking informstion exclusively from right wing sources, and almost zero skepticism against "good" country sources and intense skepticism towards "bad" country sources.
So in that ecosystem of information, if you were to sample those articles and not be intensely critical of them, you'd almost certainly get misled. What value has been provided by the illusion of openness snd choice? A false sense of knowledge. And a huge pile of homework if you want to engage critically with the media.
Only wanted to say, WOW, thank you very much, you have given a very solid argument. thank you!