The corporate media in the west is a lustily willing tool of neocon and neoliberal propaganda itself, no Russians needed. If you have ignored that fact for the last four decades, I wonder how you continue to ignore it in the face of the contents of the daily WikiLeaks dumps?
There is – conspiracy theories notwithstanding – no such group in the west. Sure, there's propaganda, but they can't write the article themselves. They have to work journalists using the same methods as corporate PR instead of faxing over the article they'd like to see.
Are most journalists supporters of the status quo? Yes, of course – because they're a product of that status quo, i. e. society. If you grow up in a western country nowadays, and you get some perspective and your mother didn't drink too much while pregnant, you can't escape the conclusion that despite all flaws, the current system is pretty much the best we've had.
journalists don't ask "the big questions" in every article because we've achieved a level of stability and safety where "asking the big questions" is a losing proposition: Just like I would not agree to have 10% of my genome scrambled, I don't take anyone serious who wants major changes in "the system": the system is sufficiently optimized to make entropy more of a risk than a chance, and even if we may be caught in a local maximum, I'd rather try a bit of hill climbing than subjecting my life to a risky exploration of state space.
Personally, I think we're being slowly boiled.
That just distracts from the actual causes of problems, and actual ways to solve them. It mistakes failures on outcome for flaws in the system. An example: I am fundamentally opposed to the PATRIOT act and warrantless wiretapping. But I don't think it was passed because the Military-Industrial complex controls congress. I believe it was passed in a completely legitimate way by democratically elected politicians voting for something they actually believed in. I also believe that at the time the PATRIOT act would have received overwhelming support from the public. I just think those congressmen are idiots, and the american public is largely idiotic enough to deserve them.
So it doesn't help screaming obscenities at NYT and WSJ reporters. You have to make your actual case to actual people to change anything.
IMHO, you are mismatching regular propaganda with Russian propaganda (AKA Informational War). Please, read linked book above, it contains in depth explanation of the topic by European Union.
As for your other link. I did look at it. Here's a paragraph talking about Russian Television News.
The underlying message is simple: the United States is engaged in a selfish, ruthless bid for world
domination. By implication, anything Russia or any other country can do to resist this is commendable
and justified. It portrays the foundations of modern Euro-Atlantic security—including NATO enlargement
to former communist countries and Western support for Ukraine—as hypocritical and unjust.
[1]: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html
And yes, they are Nukes. They were moved there after the Turkish 'coup'.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/us-moves...
I was puzzled by their tactic for long time until I found answer in Russian book for FSB newcomers: they use massive campaigns of FUD to break trust in victim country (their troll tasks are labeled like «inspire more suspects about government [in target country]», etc.) and to quickly hire agents in enemy organizations. Even USA cannot protect their own citizens from Russian «propaganda» (see case of John Demianuk[2]).
[1]: http://cepa.org/reports/winning-the-Information-War [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk