You'll try, of course, to recover the irretrievably bad position of your argument comparing the NYT to Pravda by trying to get me to defend the NYT, WSJ, and WaPo's 2003 Iraq coverage. But of course, I don't have to do that. My case is not that journalism is faultless; it's called the "first draft" of history for a reason. Rather, the burden is on you to support the extraordinary claim that the NYT, WSJ, and WaPo are effectively equivalent to state-run media, the claim you stated plainly upthread.
So no, I have not been arguing that the two are "effectively equivalent" or "just like", nor that the government (whatever that may be) has an iron grip on the press - just that the press successfully propagandizes the people with the desires of the ruling power structure. Stating it a different way, one cannot rely on mainstream news outlets and consider themselves informed.
FWIW there is a more direct mechanism of action put forth by Moldbug, but I figure you'll be even less receptive to something of the opposite political flavor.
(Although at this point in our present catastrophe I admit I'm missing the days of competent leadership, even if it was somewhat exploitative of the plebs)
No doubt Yarvin himself could contribute a pointless 5,000 words to this already pointless thread explaining how I've summarized his beliefs poorly. I'm happy to tie it off here, though.
FWIW reading Moldbug's analysis of left versus right is what made me return to self-identifying as liberal.
The press certainly can agree organically about things. We generally talk in terms of causality, but feedback cycles mean that things act mutually on each other - including the population being preached to (eg choosing to promote those fucking yellow ribbons). But exploring this way leads us deeper into handwaving territory, which is a lot easier to shoot down with a dismissive blunt response, as you did to my initial comment.
For the Iraq war specifically, I do agree that many journalists were likely in agreement to begin with. But the ones that were not were filtered out by management and ownership (cf Clear Channel's list of songs to censor), resulting in the unified presentation. I'm not claiming grand conspiracy, but rather emergent behavior with the net effect of squashing big-business-inconvenient narratives.
Also, I'd be thankful to anybody who leaked information that punched holes in the COVID-19 narrative. I don't think that will happen, because I think it is a very real crisis, but I would welcome being wrong. That's another huge difference between your points of comparison - COVID-19 analysis survives open discussion, while the pro-war camp relied on silencing dissent.