And killing journalists, and imprisoning political opponents, and controlling the media and, yes, straight up lying, because no other voice can be heard, so it's impossible to publicly fact check their lies.

That's a few autocratic countries. Such a statement is obviously not true in general. For starters you have dictatorships which have been based upon absurd and shameless lies. North Korea currently, Haiti under Papa Doc, Turkmenistan under Niyazov. In addition I'd imagine hiding news is the first line of defense, but if that fails none of these autocratic governments are not above lying (and I'd bet you find the dictators of those countries have lied many times when it suited them, if evidence is available).

I m talking about specifically “fake news” , lies that are generally obvious yet for emotional reasons persistent

What s different about autocrats is that they will unscrupulously plant evidence and kill everyone who knows

Autocratic countries like... ones that ignore and undermine their own judicial system and appoint family members to positions of power?

Any evidence to your words ? Or this is just a lie you made up to spread your FUD ?

What FUD?

Here s an article about typical media strategies https://theconversation.com/four-things-you-need-to-know-abo...

Such countries will usually fabricate stories by implanting evidence or killing witnesses, not just by repeating them