RE: Propaganda and the big picture

Good post! and a very important subject.

Take the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act then add the 1996 Telecommunications Act and you have what you mentioned here plus media cartels. Some quote from its Wikipedia (bolds are mine...):

The Act was claimed to foster competition. Instead, it continued the historic industry consolidation reducing the number of major media companies from around 50 in 1983 to 10 in 1996[23] and 6 in 2005.[24] An FCC study found that the Act had led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners, even as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States had increased.[25] This decline in owners and increase in stations has reportedly had the effect of radio homogenization, where programming has become similar across formats.
Consumer activist Ralph Nader argued that the Act was an example of corporate welfare spawned by political corruption, because it gave away to incumbent broadcasters valuable licenses for broadcasting digital signals on the public airwaves.[26] There was a requirement in the Act that the FCC not auction off the public spectrum which the FCC itself valued at $11–$70 billion.
It had been specifically named in the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace as an act "which repudiates your own [i.e. American] Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis".[27]