Of course they are going to report that gerrymandering hurts democracy and conservatives are to blame.
Why don’t you ask Russia Today about whether Russia is a strong and prosperous country that’s good for the world?
Same tier of propaganda.
You should diversify and be more inclusive of your news sources.
Here's an article about gerrymandering in NC in the journal of Statistics and Public Policy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2020.1...
The NC2012 and NC2016 plots in comparison with the neutral districting is almost cartoonish in how much packing was performed.
As an aside, I don't understand why you're claiming that the AP, of all news sources, is a propaganda outlet (let alone one favoring democrats?). Do you have some reason to believe that their take regarding district policy is suspect? Or do you just have an nebulous distrust of news media in general?
You're more than welcome to post a reputable source that provides an analysis claiming that gerrymandering enfranchises people so that we'd have some subject matter disagreement to dig into.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/...
You're claiming gerrymandering is used to create the situation in option 1. I haven't seen any indication that this is the case from any reputable source. Most mathematical analysis of gerrymandering shows that option 3 is what's occurring, which does NOT enfranchise people.
Almost every piece mathematically quantifying gerrymandering efforts in the states has indicated that it substantially favors the GOP. Here's one example centered on the 2016 election:
https://apnews.com/article/elections-race-and-ethnicity-voti...
Some of the discussion is regarding how much of the bias is intentional (due to intentionally gerrymandered districts) vs. unintentional (due to the geographic clustering of democratic voters in urban areas), but I haven't ever seen an analysis that attributes an overall advantage to democrats as a result of districting at the state or national level.