Ditto! Without the media, this "union" would not survive to the next winter.
A related thought: the production of propaganda hinges on the cooptation of the scribbling class. Stalin and Co. made a grave mistake by antagonizing the scribbling class, and they paid for it dearly - by having a significant segment of opinion makers against them. The US ruling class made no such mistake, and with the brief interlude of the McCarthy era, they coopted the scribling class to their propaganda project. That may explain not only the enormous success of the US propaganda machine - after all it employs the best minds money can buy - but the unusual hostility of the US intellectual establishment to the x-Block or China (as compared to much more brutal fascist regimes in S. America and Asia). It was a genuine expression of the scribbling class international solidarity with the "oppressed" breathern in E. Europe, or now in China and Tibet. At the same time, the US Brahmin class did not show proportional concern about slaughtered workers or peasants in S. America or Indonesia.
wojtek