I don’t think it’s free but it is free-er . You have an admittedly shitty balance of power between politicians who want to be voted for and capitalists who want to make money and voter/consumers. The population, who as a collective, want excellent public and private services with low prices/ taxes and generally not too concerned how that happens. Don’t get me wrong there are lots of fantastic people in the world and most people I meet I think are genuinely decent. A person is smart but people are dumb.

Western media are often controlled or influenced by the Chinese or Russian government, through their proxies.

Eg.

In July 2014, the Daily Telegraph was criticised for carrying links on its website to pro-Kremlin articles supplied by a Russian state-funded publication that downplayed any Russian involvement in the downing of the passenger jet Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. These had featured on its website as part of a commercial deal, but were later removed. As of 2014,[needs update] the paper was paid £900,000 a year to include the supplement Russia Beyond the Headlines, a publication sponsored by the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Russian government’s official newspaper. In February 2015, the chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph, Peter Oborne, resigned. Oborne accused the paper of a “form of fraud on its readers” for its coverage of the bank HSBC in relation to a Swiss tax-dodging scandal that was widely covered by other news media. He alleged that editorial decisions about news content had been heavily influenced by the advertising arm of the newspaper because of commercial interests. Jay Rosen at New York University stated that Oborne’s resignation statement was “one of the most important things a journalist has written about journalism lately”. Oborne cited other instances of advertising strategy influencing the content of articles, linking the refusal to take an editorial stance on the repression of democratic demonstrations in Hong Kong to the Telegraph’s support from China. … In October 2017, a number of major western news organisations whose coverage had irked Beijing were excluded from Xi Jinping’s speech event launching a new politburo. However, the Daily Telegraph had been granted an invitation to the event.

In other words, even western media are also often biased in favour of China.