Having spent a lot of time working for and with governments I can assure you that most of the time, behind closed doors, they truely hate the press, and wish it would go away. And this is true of even the most open and democratic governments.
Autocratic governments, again and again have shown what they think of a free press.
The idea that mainstream media is a mouthpiece of government just doesn’t add up.
Newspapers may pester governments with annoying questions about specific institutional failures and corrupt individuals, but they'll tend to be aligned on what the institution was supposed to achieve, what faithfully executing an office would look like.
The New York Times will ask the NYPD, "Why did you beat up that guy in a routine traffic stop?" or "How is it possible that you billed more overtime hours than there are in a week?". Not "Why haven't you shot the rich yet?"
The way you can particularly see this is in the suppression of news that doesn't ultimately help out _any_ of the current leaders with it's dissemination, only the populace.
Sometime's that's informing from a real benevolent perspective of let's get everyone on the same page for what's best to the best of our knowledge. Other times it's an obfuscation scheme to allow some to profit off of the rest of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent