During the Cold War, the go-to example of authoritarian media was Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, whose name means “truth” in Russian. It was a running joke that Soviet media repeated the government’s line on everything, without presenting an alternative point of view. Headlines about purges during the Joseph Stalin era included bangers like “Squash the Reptiles” or “For Dogs: A Dog’s Death.” After Stalin signed the nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler, Pravda no longer used the word “fascist” to describe the Nazi regime.

When American media covers this type of state media in other countries — the Soviet Union, China, Iran — it’s always from a position of smugness: that could never happen here. Maybe we shouldn’t be so smug.

The US mainstream media’s coverage of the recent campus protests of genocide in Gaza has often been virtually indistinguishable from state media under an undemocratic regime. The White House narrative is recycled nightly and relentlessly, especially in the elite print media and on the liberal or centrist broadcasts, in ways that don’t feel much different from authoritarian societies.