"Actually being state-run is okay if those journalistic institutions can be independently verified to offer high-quality, objective reporting, based on nothing more than an analysis of that reporting -- especially with regards to that institution's stances of its government's actions."

Not sure why this is so hard for you all. Like, actually, in order to determine if a news source is good, we have to -- shockingly! -- examine the output of that news source. By this metric, the VOA and BBC are pretty good... uh, single Tweets notwithstanding.